I remember the year that the "Day Place" was purchased and we moved in to the Day's old house. Just prior to moving I was over there with Gram and the only bathroom facility was a 3 holer just in back of where the kitchen is now. Gram wasn't all that impressed and although we both used it, I was made to stand over it and aim down in. Gram didn't think things were all that sanitary. When we moved in I noticed that a new bathroom had been added.
Anyway, getting back to the subject of this post. Drinking water always seemed to be a problem at the "Day Place". Initially, a well north of the house, and out past the garden provided a limited amount of water. One day Jim Tucker and I were exploring and we found the well, unsuitably covered with flat stones which we removed the better to look in and also to throw stones in. At dinner that evening a lack of water pressure and quantity was discussed by Grampa and my mother, and after dinner Gramp and I journeyed out through the garden to check on the water supply. Gramp looked down the well and remarked that there seemed to be a lot of rocks in the well. I indicated that I didn't know anything about rocks in the well (which was quite shallow, probably 6 or 7 ft in depth). Gramp was a little dubious about the origin of the rocks, but allowed that there wasn't much water anyway even with all the rocks. The strainer on the pipe exiting the well was crushed and Gramp had to climb down into the well to recover it, repair it, and remove all the mysterious rocks.
The well never recovered from the event, and after that a couple of gathering tanks were placed in the cellar, and we supplemented the water that did come from the well by pulling another gathering tank out to the center to a fire hydrant, filling it there and dumping it into the tanks in the cellar. My job was to hold the fire hose in the tank which was on a hay wagon pulled by Gramp's jeep. The hose was big, there was a lot of pressure, and a good deal of the water was spilled on each fill. I was supposed to tell Gramp when the tank was almost full so that he could shut off the hydrant, but it took him so long to get the hydrant shut off that water squirted out of the top of the tank everywhere, soaking me, the wagon, and everything close. I decided to tell Gramp that the tank was almost full well before it was so that I didn't get soaked each time. Gramp got much quicker at shutting off the hydrant, and we only got about half a tank. I didn't dare to tell him that we weren't full, and so we went home with only half a tank. When we dumped it into the cellar tank Gramp remarked that it emptied out a lot quicker than it filled. After that he climbed up on the back of the wagon and looked into the tank before each return trip.
Things seemed to me to be a little tense around the house from time to time between my mom and Gramp whenever we ran out of water, and the next summer Gramp advised that we were going to have a new water supply from a stronger spring across the road from the house. The spring was dug out with a local back hoe, and Gramp and the back hoe operator set concrete tiles down in the resulting hole. I remember remarking that the tiles didn't seem to fill up much, but Gramp told me to be quiet and that this was much better and would solve the water problem. The back hoe dug a deep trench from the house down to the road, and from the other side of the road to the concrete tiles. Someone came with a pump and a hole was basically squirted under the road so that a pipe could be run to the well. My job for the summer was to fill in the trench, which I and the Arnold boys worked at diligently(?) for most of the summer without visible results.
As it turned out, the spring below the road provided about the same amount of water that the well north of the house had, and I remember several more trips out to the center to haul water during that summer.
When we returned the following summer, a well driller was brought in and a well was drilled right next to the house. The new deep well solved the water problems at the Day place, but I think Gramp was a little disappointed at the over all economic picture when all was said and done. The well drillers set up a charcoal brazier and heated and sharpened the tips right on site. That was an impressive feat. By the way, "well driller" is somewhat of a mistatement, the Day well was pounded down through the bed rock inch by inch over several days. I remember feeling that dull thud that the driller made for several days after the event was over.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
food
Looking back at life on the farm it has struck me that a great deal of the women's time and effort was spent in the preparation of food. Of course, everyone worked hard, especiallly in the summer, so we could eat large quantities of food withoout it damaging our waistlines. In fact, large quantities of nourishment were necessary in order to provide the energy we needed to go about our daily tasks. Think of all the calories that went into the work of haying!
