Childhood Chore War Stories

The July/August edition of Farm Journal contained the following poll on the last page.  I liked the graphic and the topic of the poll was thought-provoking.

As my wife and I sat outside on a concrete bench under a live oak tree finishing our coffee, I showed her the Farm Journal poll and she asked me what items would make my most-dreaded childhood list.  It didn't take me long to compile my list.  Here goes:

1.    Pulling red rice and coffee weeds in rice fields.  This tops the list.  In growing seed rice, you cannot have red rice or coffee weed seed in your sample.  Inspectors from the Department of Agriculture would inspect the field on horseback.  If they found some, your field failed and you could not sell it as seed rice.  Seed rice carried with it a premium in price.  To eliminate red rice, it involved the enlistment of childhood friends to spread out and walk the entire field, shoulder to shoulder and pull the offending red rice and coffee weeds.  It was swelteringly hot.  Mosquitoes were everywhere.  Your pants immediately got soaking wet and you would get chafed between your legs.  Your arms would get cut up by the rice.  You'd get stung by wasps.  It was exhausting work.  It is, by far, the childhood chore I don't miss.  It is amazing, though.  I have friends who are successful doctors and financial planners who worked with me as a kid pulling red rice.  They look back and always tell me that although it was a hellish task, they've never forgotten doing it.  The comradery we shared, songs we sang, egg fights with marsh hen nests we'd wage, and work ethic instilled made it an unforgettable and formative part of our youth.

2.    Spreading the bins.  This comes in at #2.  After rice harvesting was done each day, there was one final job that needed doing.  We called it spreading the bins.  The bazooka carried the rice by auger up and into the bins leaving a big cone of rice.  The rice was dried by air pushed by large blowers.  If you didn't knock the cone down level, the air would go to least resistance (the edges) and the center would never dry.  We would climb in the bins with shovels and level them, going round and round shoveling the rice to the edges until it was flat.  It was oppressively hot and humid and dusty in the bins.  When we would emerge, it felt like air conditioning even though it was 90 degrees outside.  We'd remove our masks and blow our noses.  Black boogers would come out from all the dust!  We'd be soaking wet with sweat.  A shower or a jump in the pond felt so good!

3.    Cleaning out the pit.  The pit was a cone-shaped hole that the bazooka sat in.  Rice or soybeans would be dumped in the pit and the bazooka carried it up to the bins.  The pit would fill with rainwater.  The rice or soybeans in the pit would sour.  This all had to be removed prior to harvesting each day.  We would take a Prestone coolant jug and cut it with a pocketknife to make a scoop.  After pumping most of the water out of the pit with a pump, we'd shimmy down the pit with the scoop and a 5 gallon bucket and scoop the soured grain and water out to fill the bucket and dump outside the pit.  There was always a bullfrog or a snake or some other critter in there.  I remember the smell of the soured sludge!  It would get on your hands and stunk so bad that soap wouldn't remove it.  You just had to let time wear the smell off.

4.    Picking up pine knots on new land.  You always wanted to plant "new land."  Land that had never been planted in crops.  The soil was rested and yields would be great.  After clearing the land, you'd disk it up.  Numerous pine knots would arise.  We'd hood an old wooden wagon to the back of the John Deere 4020 and would walk the land, throwing pine knots on the back.  Disking the land again would reveal more knots and we'd repeat the process.  It was hot.  The sun was unforgiving.  The pine knots were innumerable.  One positive was that disking the land also exposed old timey bottles and homemade glass marbles.  I've got some of those treasures somewhere at Mom & Dad's.  Once the pine knots were removed, we'd empty the wagon by hand.  

I sent this list to my Dad and brother.  Dad looked at the Farm Journal poll and remarked, "Our list was much harder?"  I agree!  My brother remarked, "Ha.  Yep.  Good memories, though.  I learned about the dignity in hard work and what it takes to be a man.  Thank you Dad."

Indeed and Amen!

