Mar 22, 2010

Describe some outside chores.

After the incident with Leesa and the dishes, I began milking and feeding the cows. That involved going down into the field or pasture where ever the cows were and bringing them up to the barn. I would then take the three milk cows into the barn where we would lock them into the stantions, hobble their feet (being sure to lock the tail in with the hobbles), the using a one legged T stool to milk them each by hand. We had one cow that would only allow us to milk her with the milking machine, that is until I got tired of always having to wash the mlker and began to milk her by hand as well. It was actually easier. After milking the cows and straining the milk to remove the hair and other incidentals that would fall or slash into the bucket, I would let the cows out and go feed them. That included a walk to the stack yard some 50 yards or so from the barn and getting two to three bales of hay off the stack and then spreading them along the manger. I would then carry a half bale over to the horses, about 50 feet away, and when we had pigs would then slop the pigs(pull a bucket of sour milk from a barrel and put into their trough and yes it smelled like sour milk). Then I would go back to the barn and wash out the manure trough and then take the milk into the house. When the cows were giving a lot of milk we would also have to put it through the milk seperator and take the cream only into the house and carry the rest of the milk to the pig pen and add to the barrel. After the milk was to the house the I would get two buckets of hot water and carry it back to the barn where we would fill the tubs and wash the milking equipment. The milk seperator took a long time because it involved pulling apart the center section and cleaning each on the fifty cones one at a time. It usually took an hour to an hour and a half to milk the cows.

Other chores included carrying the coal to the furnace. I got to where I could carry 4 five gallon buckets loaded with coal into the house and down the narrow steps to the furnace. I had to do that at least once a day during the cold season while the furnace was running. I then would carry the bucket of clinkers that I would remove from the furnace, with the clinkers that dad would remove each morning, and carry them out onto the driveway where we would spread the around on the dirt road.

I also would mow the lawn with a push mower, later we got a gas one, and the rake up the grass clipping. We had a huge lawn and it took a long time to do that as well.

During the summer I also had irrigating duties, as well as cutting, raking, baling, hauling, and stacking the hay in the stack yard. Then there was the seasonal chores of washing out the bottles before canning and helping to pick, wash, cut and can the fruit. We had apples, apricots, pears, and cherries that we would can each fall.

The other main chore that I had were the usual cleaning the room, and taking the garbage to the big 55 gallon drum where we would burn it.

The summer time also included planting, weeding, watering and harvesting the garden.

I hated to weed and still do but the Clement weeder helped a lot. It was a blade on the front of a triangle assembly with a single wheel that allowed you to psuh it just under the ground and cut off the weeds. It was invented by Uncle Lyle Clement.