Work Ethic
As a child, I was taught that work never hurt anybody—thus the reason for rising at 6:30 a.m. to help with the barn chores. Farm kids were morning kids; never during my childhood did any one of us sleep past our standard wake-up time. Barn chores were a continuous cycle, yet specific tasks varied from summer to winter. Twice a day, Dad milked about twenty Holsteins while we kids fed the cows, pigs, and chickens. Helping with chores to the best of our ability was critical for running the farm. Even the little ones could throw corn over a fence to pigs, haul grain in a little red wagon, or open and shut the gate while Dad hauled manure.
As challenging as summer chores could be, winter chores were even more difficult. During the winter, we did barn chores in the morning before school and then again after school. We dug silage before we ate dinner at 5:00 and returned to the barn at 6:00 to feed the calves and throw down hay. Thankfully, even when the outside temperature dipped below zero, the inside of the barn stayed warm from the heat of the animals.
Digging Silage
One of the toughest chores was digging silage. To this day, I can see and smell the fermented silage, and I can feel my frozen toes as we worked. After school on winter afternoons, two of us, wearing buckled overshoes and caps with earflaps, climbed the forty-foot silo chute. My breath raced as I clasped the steel rungs to reach the top. Crawling through the door, I shivered at the frigid temperature in the silo and rubbed my hands before I grabbed a pitchfork and began tossing silage down the chute I had just climbed. Dad would have loosened the frozen silage with a pickaxe earlier in the afternoon. We kids pitched silage in front of the chute door until a substantial pile accumulated; then we pitched it to the silo room (the small room at the bottom of the silo chute). Through vapors of breath, we played word games or discussed Warren’s theories while working:
“What is the largest number?”
“What comes after a zillion?”
“How long would it take you to count to a million?”
After what seemed like an eternity, when the bottom pile reached a certain height, Dad hollered, “That’s enough.” I climbed down until I was close enough to jump into the mound at the bottom. Our next chore was to carry silage by galvanized tubs to the manger. The warmth of the snug barn was heavenly after our claustrophobic time in the sub-zero silo.
Milking the Cows
As cows filed into the barn and entered their stalls to eat silage and drink from their individual drinking cups, we closed the wood and metal stanchions. The soft rhythm of machines pumping milk, and cows chewing along to country tunes drifting from the radio, made the warm barn a pleasant place to work. Dad’s jovial demeanor made these chores even more agreeable.
The Holsteins trusted Dad’s touch and calm voice as he sat on an overturned bucket between two cows and attached four suction cups to each cow, always wary of being stepped on or swatted by a tail. When the milk bucket was full, Dad carried it to the sterile milk room and poured the warm milk into a large container on top of the DeLaval separator. That machine swirled the liquid around, separating the cream and milk before pouring them out separate spouts to be collected in tall milk cans and short cream cans that were placed in a coldwater tank for Dad to haul to the creamery in the morning.
Shortly after any calves were born, Dad moved them into a pen where we kids taught them to drink warm milk from a bucket. First we got the calf to suck on our fingers and then we dipped our hand into the bucket of warm milk. The calves greedily snorted milk out of their noses, butted the milk pails, and wedged our fingers in the pails. Soon they learned to drink on their own. Then they moved to a drink we made by mixing warm water with a powdery milk replacer—it had such a strong smell. I’ll never forget it.
Fun with Language and Math
Between chores, we rallied around a wooden bench that Dad rested on while the cows milked. Dad taught us to count and to say the days of week in Norwegian. En, to, tre, fire, fem, seks, sju,
ate, in, and ti are the words for counting one to ten. The days of the week are “Mandag, Tirsdag, Onsdag, Torsdag, Fredag, Lordag, and Sondag. Mostly, Dad engaged us in math challenges.
“If a train goes 150 miles in three hours, how many miles did it go in four hours?”
“Hilmer is eight years older than his sister. In three years, he will be twice as old as she is. How old are they now?”
“In three hours the temperature dropped eight degrees. How many degrees did the temperature drop per hour?”
“Here’s one, Daryl. If I gave you two dimes, four nickels, and five pennies, how much money did I give you?”
