Life on The Farm

Thus far in these writings we have only occasionally referred to our life on the farm. It was a way of life so different from the 21st century life whether one lives is the country or on a small lot or in any sized city. It was in another world of anything we can imagine today. Country culture was so different in so many ways, and even more so as we lived without many modern conveniences everyone now takes for granted, at least in the United States. So here I will digress in time and begin back at my early life as a young farm boy and growing up and away from the farm.

The barn was central to much farm activity. That is where we had our cattle, horses, and sometimes pigs as well. It was a second story building with a steep hill going up to the second floor. Downstairs were the animals with a large space-room kind of shed where the cattle were, especially in the winter. It was the job of children to help keep this area relatively clean for the cattle. This meant to throw straw down from upstairs each evening in the winter and spread it so the cattle had a nice place to sleep at night. There was always manure in this shed which was dirty for the animals which is why we had to "bed" the shed every night. In the summer the cows might be out in the barnyard and so we had less work inside each evening. Also we had to throw hay down for the cattle each evening and morning when it was too cold for them to be out on the farm.

An important part of the barn was the stables for cows when we milked them. We usually had 8-10 cows and we milked by hand, sitting on 3-legged milk stools, squirting the milk in pails as we sat by the udders of the cows. Young heifers had to get used to this and sometimes they would kick and spill the milk pail, or worse, get their foot in the pail of milk, grossly contaminating it. On rare occasions we might even be kicked over and have to pick ourselves off the floor. My favorite cow was named Daisy. She was so gentle she hardly ever kicked like that. I believe I sometimes even rode on her back as I brought them to the barn. The cows were in the stalls only for milking and in the barn yards or fields grazing, especially in the summer. It was my job to go after the cows in the evenings to milk them. For some years we had a large pony named Nancy that I rode to go after the cows. I rode bare back and the horse got used to chasing the cows and would go back and forth after the slowest cows at the end of the herd. I also rode this pony/horse on errands to neighbors and at least once rode it to school on the last day of school. I remember once riding behind the school bus trying to keep up with the bus.

Harvesting wheat and oat was an exciting thing for us children. First Dad drove the "binder" around the field to cut the standing grain stalks and automatically tie them with heavy string. Then we boys would set them up in shocks to dry, about 10 sheaves upright with one on top to let them dry for a week or two. Then when it was time for thrashing- separating the grain from the straw, the thrashing machine would come to our farm. It was a big, long machine on steel wheels and pulled also buy a tractor with such wheels. It was especially exciting to see the tractor driver push that big machine up the barn hill into the barn. He turned the tractor around and pushed it with the front end of the tractor. When it pushed hard up the hill, he skillfully kept it straight with hands on hand-brakes, to steer it. It never got away from him, but as I think about it now, I realize that if he had gotten into the wrong angle, it could have pushed the machine to the side and perhaps dumping the tractor over and perhaps on him. It never happened, but it was a tense moment for us to see him push it up the hill.

Sometimes when the barn was full of straw, we would make a straw stack outside in the barn yard. My job was to work either to steer the straw blower so that it would make a nice pile or fill the entire straw shed, or watch the grain on the wagon so that it wold fill the wagon without spilling over the edges. Meanwhile, wagons were loading up the shocks in the fields and bringing them to the thrashing machine and pitching them into the machine with forks. When I was old enough, I would help in the fields, pitching up the sheaves or bundles, or work on the wagon arranging the bundles so that we could carry a full load, at least 6-7 feet high.. If one was not careful in loading properly, the bundles could slide off on the way to the barn, or when going up the steep barn hill. Usually 5-6 farmers worked together, helping each other to load the wheat or oats, and the machine would go from farm to farm. The women had a big job to feed all these in the thrashing ring, as we called it, when it was at our house. The thrashers worked up a hunger so that the expressions was that one was hungry as a thrasher. It was a social event, working and eating together. Usually it was with neighbors whose farms were close to each other.

I mentioned work in the barn daily. This we called chores and all boys and sometimes girls helped there. It involved as we mentioned, feeding, milking and bedding the animals. Usually Dad fed the pigs and we did other things and he helped milking. Especially in the winter it was dark inside the barn and we used kerosene lanterns so we could see what we were doing. Some people had gas lanterns which were brighter and we may also have had them at times. We had to be careful with the lanterns as if they fell over, the oil might spill and catch fire. So we always hung them high, which also lighted up the areas better. We did not have electricity in the barn until I was about grown. Younger children helped with chores in feeding the chickens and gathering the eggs. We got up early in the morning to do chores while Mom made breakfast. It had to be worked out before school time during the school year. My parents were good in scheduling the chores so that we could have family devotions together before breakfast before we went to school.