In my growing up days most of our food was grown right on the farm. Even the meat, or perhaps I should say especially the meat, because it has only been in recent years that I have changed my meal-planning from building meals around meat to thinking of other forms of protein in our diet. We always had chicken, In the summer Dad, with the help of the boys, raised broilers for market and we ate our share. Sometime during the summer our family would host a big chicken barbecue with the chicken cooked over a specially dug pit and all sorts of other goodies to go with the chicken. We also canned chicken for consumption during the winter. Of course, no freezers in those days. We raised our own beef, and some of that was canned. Dad made great dried beef, now known as chipped beef. We raised pork and lamb, as well. We kids never wanted to know which of our pets we might be eating. However, I have to say that it didn't seem to spoil our appetites if by chance we did know which animal had been offered up to the table. We once had a pet goat which eventually found his way to our table. Sister Marion, who liked to stir up controversy, inquired suspiciously while consuming the goat meat if that was Goatie. I don't remember who replied to her question, nor what was said, but anyway Marion got the message, threw down her fork, and refused to eat another mouthful. Meat and its preservation made an awful mess in the kitchen. When I was in college, home for spring vacation, two boys came to visit me unannounced. Dad happened to be cutting up beef on the kitchen table. When the visitors knocked on the door, he opened the door with a large butcher knife in hand and clothes which were quite bloody. The kitchen also had the trappings of maple sugaring, which was a very sticky business. I wonder what my visitors thought, but they were too polite to show much emotion.
We also canned hundreds of quarts of vegetables and fruit. Much of that was the job of the women, although the men sometimes helped to harvest the produce. Garden produce has to be preserved when it is at a certain stage of ripeness, rather than when we had the time to take care of it. Moreover, things have a way of coming in large bunches, so that for several weeks in the summer large portions of many days were spent in canning. No freezers, of course. Often we had to process the jars of canned produce on the wood stove, sometimes far into the evening. We ate well all year round, but not without considerable effort. Maybe that is why the so-called great depression of the 30's made so little impression on us as kids. We didn't know anything about selling apples on the streets of the big cities.
Ruth became a proficient baker from a very early age, a skill at which she excels to this day. At the age of 11 she could bake anything: bread, pies, cakes, doughnuts. Because she was so good at it, the task of preparing the rest of the meal often fell to Marion and me. So did the clean-up until Marion and I lodged a complaint with Mom at the unfairness of our having to spend half the afternoon cleaning up after the main meal of the day, as well as Ruthy's baking. As a result, Ruth was directed to do her baking dishes. The summer that I was 16, Ruth 15, Marion 13, and the boys younger, Mother had a mastectomy followed by radiation therapy at what was then Mary Hitchcock in Hanover. In those days that was a much bigger deal than it is now and she was not well throughout that whole summer. We girls ran the household, with help from Dad when it came to grocery shopping, of which there was not a great deal. We did the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, the ironing, the whole deal. Don't forget that there were many mouths to feed in the summer, what with the extra help and the visiting relatives.
As an adult I have had to prepare my share of meals for family and visitors. I didn't especially like doing that, but neither did I especially dislike it. I have never considered myself very creative nor capable as a cook, but we always managed to eat. Now I am somewhat of a klutz in the kitchen. Ruth on the other hand is both creative and capable, and just seems to get better at it with age, and to really enjoy it.
In my growing up days most of our food was grown right on the farm. Even the meat, or perhaps I should say especially the meat, because it has only been in recent years that I have changed my meal-planning from building meals around meat to thinking of other forms of protein in our diet. We always had chicken, In the summer Dad, with the help of the boys, raised broilers for market and we ate our share. Sometime during the summer our family would host a big chicken barbecue with the chicken cooked over a specially dug pit and all sorts of other goodies to go with the chicken. We also canned chicken for consumption during the winter. Of course, no freezers in those days. We raised our own beef, and some of that was canned. Dad made great dried beef, now known as chipped beef. We raised pork and lamb, as well. We kids never wanted to know which of our pets we might be eating. However, I have to say that it didn't seem to spoil our appetites if by chance we did know which animal had been offered up to the table. We once had a pet goat which eventually found his way to our table. Sister Marion, who liked to stir up controversy, inquired suspiciously while consuming the goat meat if that was Goatie. I don't remember who replied to her question, nor what was said, but anyway Marion got the message, threw down her fork, and refused to eat another mouthful. Meat and its preservation made an awful mess in the kitchen. When I was in college, home for spring vacation, two boys came to visit me unannounced. Dad happened to be cutting up beef on the kitchen table. When the visitors knocked on the door, he opened the door with a large butcher knife in hand and clothes which were quite bloody. The kitchen also had the trappings of maple sugaring, which was a very sticky business. I wonder what my visitors thought, but they were too polite to show much emotion.