“Warren, the product of the ages of three brothers is 72seventy-two, and the sum of their ages is a number greater than 100. What are their ages?”
Hayloft at Night
Throughout the winter, we dragged round hay bales out of the dim, cold hayloft to the manger, bale by bale, using only our body strength and bale hooks. Once in the manger, we cut the twine, unrolled the bales, and spread them out for the cows to eat. What made getting the hay bales difficult was that, when we loaded the haymow in the summer, we let the bales fall off the elevator randomly and did not stack them. This made playing in the haymow lots of fun, but also made it harder to pull bales out in the winter. We ended this task by cleaning the hay out of the cows’ drinking cups with our hands. Then we pitched straw bales down a chute that Dad spread out for bedding for the animals.
Grinding Feed
During the winter, grinding feed was a constant Saturday afternoon ritual that none of us four oldest were exempt from. No matter how low the temperature dropped, we ground a week’s supply of corn. A long belt attached to a tractor ran a feed grinder. One kid sat on the tractor and held in the brake, knowing that if he or she released the brake on the Allis Chalmers it would slack the belt drive and the grinder would stop. With legs barely long enough to reach the pedals, we slid off the seat as far as possible to reach the clutch and brake. The three kids not holding the brake shoveled ears of corn into the grinder until our fingers and toes were numb from the cold. We were not able to talk to each other over the roar of the machines.
Heifers and Steers
Heifers were young cows that had not yet given birth to a calf. Although they didn’t need to be milked, they still had to be fed. The heifers were kept on the north end of the barn, and we brought hay from the haymow to feed them daily. A heifer has her first calf when she is two years old, after which she begins to produce milk. The two months she is not milking—before she has a calf—is called her dry period. When a male calf was born, Dad castrated it; and it became one of our steers to be fattened for market.
After we had washed and disinfected the stainless steel milkers, we were done with our chores for the day. I remember the glow of the light from the kitchen and the smell of wood smoke drifting up from the house. It was gratifying to feel that another’s day work was done and we could now relax in our warm, cozy house. We did homework and played cards until bedtime.
Bringing the Cattle Home
Summer chores were more relaxed because the cows grazed in the pasture. Our evening chores began about 4:00, when we hauled grain from the granary to the mangers in a small wagon. We followed a well-worn cattle path to the pasture to bring the Holsteins home. As we went by the pond the seagulls dived at us, so we had to run. We called, “Come, Bossy!” and the cows began their trek home to milk and feed.
If a cow delivered a calf, she might swing her head toward us and bellow to protect her new baby. Certain she would charge us, we hightailed it out of there. On these occasions, Dad walked out to get the cows instead. Dad would carry the calf home, while the cow, bellowing, followed behind.
Sometimes we watched Dad deliver a calf. With the heifer lying down, we could see the two feet sticking out. Dad would tie a rope around them and pull out the calf.
The Cows Are Out
“THE COWS ARE OUT” meant we had to drop everything and help. My Dad was a reasonable man, but when it came to chasing cattle he misconstrued how we girls perceived the situation. Periodically, cows found a breach in a fence and walked out because the grass on the other side was a succulent treat for them.
“The cows are out!” Dad yelled. “Girls, stand on the north side of the gate and head them into the pasture. Warren and I will circle around in front of them and turn them down the driveway to the gate.”
We knew the drill: Flail our arms in the air and holler so that the 1,000-pound Holsteins would be so scared of us three little girls they would turn back and run through the pasture gate.
Following orders, we took our places north of the gate, finding it easy to wave our arms and holler with the cattle a quarter mile away. However, as they got closer, our fear of stampeding cattle became greater than our ability to obey orders.
“Do you think they see the gate?” I asked with an ashen face, breathing in ragged gasps.
“They’re going too fast to see a gate,” one of my sisters replied.
“Do you think they see us?”
“I don’t think they see well.”
“They’re stampeding straight at us!” we shouted as we hightailed it behind the barn.
As Warren and Dad tried to herd the cows toward the gate, we peeked from behind the barn and, sure enough, twenty-five cows ran right by the open gate, by the barn, and up the hill to our front lawn.
“What is WRONG with you girls?” Dad bellowed.
