I’d heard it often said by Pa, and by my teacher as well: “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” It was almost always true. Early March usually looked a whole lot like February, with plenty of snow and cold, though not extreme cold. (Ten-below-zero days were rare in March, but not unheard of.) And by the end of the month, the days were becoming noticeably longer and the sunlight felt warmer.
Somewhere around mid-March, when I had had about as much winter as I could stand, when I was thoroughly tired of shoveling paths to and from our various farm buildings, and when skiing and sliding down a hill had lost almost all of its appeal, I woke up one morning and saw from my bedroom window snowmelt dripping from the roof. It was evidence of the first major thaw, the first shrinking of the snowpack since that brief “woodpecker thaw” back in January or February. As I walked out to the barn, the snow was mushy underfoot, and I could smell spring. Hard to describe but distinctive, the smell of spring comes on a gentle southerly breeze that washes over the tired old snow banks. It trickles upward from the melting snow, a tantalizing and optimistic smell of warmer days to come.
The barn animals sensed the first hint of spring in the air, too. After we finished the milking, Pa let the milk cows and the calves out into the barnyard. They were the most foolish-acting bunch of long-cooped-up animals I’d ever seen. They ran with their tails in the air, jumping up and down in the mushy snow. They feinted fighting with each other, butting heads, backing off, and doing it again, not for real, just for play. With the barn doors wide open, the stuffy odors transformed into a fresh smell. Pa was smiling. I was smiling. I think the animals were smiling, too. It was time for a seasonal change.
Later that morning the phone rang. It was George Collum, the depot agent in Wild Rose, calling. “Your baby chicks are here,” he said. “Pick them up as soon as you can.”
Back in February we had ordered a hundred or so white leghorn chicks from a hatchery in southern Wisconsin, enough to replace the laying hens that had passed their prime and were on their way toward becoming chicken soup. We also ordered twenty-five White Rock chicks to raise for selling and eating. Now the whole peeping bunch had arrived on the morning train.
Wild Rose’s depot was a little one-story building along the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad tracks that featured a small office for the agent, a larger waiting room for passengers, and an equally large, unheated baggage room at the back of the building. The moment we opened the door to the waiting room, we could hear the peeping of hundreds of baby chicks piled in cardboard boxes. Several other farmers’ chick orders had arrived along with ours. Mr. Collum helped us find our two boxes, Pa signed a paper, and we loaded the chicks in the back of the Plymouth. The peeping continued all the way home.
A small building to the west of the straw stack served as our brooder house, where we housed the little chicks until they were large enough to become part of the laying flock (the leghorns) or heavy enough for butchering (the White Rocks). The brooder house would need a good cleaning before it was ready for the chicks, a job we’d tackle as soon as we dropped the chicks in the house. We toted the two boxes into the house and put them in a warm, cozy spot near the cookstove. There they would continue peeping throughout the rest of the day and all night.
We swept out the brooder house, started the brooder stove (which burned coal and thus held the heat longer than a woodstove), and gathered up the long, narrow feeding trays from where they were stored and some quart jars to make into chick waterers. We cleaned and washed everything thoroughly; chicks easily succumb to any disease that might have overwintered in the feeding and watering equipment.
The next day we carried the little chicks to their new quarters in the spruced-up brooder house. They scampered about, ran into each other, fell over, found the watering jar, found the feeder, and eventually found their way under the big hood of the brooder stove, where they would be warm. They ceased peeping, for the most part. Pa and I stood watching them for some time; little animals, no matter what kind, are a joy to watch, and chicks are especially entertaining, with their skinny yellow legs, tiny feet, and fluffy, soft yellow coats.
The next day one of our sows gave birth to a litter of pigs, ten squirmy little packages of wrinkled pink skin and endless appetites. We made sure there was plenty of straw in the hog house so the little pigs would stay warm. A couple of days later, as the warm temperatures continued and the snow melted enough so we could see the brown hilltops once more, I heard the first flock of geese winging north, calling loudly to each other and to us—announcing with clear tones that spring indeed was on the way.
In most years by mid-March, a little stream of meltwater trickled from behind the corn crib, continued on between the house and the barn, and finally curled under the barnyard gate to disperse in the barnyard. One year Pa cut two pieces out of a cedar shingle, notched them, and pushed them together to fashion a little waterwheel with four paddles. With two other pieces of shingle wood he made a little frame. He placed his contraption in the meltwater river.
In early morning when the temperature had fallen below freezing, the little waterwheel hung motionless in its frame, but usually by midday, with climbing temperatures and more snow melting, the waterwheel turned furiously, making a flip, flip sound. The waterwheel turned for more than a week; as we went about doing our spring chores, Pa, my brothers, and I would stop occasionally to watch and listen to it. One warm late afternoon, we noticed that the meltwater river had stopped running and the water wheel no longer turned. On that day we knew that spring had truly arrived. Now it was time to remove the banking from the sides of the house and look forward to a week of muddy, sometimes nearly impassable roads and the first green grass springing up on the south side of the house.
Winter was over. Spring was here. And with spring came another round of farmwork that would continue nonstop until the first snowflakes appeared in the fall. Although Pa didn’t say it in so many words, almost of all of what we did on the farm was preparing for winter. With the coming of spring, the cycle of the seasons began once more.