An Overview of the Farm

I've taken the liberty of moving one of Charles' comments to a post of its own. It's still in the Haying thread as well.

Charles Cooley said...

Our farm, like most farms at that time, was much more diversified than the typical farm of today. We had about 245 acres of land. It sloped toward the west with a view of the range of hills and mountains that lie east of the main range of the Green Mountains. We could see the tops of some of the higher peaks of the Greens such as Killington and Pico and Lincoln Mountain but the dominating scene was of Mt Cushman and the mountain tops in that range. It was a beautiful sight and when I went to Chicago to attend college I couldn't believe how fortunate I had been to grow up where I could look out on that expanse of hills and mountains every day.

From the house it was mostly uphill through pasture and woods to the eastern edge of the farm where the land fell away to slope the other way. The woods were a mixture of sugar maples and softwoods with several places where the hemlocks had formed enclosures that felt like rooms. Once through the outer ring of branches the space was closed in so completely as to be hidden from outside. One could walk past these places and never realize that they were there. It was a great place to explore and we spent many summer days on the hill in the woods. Mother and Dad, busy as they were found time occassionally to take the family up there for a picnic. There were about 30 or 40 acres of open land that had been cleared in the early part of the 19th century and we used it as pasture. During the thirties the federal government through the Soil Conservation District subsidized tree planting on acres like this and we were gradually reforesting a large part of tha pasture which was not of much value as pasture anyhow. Some of the land had been tilled and was good enough to concentrate on for improvement. My father had grown crops on a little of it and I can remember a cornfield on what later became pasture and woodland. In the the 18th and 19th centuries there was a farmstead up on the hill and there were still signs of the buildings and some rose bushes and lilac trees that had persisted through several decades of neglect and grazing by sheep and cattle. We harvested crab apples from some trees left by the occupants of that farm. In a far corner there was a small area surrounded by a stonewall that my father called the old hop yard. One could still see the little hillocks where the hop vines grew.

The majority of the tillable land was to the west below the house and barn. It sloped less steeply than the land above the house. The road that went northa nd south that we used to go to the Center (Randolph Center) lay between the house and barn and divided the farm into two approximately equal parts. The western half sloped down to a brook with a fringe of woods composed of mostly balsam and spruce. There were trout in the brook and we fished there. The western half was bisected again by a road that made a shortcut for people who lived north of our farm when they went to Randolph. The road was deteriorating gradually due to neglect. For that reason it was used much less than the road that went between our house and barn. The brook was another place where we could play and spend time building rock dams.

While every day had chores that had to be done there were many days when no haying was going on. If it had rained the day before even if the weather was good following the rain it took some time for any hay that got wet to dry out so that we could continue with it. We might use such a time to mow some more hay but that was a job for one man and a team of horses so it was a time when youngsters could amuse themselves. Once the hay had dried on the surface it often needed to be turned or tedded so that the the under layers would dry out. My father often felt that it was efficient to turn the hay with pitchforks especially if there was not too much of it and there were several idle boys around to be put to the task. Another job that seemed endless was pulling kale that grew as a weed in the corn. We could control the weeds between the corn rows with a horse drawn cultivator but there was always kale right in the row of corn and the only way we knew to eliminate it was to pull it by hand. We grew several acres of corn to chop for silage and pulling kale would start about the time haying began and lasted a little over a month as I recall. The rows were pretty long and it took at least 20 minutes and maybe closer to an hour to pull the kale in one row of corn. Dad would pay us by the row and both boys and girls could earn a little money by pulling kale. I don't remember how much he paid. I usually spent most of what I earned to buy fireworks on the 4th of July.