We also canned hundreds of quarts of vegetables and fruit. Much of that was the job of the women, although the men sometimes helped to harvest the produce. Garden produce has to be preserved when it is at a certain stage of ripeness, rather than when we had the time to take care of it. Moreover, things have a way of coming in large bunches, so that for several weeks in the summer large portions of many days were spent in canning. No freezers, of course. Often we had to process the jars of canned produce on the wood stove, sometimes far into the evening. We ate well all year round, but not without considerable effort. Maybe that is why the so-called great depression of the 30's made so little impression on us as kids. We didn't know anything about selling apples on the streets of the big cities.
Ruth became a proficient baker from a very early age, a skill at which she excels to this day. At the age of 11 she could bake anything: bread, pies, cakes, doughnuts. Because she was so good at it, the task of preparing the rest of the meal often fell to Marion and me. So did the clean-up until Marion and I lodged a complaint with Mom at the unfairness of our having to spend half the afternoon cleaning up after the main meal of the day, as well as Ruthy's baking. As a result, Ruth was directed to do her baking dishes. The summer that I was 16, Ruth 15, Marion 13, and the boys younger, Mother had a mastectomy followed by radiation therapy at what was then Mary Hitchcock in Hanover. In those days that was a much bigger deal than it is now and she was not well throughout that whole summer. We girls ran the household, with help from Dad when it came to grocery shopping, of which there was not a great deal. We did the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, the ironing, the whole deal. Don't forget that there were many mouths to feed in the summer, what with the extra help and the visiting relatives.
As an adult I have had to prepare my share of meals for family and visitors. I didn't especially like doing that, but neither did I especially dislike it. I have never considered myself very creative nor capable as a cook, but we always managed to eat. Now I am somewhat of a klutz in the kitchen. Ruth on the other hand is both creative and capable, and just seems to get better at it with age, and to really enjoy it.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
The Kitchen
By now pizza, Thai and 27 kinds of lettuce are pretty much normal fare. So are garlic, two kinds of olive oil, three kinds of milk, tofu and year round fresh anything. NPR tells amazing stories of families that are valiantly attempting to eat only what is grown within a matter of 10 miles around their home. So, how does that really work? When you're cooking with wood? And you need to kill the chicken dinner?
Education in Rural Vermont
Yes, well, it would seem that Cooleys in one way or another get involved in education. Grandpa taught at the Aggie School, now Vermont Tech. Idora taught and went on to the Vermont Dept. of Education, Ruth taught for her career, and Charles taught high school and finished teaching at Vermont Tech. John worked for the Forest Service, and Marion was a lawyer, perhaps not as formally didactic but not without a component of education.
So how did all this start? What was school like in Randolph Center? What did Grandpa do to balance farming and working at the Ag. School? How do you do homework without a computer?
So how did all this start? What was school like in Randolph Center? What did Grandpa do to balance farming and working at the Ag. School? How do you do homework without a computer?
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.
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.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Broadening the Time Frame
Most of what my Dad, Charles, has written is about the farm in his comments on the "Haying" post (below) are about a period when he and my aunts and uncle were young, the 1920's and 30's. This is what I had originally thought was most interesting to me, and what I think Sara thought was most important to get recorded. When we were kids, the horses were long gone, the road between the barn and house was paved, and electricity was a necessity not a luxury. Sara commented that we should get more people involved, particularly our cousins and my Mom, and my brothers including Paul Andrew. But Paul Andrew was born after we had moved from the farm. Many of my cousins are a few years younger than me, and I moved from the farm when it was sold in August 1962. At this point, people have to be 50 or close to it to directly recall much about the place. So I guess that era is also receding into history!
