Growing Up on a Farm

We had all kinds of animals on our family farm:  chickens, geese, pigs, horses, cows, and sheep.  Animals have their own special personalities and we got to know some of them pretty well.  Caring for farm animals requires constant responsibility.  Their well-being, their very lives are in your hands.  It’s sad to say that Peter and I accidentally killed a few growing up.

Maybe my story should start there.  We learned to work hard on the farm when we were very young.  Most of our chores consisted of feeding the animals.  We bottle fed both sheep and calves.  We had the deadly problem with calves on two separate occasions.  The darn things were delicate.  If you don’t feed them enough, they die.  If you feed them too much, they die.  If they get too cold, they die.

The baby calves were being kept in a big old barn.  Peter and I had been given the assignment to feed them.  We mixed a special milk powder with water in a big bottle with a big black nipple, shook it up good and fed them.  We had about 6 or 8 calves in a big pen inside the barn.  The problem was that they were all together in the same pen.  Remembering which ones you had fed was a challenge because even the ones that had just eaten would still act starved and try to get at the food.  The stupid creatures would eat themselves to death.  We had been successful for quite a while, until the fateful night that the light bulb burned out in the barn.  We had only fed about half of the calves.  It was pitch black and we couldn’t tell which ones we had fed and which we hadn’t.  We were in quite a predicament.  It was for certain that if we didn’t guess wisely, someone was going to die that night.  We didn’t guess wisely and at least two of them bit the dust.  Dad was rather angry, but we couldn’t help what had happened.

My mistake with the same group of calves resulted in more deaths on a bitter cold winter’s night several days later.  I hadn’t properly latched the barn door after we had fed the calves and a couple of them froze to death. I got into trouble, and felt badly.  I had tried my best.

Sadly, we learned not to get too attached to the calves because we would eat them later, or sell them to other people for meat.  We had one old gentle milk cow named Daisy.  She gave the creamiest milk and had to be milked twice a day.  I remember how proud I was the day I was able to squeeze her udder hard enough to shoot a milky stream into the bucket.  I could hardly wait to show dad.  In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t shown him because I became the milkmaid from that day on whenever he went hunting or fishing.  He would take Peter and I was left with Daisy.  It would take about 30 minutes to milk her.  First I had to wash her udders off.  Then I would sit to the side of her back end on a stool and squeeze the milk out.  Sometimes I would rest my head on her flanks.  This was only advisable if you had a hood on your head.

I especially hated this chore when as an older teen I would have a date or a school ballgame and dance later that evening.  I would come in and clean up and get all beautiful, but I couldn’t get the cow smell off my hands.  You can’t wash it off! I know this because I tried everything–even Ajax.  I tried to solve the problem by adding lemon-scented Joy dishwashing liquid to the water I washed Daisy’s udders off with.  That didn’t work at all.  The barn ended up smelling like lemons and manure!  (One funny result of my cow milking is that when I went to BYU and took a fitness class, they tested our strength with an instrument that measured your grip.  They were shocked because my grip was as strong as some of the men in my class.)

We always seemed to have a couple of horses around.  Dad would use them for trail rides and hunting.  Horses scare me.  I’m sure this began when we bought two horses named Sunday and Brownie.  I claimed Sunday and Peter put his dubs on Brownie. Sunday had been traumatized by sliding down a mountain on her side while carrying out some game on a hunting trip before we got her.  She hated having anything on her back—like a saddle.  They saddled her up and she immediately went bucking clear across the pasture trying to kick the saddle off, then dad forced me to get on her.  Terror!  I don’t think I ever rode her much again, even though she was pretty calm after I got on her.

Peter, on the other hand, rode Brownie everywhere.  Brownie had been a cutter horse, and had very quick reflexes.  One day Peter talked me into getting on behind him to go for a ride.  I did, but wished I hadn’t!  He took me out to the field where big tall bull thistles were growing.  He then began galloping Brownie through the thistles with me clinging on behind.  Every time the horse hit a thistle he would jump sideways.  Peter was laughing his head off.  I was screaming because I knew I was going to die!  No more horse rides with Peter.

The worst days of the year for me on the farm were the days we had to haul hay.  I was the designated tractor driver and I wasn’t very good at it.  I had been driving the tractor since I was about 9 or 10 years old and could handle the tractor okay.  I just couldn’t make the drive smooth enough.  This was a problem for my dad and Peter who were up on top of the load of hay riding on a trailer hooked to the back of the tractor.  If I hit a bump too fast, they could fall.  If I popped the clutch, they could fall.  I was a nervous wreck.  I think my dad got madder on that day than any other day of the year!  This problem was magnified because a hay loader was hooked to the side of the tractor and I would have to aim the loader so that it would pick up the bales of hay and lift them to the top of the load where Dad and Peter would place them in a stack.  If I didn’t hit the bales of hay square on, the bale would be torn in half by the loader.  I would have to stop the tractor and clean the loader out.  Dad’s temper was hot and my nerves were shot!