I suspect that the diversification of the farms at that time was partly a holdover from the days when farms were pretty isolated places and farmers used their farms and labor to produce much of what they buy today. It probably lasted during the depression because the price of what farmers had to sell was low and it was as productive to produce something needed by the family as it was to produce something to sell. We had several hundred hens and sold some eggs and dressed poultry. Hens could be cared for by children and women and they formed quite a bit of the chore activity that took place daily on our farm and was participated in by children. We had some pigs that ate household garbage, grain and skimmed milk. For a few years we had some geese but they required very little care or at least that's the way we did it. They ate a lot of grass and ran around pretty much as they wanted to. I don't know how they benefitted us because I only remember eating one when it got hurt and had to be killed "to save its life" as my father used to say. The ganders were pretty territorial and fiesty. One of the tasks that frequently fell to me was feeding calves that we raised as herd replacements. Calves don't have to be taught to nurse but they do have to be taught to drink from a pail if it's done before they are weaned due to age. Since our principal product for sale was milk we didn't want to squander too much of it on calves if we could control their diet and produce healthy heifers. After a day or two with their mothers the calves were hitched to the wall behind the cows and taught to drink from a pail by holding their mouth in some milk in a pail while the calf sucked on my fingers. It was no problem getting a hungry calf to suck my fingers but they had a natural tendency to tip their head up as though they were sucking on their mother's teat. The trick was to get their head down into the milk and by using two fingers in their mouth with a space between the fingers the calf would get some milk and in a short while give up trying to lift its head up. If I relaxed too much and the space between my two fingers closed in the calf would give a violent bump with its nose and might knock pail, milk and me down. It might take three or four days to teach the calf that all it had to do was stick its nose into the milk in the pail and drink. They never seemed to get enough to satisfy them and if I fed them too much they would get diarhea which could be fatal. They had a nasty habit of bunting the pail when they had finished the milk in it. I usually held the pail while they drank and it could be hard to keep hold of it when they bunted. These were animals that weighed from eighty to a hundred ten pounds and they were pretty strong even when they were only a day or two old. After a few days on whole milk they would start eating a little hay and grain and when they were eating enough solid food we would gradually convert the liquid part of their diet to water. As we made the transition we would use skimmed milk which had to be warmed up for them. There was no way to warm it in the barn so I had to take the cold skimmed milk to the house and warm it in a pail or kettle on the stove. Some of the calves a little older needed warm water and milk as their liquid. It sounds complicated but the changes took place slowly and I rarely had more than six calves that had to be fed that way so it was doable. There was a lot of schlepping back and forth from barn to house.

The milking was done by "the men" for the most part. That chore and feeding the cows took most of the time spent by the men while doing chores. Remember, though, it happened twice a day and it didn't take long for it to lose its appeal. In the summer the cows spent the time that they were not being milked in the pasture. The got a lot of their feed by grazing and keeping the barn clean was a lot easier in the summer. Flies were a problem and we sprayed with a repellent nearly every day.

The garden and raspberries took quite a bit of time for children. Hoeing, pulling weeds and picking garden produce and berries was work that many people could do and there was always some to be done if there was nothing more pressing. As I look back on it I think we were pretty busy what with work and play. At first some of the work was play but when it had to be done and there was something that seemed more interesting we might be a little less enthusiastic. A big difference between then and now is the absence of TV, radio and trips to town.

We made some of the things we played with. Someone showed us how to whittle a shingle to make dart that could be launched with a stick and a string. After we learned how we could shoot the dart hundreds of feet into the air and then we spent quite a while looking for it. We learned that we could find the dart easier if we painted it red. We learned to throw a small green apple with a limber stick about 30 inches long. If we got it right we could throw an apple three hundred yards or more that way. My brother and I trained steers with some help from the men. Some of them were fairly well trained.

During the long summer twilights we played rousing games of "kick the can". I think most people know a little about the game but just in case, it's a version of hide and seek and with the whole farm to hide in we had great fun.

Another highlight of the summer, but not until haying was done was a trip to Georgia. My father was born and spent his early childhood in Geeorgia, VT. He had a cousin who still lived and farmed there. He was especially fond of his cousin, Hale Nye. Hale had a "cottage" on the shore of Lake Champlain. He was very generous about letting us use it for a little vacation. It took nearly all day to drive to Georgia in those days and we wold spend a few days at the Lake, fishing and swimming and listening to Hale's entertaining stories when he could spare time to join us.