farm

DOWN ON THE FARM




One good thing you can say about life on a farm, is, generally, kids learn to work! Whether they want to or not, there is a certain "work ethic" instilled into them, as in "We-all-have-to-pitch-in, because many hands make light labour, or some such quaint homily, my mother often quoted.
Anyway, let me tell you about the Morrison kids’ chores on the farm, even if we we accepted our lot in life with sometimes less than good grace….
Jack and I were close in age, only 14 months apart, so we were assigned double duty, always, until he got big enough and strong enough to start picking rocks and I was relegated to be assistant housekeeper. Our first chores were gathering the eggs from the hen coop; a mindless job which could turn to hazardous if there happened to be a broody hen or two sitting on a clutch of eggs. Then we had to be a bit careful because some of those babies could peck at your intruding hand to the point that blood could be drawn. No way would they give up their eggs willingly, those eggs would provide them with baby chicks one day was their simple thought.
Then there was pumping water (hand pump before we finally managed to get a pump jack, which was a motorized device that pumped the water for us.) We had a huge tank which had to be kept filled for the cows and horses to drink out of, like the size of two large jacuzzis. Jack would pump 100 strokes, then I would, and so on, over and over until the dang thing was filled. This went on, year round, no respite in winter time; there was a waterproof heater immersed in the tank in winter, to keep the ice down, and of course the well never froze, as it was much below the frost line. Another part of that job was keeping the two buckets of water filled in the house…..that was our drinking water, cooking water, washing hands, whatever. At the side of the stove there was a reservoir for water too, which had to be kept filled as well, heat from the stove would heat it up nicely, and it was used for washing dishes, filling the kettle, stuff like that. No paper or plastic cups in those days, we all drank out of a "dipper" and far as I know, never caught too many of each other’s germs. For washing hands we had a small basin on the water bucket stand, and a common towel, used by everybody, hanging on a nail. When you were finished that little chore, you were supposed to wipe out the basin and chuck the dirty water into the "slop bucket", a big 5 gallon bucket which stood on the kitchen floor next to the "water"area. Sometimes, water in the basin would just sit there, forgotten, and on really cold nights, we’d get up in the morning, and it would have a sheet of ice over it.
Then there was the wood pile; one of the major preparations for winter was cutting down trees from the groves of poplar on our farm, and cutting them into stove-sized logs. For this my dad rigged up a motor that drove a special saw on a long belt, it was always at least a two man job, feeding the logs into the whirling saw and cutting them into lengths of about 20 inches. I’ll never forget one time, the Service boys (my dad’s cousins) were at our house, and they were all busily engaged in sawing up a huge pile of wood, when Bill Service let his left hand get too close to the blade, and bingo! his wrist was sliced almost right through. My dad pressed it back togethe again, then bound it up tightly, tightly, put a makeshift tourniquet on his arm, and off to town they went for the doctor to deal with it further. Anyhow, us kids were not allowed to help with this job, at least not when we were small, just too hazardous. Our part of the job was keeping the woodbox filled in the kitchen, so we packed loads of wood in from the woodpile every day, the old kitchen stove was constantly in use, with 8 mouths to fill three times a day, water to heat, or snow to melt for washing clothes, baking……my mother was constantly baking. And when I turned 11 or 12, I was responsible for contributing to the baking. I could bake VERY MEAN PIES! From scratch, of course, no pre-made pie crusts in those days.
A summer-time chore was "pulling weeds", Uncle Hughie used to pay us a special bonus for doing this job, 5 cents for a 5 gallon bucketful, pressed down as hard as you could. Pig weeds….we fed these to the pigs, appropriately enough, they loved them. Stinkweed was a first target, it came up early in the spring, and if the cows got into it, in their winter-starved search for anything green, it would taint their milk. Yeccchhh! Undrinkable. As the garden came up, we would have weed-pulling jobs there too. We were encouraged to have our own little garden spaces, and learned all about how to garden in those early days.
As we got bigger and better-muscled, we started milking the cows. You had tio be careful with a couple of them, as they were inclined to "kick the bucket", literally. I always told Jack he was much better than I at handling those bossies, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. We trained our barn cats (we never had housecats, they all lived in the barn, winter and summer), to sit up on their hind legs and we would squirt the odd stream of milk right into their little pink mouths. This was great fun for both milker and cat, but we didn’t dare let the grown-ups see this, they did not approve. As we moved into our teens and started going to the local country dances, we often wouldn’t get home until 4 or 5 in the morning, but before we could lay our grateful heads on a pillow, the milking had to be done! So off to the barn we’d go….A direct off-shoot of the milking was feeding the calves, they never had a chance to feed off their mothers. So it was our job to teach them to drink their milk out of a bucket, first you had to dip your fingers in the milk, then put them into the calf’s mouth and let it suck your fingers until finally, it would get the idea, and after butting the pail a few times in frustration, they learnt to drink in peace and harmony. I often had to go and find the new calves when they were born, if the pregnant cow had given birth in some remote area of the pasture (which they usually did, went off by themselves). Their mothers licked them until they were dry, then I would take them both home to the barn. I’ll never forget one little bull calf that had the nerve to put his head down, bellow and take a run at me like a full grown bull…..an hour old, instinct rules. At that point he could hardly even stagger, but no mistaking his intentions!
We all learned to stook, before the days of combines, a binder cut down the ripe grain, pulled by a four horse team, later by a tractor. The binder would cut the grain, form it into bundles with binder twine holding them together. Then they had to be picked up and formed into stooks, consisting of 8 or 10 bundles propped against each other, right side up (grain heads up, that is) in long rows all across the field. This was hard hard work….I really didn’t have to do much of it, but the boys had their turns. They also had to hitch the stone boat (a flat sleigh-like device on runners) and take it out to the fields and pick up the numerous rocks lying all over the place. I don't recall ever doing this chore, but Jack certainly did, and the other littler boys too, Sandy and Bob.
And so we all learned to work together…doing the chores, feeding the animals, planting the crops, tending them, the gardens. Our part of the country was too cold in the winter to grow any kind of small fruits, but there were wild saskatoons, chokecherries, pincherries, the latter two to be made into jellies or juices, the saskatoons to be canned (jarred) for winter use. In the summer time, when the saskatoons were at the height of their season, Jack and I would set off for our favorite patches, each wearing a belt, on which our picking pails (lard pails with handles) were attached and a milk bucket each. We’d come home with everything full to the brim. Then the distasteful job of picking over the berries, throwing out the wormy ones (just a few), picking out the stink bugs and the odd little twig or leaf that ended up in our booty. My mum canned usually a couple of hundred jars of saskatoons each summer, and they were our mainstay for desserts….and rhubarb.
That was life on the farm……I still have a few stories about those days, but this post is (again) getting too long! So see you all again, sometime soon!
UNOHOO.