On the other side of the 20's and 30's, we are incredibly lucky to have Harry H. Cooley's "Randolph, Vermont: Historical Sketches" or probably even more interesting to us, subtitled "To Which Are Added Personal Reminiscneces of the Author." This was published in 1978 by the Randolph Town History Committee and the Randolph Historical Society. Here is an excerpt from a chapter titled "Farm Boys":
THIS IS AN ATTEMPT by a father of five and a grandfather of nineteen and a great-grandfather of three to tell the youngsters of today what it was like to grow up in rural Vermont at the turn of the century. It is frequently stated that one difficulty with young people today is lack of some useful employment. Whether this is a disadvantage or the opposite may be argued, but it is a fact that the modern way of living has brought about great changes in the use of time. I believe we are now in a period when we are beginning to realize that not all such changes are entirely good. At my age it is quite customary to speak of the "good old days." Even some of my grandchildren speak enviously of "way back when you were a little boy" although I know they do not entirely believe that I was that "little boy." I was born in the country town of Georgia, Vermont, on November 13, 1893. My parents and grandparents were farmers, and the principal farm operations were milking cows and raising crops to feed the cows. Sheep raising was largely in the past although both families still kept small flocks in spite of disastrous experiences during the 1870's and 1880's. I think that more changes in farming have come about since 1900 than at any time in the history of agriculture. With the exception of mowing machines, the Vermont farmer of 1900 carried on much as his father and grandfather had done ever since their ancestors came from Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1790.
What is the significance of this in a discussion of the use of time by the young? It is in the presence of so much work done by hand which was necessary to keep the family a going concern.
Consider the use of fuel for heat and cooking. Very few families used anything but wood-wood for the cook stove, wood for the heating stove, wood for the fire to boil sap and heat water. This wood had to be cut down, sawed, split, piled and seasoned, piled again in the wood shed, and carried into the wood box daily and fed into the fire with continuing judgment and punctuality. A 10-14-year-old boy was expected to do his regular woodbox chores after he had spent long hours getting it ready.
He was also expected to hoe the garden and the cornfield, with some older help. In haying he drove the horse on the hay rake, then "tumbled up" the windrows into "tumbles" which were of suitable size for the man who "pitched on' 'to pick up with a hay fork and pass to the "loader" who drove the team and placed the hay on the rack in a regular system so it could be "pitched off" onto the mow at the barn. He also "raked after" or raked "scatt'rin," cleaning up the scattered hay which the pitcher left. Sometimes he did it with the horse rake and sometimes with the "bull rake," a hand affair more properly named a "drag rake." How the "bull" got into the name I know not except for the Yankee "Bull strength and ignorance." The horse rake referred to is the old-fashioned sulky drag rake with two wheels 8 to 12 feet apart, and long curved steel teeth which gathered the hay and dragged it until the teeth were full. It was then "dumped" by the operator as near as possible in the same line as the last dump. The horse (usually one horse) worked between two "thills" and the boy rode in the center on an iron seat.
After the wagon was loaded our young man could follow it to the barn, gulp a drink of water, and ascend into the mow or "scaffold" where he was supposed to help level and pack the hay as it was thrown off the wagon. As the work progressed, and the mow became higher, the temperature up under the roof became higher and there was less chance of a breeze. But it was standard that the "boy" was high man since he did not have to lift the hay.
The time that Grampa is writing about is a time that seems, to me at least, to be closer what my Dad is talking about in his comments on "Haying" than to the time when I lived on the farm. But more importantly, it shows that it would be great to get any and all recollections about the farm and family from any time. They don't need to be first hand. If you read this, and remember the farm, add your story, or better yet stories.