We also raised chickens for eggs, meat, and feathers.  (My dad liked to tie fishing flies and would use the feathers.)  One of my least favorite chores was cleaning the chicken coop.  There were big wooden roosts in the coop where the chickens perched for the night.  They were covered in chicken poop that had to be scraped off with a hoe into a wheel barrow and hauled out and dumped into a pile.  I hated that job.  We had to wear gloves, long sleeves and a bandana over our mouths to keep the yuck out.

Actually, come to think of it, I don’t think I really like chickens all that much.  Yes, baby chicks are some of the cutest creatures alive.  We would buy a big bunch of them from time to time.  But, they soon got kind of ugly looking and would sometimes peck each other to death.  Gathering eggs was an adventure in itself.  One wall of the chicken coop was lined with little egg-laying compartments.  A hen could go into one of the compartments to lay her eggs.  They seemed to nest there naturally.  We would have to gather the eggs every day.  Sometimes the eggs were just laying there ready for us to pick up, but all to often the hen was still sitting in the compartment on her eggs.  We had to carefully reach under her and steal the eggs.  Some chickens didn’t seem to mind; others would peck my hands.  And then there was Peter’s pet rooster (in another story).

I have some pretty vivid memories of chicken butchering day.  It was gross and smelled bad.  After the chicken’s heads were removed they would run all over the place. It was so strange to see a headless chicken trotting around the yard.  Then my parents would clean their entrails out and remove all the feathers.  We kids thought that some of their insides were pretty interesting.  They would then burn the rest of the feathers off the bodies.  It’s a smell I won’t forget and don’t ever wish to smell again!  The reward was several chickens in our freezer for upcoming meals.

One winter when I was about 9 or 10 years old my dad got very ill and had to be in the hospital for about six weeks. This left Peter and me with the chores. I think mom had just had a baby and for some reason couldn’t do the chores. Our school bus came at 7:00 a.m., so we had to get up at 5:00 a.m. and feed the sheep. It took the two of us to lift the bales on the the tractor platform, then one of us would drive the tractor while the other one threw the hay off to the sheep. We were quite a team!

Raising sheep was an experience.  This probably provided the widest variety of memories.  We spent hours herding them.  Every year we would move the flock from our barnyard to a wooded area across the dry bed from our house.  We had to herd them on the road about three miles to the timber.  Sheep like to follow a leader, so dad would walk out in front of them, leading them to the new pasture.  The rest of us would follow and bring up the stragglers.  It was very exciting.  Then, before winter we would go and get them from the timber and bring them back into the corral.  They would have their babies there where we could care for them.  We would feed the bum lambs with bottles (in another story).

We sheared the sheep in the late spring, before taking them to the timber pasture.  Dad would hire shearers to come and shave the wool off of the sheep.  Peter and I were responsible for two things. One was to herd the sheep into the barn where they were shearing them.  That was rather fun.  The sheep were smashed into the barn so tight that we could walk from one end of the barn to the other on top of their backs, which was like one big wooly mass.  The other job was one of the worst.  We had to take turns stomping the wool.  They would hang big eight-foot sacks from a wooden structure.  One of us would get in the bottom of the sack. T he other would throw down the bundles of freshly sheared wool.

The wool was not as fluffy as you would imagine.  It was filthy and mixed with everything you can find in a barn yard.  When Peter threw the fleeces in I would turn my face to the side avoiding it as much as possible, but it still smeared the whole length of my body.  I would then began stomping the wool.  The stomping would compact the bundles tighter so a lot of wool could fit into one sack.  I had on little canvas shoes.  By the time I was finished, I could have almost wrung the lanolin out of them.  (Lanolin is the oil found in sheep’s wool.) Again, another smell I do not miss!

One Christmas when I was about 13 years old I wanted to give my dad a gift on Christmas morning.  I decided to wake up very early before he did and go out and feed the sheep so he wouldn’t have to.  I set my alarm and when it went off, I snuck out to the corral to feed the sheep.  It was still dark on that snowy Christmas morning.  I climbed up on the haystack to throw down the bales of hay I would feed the sheep.  I still remember the wonderful feeling I had sitting atop the hay, looking at the stars.  I fed them and snuck back to bed.  All did not go as I had planned.  Dad thought I had misread my clock, and fed them at 1:30 a.m.  The sheep would still need feeding in the morning.  I was sad–but at least the sheep got a Christmas present.

One year when I was about 16 years old I was assigned to watch the sheep graze along the railroad track that ran along the back of our property.  I would sit on the tracks for hours and make sure the sheep were off when the train went by.  I took my Book of Mormon with me and did a lot of reading there in the quiet with our sheep.  It was a sweet experience.

Farm life taught me several lessons.  I learned how to work hard.  We had a large garden and I learned what it takes to produce your own food.  I learned to deeply respect the American farmer, and I firmly resolved never to marry one.  I learned that farm life was not for me!