An Evening Ritual

I drive in from work in the afternoon, usually pulling into the driveway around 6 pm.  Tricia and I visit for a little bit and then inevitably the question will be brought up, "Do you want to do chores before supper or after supper?"  Last night she made chicken fried steak, so we ate first.  Then we went out to the barn.  

It was a peaceful late afternoon, even if the mosquitoes are out with a vengeance.  Our Maker's Acres Family Farm sits on 5 acres.  I began to call the cows in.  I'm sure the neighbors are not amused.  Rosie, Clarabelle, and Elsie were as far away as you can be on five acres.  You can see them in the center left of the photo below.

Those girls did not heed my call.  No amount of beckoning could convince them to head this way.  So, I pulled out the secret weapon.  This will get them in.  I grabbed the feed bucket and put some sweet feed and a handful of alfalfa on top.  The sweet feed smells great and is sticky-sweet with molasses in it.  I picked up the plastic bucket, banged on the side of the bucket, and yelled, "C'mon girls, Come eat.  Come eat."

Like the bat signal in Gotham City to Batman and Robin, the 'bang on the bucket' trick was successful!  You can see them heading my way.

Elsie is in the lead, followed by Rosie, then Clarabelle.  They've been out there all day eating in some taller grass, so their bellies are full.  They'll sit down tonight and chew their cud.

With anticipation, the girls' steps are sure, their gaze focused.  They cannot be distracted now.

We bring them into the barn, feed the momma cows, feed the goat family, check them all out, and then move all of the animals out of the barn except for Agnes, Cupcake and Elsie.  They sleep in the barn each night.  Rosie and Clarabelle exit the barn.  They are always sure to stay right in the gate.  Right in the way.  Why do they always do this?  Rosie will lick Clarabelle's head and ears in an affectionate display.  

The chickens slowly make their way back to their roosts in the hen house and the cows and goats sit down on the other side of the barn and chew their cud.  Belle, the dog, lays out in a freshly dug hole in the yard (Argg!) and Ginger, the cat, follows us back to the house where she'll try to sneak inside when we open the door.

The sun sets beautifully in the west and we make our way back down the garden path, over the bridge and back inside.  Another day done in our little corner of the world.

Mais, It's Cold, Cher!

Hey, do you have a minute?  I'd like for you to take a walk with me this morning.  Look, grab a cup of coffee to take with you.  I made it extra strong today.  Better put on a cap and your heavy coat, it's cold outside!  It snowed last night.  We aren't used to that, and our animals aren't either.  We have to go take care of them.  I'll show you the morning routine.  First, we'll bring some food out to the pullets in the chicken tractor.  They are just starting to lay.  The eggs are small.  The tractor is in the back yard and they are demolishing the St. Augustine grass - just scratching it up to bits.  Let's put some feed in the gutter we use as a feed trough.  I thought we'd have to break the ice off the water in the water bowl, but the heat lamps we turned on last night kept the occupants of the tractor warm and toasty and the water didn't freeze.

The twin bridges that lead into the pasture and the garden were frozen over.  It looked very pastoral and wintry, wouldn't you say?  Don't slip when you pass over now.

Yesterday we frantically put blue tarps over the entire garden except for the radishes that are almost done and the turnips.  The snow blankets the blue tarps, but you can still see the blue of the tarp underneath.  Beneath the snowpack and tarp are beets, carrots, kale, chard, spinach lettuce, onions, kohlrabi, broccoli and cauliflower.  By Friday when things thaw out, we'll fold up the tarps and see if we have live plants underneath.  If not, we'll quickly harvest all the carrots and beets and anything salvageable.

Follow me out to the barn.  We've got to feed and hay the cows and goats.  Look at Belle waiting inside the barn.  The cows are coming round the corner.  The fake owl is doing its job on the roof chasing off hawks that like to steal our hens.  A few chickens are out scratching looking for something.  Let's get a bucket of hen scratch and scatter it around for them.

The rest of the hens are in the hen house.  It is nice and warm in there.  Would you mind opening the lids to the nesting boxes?  We close those up at night or the hens would roost on them and poop in the hay.  Then the eggs would be all full of poop the next day.