We always farmed the fields with horses instead of tractors. This was the Amish way of doing it as they believed it was “worldly” to use modern equipment. The first I can remember driving horses was when we hauled hay from the fields. I stood on the front rack of the wagon and drove the horses while two persons loading the hay as it came up at the back of the wagon on the hay loader. The horses had to straddle the row of hay which had been raked together in a long windrow. We had to guide the horses especially around the corners so that the row of hay would come right under the loader and we would not miss any. As I grew older I would load the hay carefully so that it could be piled high and not fall off as we left the field for the barn. One other person was usually on the wagon to tread it down and pack it so it would make a good load. As I grew older I also drove the mower around the field cutting the hay as well as the side rake that brought the hay together in a long row to be picked up by the hay loader behind the wagon. At the barn we would unload the wagon by huge forks that held the hay as it was pulled up by ropes on pulleys to the peak of the barn. Then it was slid over above the hay mow on tracks and dropped, where it then had to be scattered as it would just come down on one pile. The whole hay mow had to be filled for the winter for the cattle and horses. The hay mow or loft was a place for kids to play with brothers and sisters and cousins, often jumping down on the soft hay from higher beams in the hayloft. We might also play hide and seek in the barn as well as basket ball at times.

In the spring we hitched 3 or 4 horses to a plow to get the fields ready for planting corn and oats. Wheat was planted in the fall for the following year. We plowed about 2 acres of ground in a good day which hopefully went from 7 in the morning to 5 in the evening with an hour or more off for dinner. As a small child I was often sent to tell my father when it was time to come in for dinner. Dinner was at 12 noon, so I would go back to the field in time that he could bring the horses up and in the barn and feed then and get into the house by 12. That way they were together on when they could expect to eat. As a kid I was always hungry before meal time and my mother could promise that we would eat at 12 if I could wait to eat until then. No wonder I am stills stuck on that schedule.

I suppose I was about 10 when I started to drive the horses in the fields with the harrow. This farm tool had many tines, or iron springs bent around, to stir the ground after plowing to smooth out the ground to prepare it for planting. As a teen I would then also plow the fields. We rode on the plow and sometimes it hit stones and it would jar the plow upward and sometimes we were shaken off the seat. Dad always operated the drill for planting grain or corn. That had to be done carefully and I probably never did it that I can distinctly remember. I remember we had to let the horses rest every ten to fifteen minutes when it was warm. When the corn was up and growing, we cultivated it with two horses pulling the cultivator and with operating the cultivator with our feet, we could insure that we did not cultivate out the little corn plants. One row at a time we took and it was a long job to cover fields of 10-20 acres.

Sometimes after plowing Dad thought there were so may stones in the fields that he sent us to pick them up with a flat stone boat- just a 4-5 2x6's nailed together, perhaps ten feet long and pulled by horses. Once I know we went out and pulled yellow mustard weeds that were growing so thickly in the hay fields.

In the spring as it began to warm up, probably in February or March we tapped the maple trees in our back woods. This involved drilling holes in the trees and placing there, a small pipe with a wire hook around it on which a pail was hung to catch the sweet water, sugar water, we called it. About everyday, in the right kind of weather we would collect this sap in a big tank on a wagon and haul it to the sugar camp to boil it until it would become maple syrup. It took about 35 gallons of sugar water boiled down- evaporated, to make one gallon of syrup. We would have to keep loading the space under the long flat pan with wood to keep the water boiling until it was “boiled down” to the right consistency or thickness. Sometimes when I was working at that, I would go to the hen house and get an egg or two and place it in the boiling water until it was cooked and then eat it. Which reminds me, I would often help my mother butcher chickens, holding then as she stretched out their heads and chopped them off with an ax on a stump or chunk of wood. Then the chickens would jumped around wildly until they were dead. Then she would dip them into a bucket of hot water so that the feathers could be pulled out. She then cleaned them of small feathers and gutted them.

Farming was a way of life. We probably assumed as children we would be farmers when we grew up, but in teen years we began to think of other occupations and felt that farm life was to simple to be challenging, especially with the Spiritual challenges that we were being exposed to. We also began to think about higher education even as only a few of our acquaintances went on after high school. A change of life style, values, and dreams was in the atmosphere and the simple life on the farm would have to shift to something else, where ever God was taking us in our commitment to him..