We whispered, “They charged us.”
“Go with Warren, circle around behind them, and I will head them into the pasture.”
Later, at the dinner table, Dad commented, “There is something wrong with you girls. Why is it so hard to follow orders when chasing cattle?”
Mom slammed her coffee cup on the table. “Milton, I don’t blame the girls one bit. I wouldn’t be foolish enough to stand there as a herd of 1,500-pound stampeding cows charged toward me.”
“Whose side are you on?” asked Dad. “I guess it’s easy to figure out where they get their crazy fear of cows!”
A couple days later, some cows swam across the slough on the east side of the road.
“I will scare them across the slough,” Dad said as he grabbed his rifle. “Warren, move them toward home when they swim across. Girls, head them toward the cattle pass.”
Daryl took the station with us girls. As Dad shot into the air to scare the cattle into swimming across the slough, Daryl screamed, “Duck! I think he’s shooting at us!” He hit the ground facedown with his arms spread out. Not having time to assess the predicament, we did what any normal girls would do—we flattened ourselves to the ground, too. We found this position a rather hard one to explain to Dad.
Time after time, we knew the drill, we prepared for the chase, but something denied us the courage to remain there at the last minute. Mom said it was common sense.
Fencing
When cattle broke through the electric fences, Dad knew a weed touching the fence had grounded out the battery. He sent us kids to walk the fence line and cut any thistles that were touching the wire.
Our standard method of testing whether the electric fence worked was to pull a reed of grass and touch it to the fence. If we got a shock, it was working. Knowing that the current going through the wire was small, Dad teased us.
“I wonder if the fence is working,” he said as he took a long piece of green grass and touched the fence with it. “Shucks, I don’t feel a thing. Here, you try it.”
Pulling a reed of grass and touching the fence, I screamed with a shock, “It’s working!”
On a rainy day, Dad collected his leather gloves, pliers, posthole digger, wire cutter, and one of us kids, and then headed out to mend fences. Barbed wire fences and electric fences enclosed our fields and pastures.
Barbed wire fences consisted of three strands of barbed wire attached to wooden posts made from tree trunks. The sharp barbs on the strong wire discouraged pigs from getting through. If Dad needed to dig a new hole for a post, he used the posthole digger, which was a shovel with two handles. We unrolled the barbed wire while Dad attached it to an oak fencepost with a U-shaped wire nail called a staple. If a new hole had to be dug, Dad did it.
Farrowing Time
A few days before a sow’s delivery date in the warm spring months, Dad put her in a farrowing pen. We checked on them often so we could watch them farrow. As each of the eight to twelve piglets was born, it moved to drink milk from the mother. When the sow delivered the last piglet, we ran to announce the news to Mom or Dad. Over the next few weeks, we watched the playful baby pigs fighting for nourishment. When we held them, they squealed.
Our gentle pigs loved it when we scratched them. We fed them whole ears of corn. We raised the pigs until they finished off at a certain weight and went to market.
Like Charlotte’s Wilbur, our pigs scratched themselves against walls, rooted under and broke fences, ransacked their pens, chased each other in circles, squealed when scared, and grunted when satisfied and happy. A pig’s natural instinct was to dig for roots. To cool off, they tipped their water troughs to create a mud puddle and laid in it. Dad said it was important to have shade for our white pigs so they would not sunburn.
Gathering Eggs
Each spring Dad would buy baby chicks from the hatchery in Dalton. They went into the brooder house where a hanging heat lamp provided warmth. We filled Mason jars with water and screwed them to saucer-like water dispensers. The chicks learned to eat finely ground corn.
We raised chickens for our family to eat, and we sold a few extra eggs. By summer, the young hens laid about one egg a day. We collected the eggs once a day, cleaned them, and put them in boxes for Mom to sell at the creamery.
Mom, Dad, and Grandma butchered and cleaned the young male chickens when they were still young and tender. They were stored in our rented freezer box in the locker plant in Dalton. In the fall, the hens were butchered. These were stewing hens that we used to make pressed chicken, a Scandinavian delicacy.
The righteous care for the needs of their animals . . .
–Proverbs 12:10 (NIV)