And here's Belle.  Look at that girl, would you?  She spent the night in the barn.  She is indigenous to the Pyrenees mountains between Spain and France.  She has a heavy coat and would have been fine outside, but we wanted to make sure she was warm and dry.  She repaid the favor by digging a big hole in the barn.  I'll have to cover it all up.

There was no stick nearby to break the ice in the trough, so I used my boot.  It was an untimely day to discover that my boots have a hole in them.  My sock is wet and my feet are cold now.  We have to break the ice, though, so the cows and goats can drink fresh water.  We never have to fill this trough.  It sits under the drip line of the barn and catches rainwater.  

We'll throw a few gallon scoops of sweet feed and alfalfa to the cows and let them eat.  Then, I'll put a square bale of some good bermuda hay for them to munch on.

I read one time that in northern states, farmers supplemented their livestock's diets with root crops in the winter.  I've been doing that for several years.  If you look below, I have a thick bed of turnips that are growing.  I began pulling turnips, cutting up the turnip roots and feeding the greens and roots to the cows.

Some of the roots are the size of a baseball.  Others are small.  It doesn't matter.  The cows can't distinguish.  They eat them all quickly and beg for more.

The cows can eat in peace for the time being as the goats haven't picked up on the fact that I'm tossing turnips to the cows.  Otherwise, they'd be between the cows causing trouble.  The cows will inevitably toss them to the side with their big heads and necks and the goats go flying.  Seems like they'd learn, but no.

I appreciate you joining me today.  Maybe tomorrow if you're not doing anything, I could show you some other sights in this strange, alien winter wonderland?

Knocked a Few Items Off the Project List

Weekends are a blessed time for relaxation.  With a hectic work schedule, it is nice to sleep a little later on the weekends and start the day slowly.  I usually have a nice cup of coffee, go outside and feed the chicks, the laying hens, the goats, the cows, the dog and the cat.  This routine is much better now that the weather is cooler and the humidity has fallen.  

Then I come back inside and have breakfast.  While eating breakfast, I generally read the daily devotion from Open Windows.   It is a nice way to start the morning.  We usually have a few items that we'd like to take care of and we go outside, soak in some Vitamin D and breathe in some clean country air.  Getting things done is therapy for the soul.  

The first action item was getting Belle a new area to roam.  Belle chewed through my brake lines (TWICE) and while she didn't succeed in killing me, she lightened my wallet to the tune of several hundred bucks at the auto shop.  To prevent recurrence, I wired up a section of pasture to keep chickens out and now Belle has the "bull pen" in which to run free.

Next we moved some riverstone that was formerly used in our landscaping.  We loaded it into our wagon and brought it to the back.  Especially in the wintertime, the walk to the barn is mighty muddy.  We inevitably track a bunch of mud into the garage on our rubber boots that we have to clean up later.  To alleviate this, we used a shovel to dig and bury the stones, making a nice walkway to the garden and the pasture.  Straight sidewalks are a little boring to me, so we made our walking path with a meandering curve.  The shortest distance between two points while it might be a straight line, isn't always the best way.

The stones end up at the bridges that lead to the pasture or the garden.  The photo below shows this, but also shows several other projects that were either completed or still in progress.  First, in the upper left, you'll note the cows are all congregated around a round bale of hay.  I had rolled that out earlier and placed the hay ring around it.  This was the first bale of the Fall season.  

Next, in the middle right, you will see a newer looking board in the garden bridge.  The older piece had to be removed as it was rotten and a piece of it had fallen through.  I was able to find a board and some screws, so I didn't even need to go to the hardware store.  

Finally in the upper right hand of the photo, you'll see Tricia moving a 3 inch layer of mulch around the broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage plants.  This will make weeding an almost nonexistent chore, while at the same time retain soil moisture, making watering a rare chore.

It felt great to get a few things done.  It's nice to accomplish some things around the homestead.  With daylight savings ending and the days getting shorter, we must make the most of the daylight hours.