On the other side of the 20's and 30's, we are incredibly lucky to have Harry H. Cooley's "Randolph, Vermont: Historical Sketches" or probably even more interesting to us, subtitled "To Which Are Added Personal Reminiscneces of the Author." This was published in 1978 by the Randolph Town History Committee and the Randolph Historical Society. Here is an excerpt from a chapter titled "Farm Boys":
THIS IS AN ATTEMPT by a father of five and a grandfather of nineteen and a great-grandfather of three to tell the youngsters of today what it was like to grow up in rural Vermont at the turn of the century. It is frequently stated that one difficulty with young people today is lack of some useful employment. Whether this is a disadvantage or the opposite may be argued, but it is a fact that the modern way of living has brought about great changes in the use of time. I believe we are now in a period when we are beginning to realize that not all such changes are entirely good. At my age it is quite customary to speak of the "good old days." Even some of my grandchildren speak enviously of "way back when you were a little boy" although I know they do not entirely believe that I was that "little boy." I was born in the country town of Georgia, Vermont, on November 13, 1893. My parents and grandparents were farmers, and the principal farm operations were milking cows and raising crops to feed the cows. Sheep raising was largely in the past although both families still kept small flocks in spite of disastrous experiences during the 1870's and 1880's. I think that more changes in farming have come about since 1900 than at any time in the history of agriculture. With the exception of mowing machines, the Vermont farmer of 1900 carried on much as his father and grandfather had done ever since their ancestors came from Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1790.
What is the significance of this in a discussion of the use of time by the young? It is in the presence of so much work done by hand which was necessary to keep the family a going concern.
Consider the use of fuel for heat and cooking. Very few families used anything but wood-wood for the cook stove, wood for the heating stove, wood for the fire to boil sap and heat water. This wood had to be cut down, sawed, split, piled and seasoned, piled again in the wood shed, and carried into the wood box daily and fed into the fire with continuing judgment and punctuality. A 10-14-year-old boy was expected to do his regular woodbox chores after he had spent long hours getting it ready.
He was also expected to hoe the garden and the cornfield, with some older help. In haying he drove the horse on the hay rake, then "tumbled up" the windrows into "tumbles" which were of suitable size for the man who "pitched on' 'to pick up with a hay fork and pass to the "loader" who drove the team and placed the hay on the rack in a regular system so it could be "pitched off" onto the mow at the barn. He also "raked after" or raked "scatt'rin," cleaning up the scattered hay which the pitcher left. Sometimes he did it with the horse rake and sometimes with the "bull rake," a hand affair more properly named a "drag rake." How the "bull" got into the name I know not except for the Yankee "Bull strength and ignorance." The horse rake referred to is the old-fashioned sulky drag rake with two wheels 8 to 12 feet apart, and long curved steel teeth which gathered the hay and dragged it until the teeth were full. It was then "dumped" by the operator as near as possible in the same line as the last dump. The horse (usually one horse) worked between two "thills" and the boy rode in the center on an iron seat.
After the wagon was loaded our young man could follow it to the barn, gulp a drink of water, and ascend into the mow or "scaffold" where he was supposed to help level and pack the hay as it was thrown off the wagon. As the work progressed, and the mow became higher, the temperature up under the roof became higher and there was less chance of a breeze. But it was standard that the "boy" was high man since he did not have to lift the hay.
The time that Grampa is writing about is a time that seems, to me at least, to be closer what my Dad is talking about in his comments on "Haying" than to the time when I lived on the farm. But more importantly, it shows that it would be great to get any and all recollections about the farm and family from any time. They don't need to be first hand. If you read this, and remember the farm, add your story, or better yet stories.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Haying
Many of the memories I have about the farm have to do with haying. There was always some excitement assoicated with haying, and interesting things happened then. For one thing, because Dad was desperate for help I suppose, it gave me the chance to drive a tractor when I was only 7 years old. There were other times when a truck partially crashed through the floor of the hay mow in an old part of the barn, almost getting a friend and me who were underneath. One of the summer kids, Volnee (sp?) Blodgett, let go of a hay wagon that he and Phil Cooley were supposed to be backing out the mow by hand, and the wagon nearly ran over Phil. Hay bales are also great for building forts anytime, and the hay mow was a constantly changing landscape, filling with hay in summer and slowly emptying to floors in winter. Later on, a used IH baler that constantly sheared a key pin when it was most critical drove Dad nuts, and brought a mechanic from Magalski's, the farm equipment dealer, up to try to fix it. That mechanic showed up 15 years later as my wife's grandfather. Who knew then?
My question to you: what do you recall about haying when you were kids, say teenage or less?
My question to you: what do you recall about haying when you were kids, say teenage or less?
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