This old photo from the Summer of 1969 was among the ones that I scanned.
My sister and my baby brother on the Yamaha 50 that our Dad brought home for us so we could drive faster to the back fields versus our bicycles. My sister was 3 and my baby brother was 15 in the photo. Note Far Guy's 1959 Desoto in the background.
That was a fun little motorcycle to drive.
Far Side
I had a book that was a gift from Linda years ago...I read the first part of the book and never got around to finishing it. I suggested that it be a book club read, everyone liked it and I finally got to finish the book!
I give it a 9 out of 10. We were fortunate to connect with the Author who lives in Barnesville Minnesota and he joined us virtually for a very interesting discussion.
It chronicles five farm families in Minnesota and how they make hay.
Thank you Linda for sharing this great book!
One of the authors discussion questions was very thought provoking.
What do you believe to be the FIVE greatest fears of farm children. Rank them one to five.
Here are mine.
Silo Death....sileage fermenting makes a gas either carbon dioxide or nitrogen dioxide that renders you unconscious and death follows.
Grain Auger...will take off a foot or arm
Electric Fence...won't kill you but it really hurts!
Drowning in the stock tank...especially since you were not supposed to play in there.
Animals being injured and hurt
What do you suppose are the biggest fears of kids that live in town?
Here are Far Guy's answers.
Being the last one chosen when they picked sides for a game
Being singled out in the classroom at school
Getting caught smoking or drinking
Loss of parent or family member
Penicillin shots
Interesting differences between farm kids and town kids.
Far Side
The other day I was concentrating on the changes happening around here.
Today I will show you that some things are still pretty much the same as when I was little…with a few small changes.
This is the farmstead where I grew up…I came here before I was one year old and I left when I got married when I was 18. The big silo was not there back then…there was a silo next to the barn, and that building behind the barn was not there and the hay/straw bales are much larger…we had the little square bales which was a great improvement from loose hay piled onto wagons or in haystacks.
The Smoky Hills Fire/Lookout Tower is still there…the communications tower was not there in earlier days. I climbed to the top of the tower ONLY once and that was under great duress ( My brother and Danny were behind me.) Inside the tower I had a meltdown and bawled my eyes out and said “I am stuck up here forever because I am too scared to go down!” ( I was going to be in BIG trouble too!) I guess the boys finally figured that they were going to be in big trouble with me so they talked me into going down, one in front of me and one behind me…it was one of the scariest moments of my life. I am afraid of heights. I had attempted the climb before but was always the last person up the ladder and once I got to the tree tops I would chicken out and go back down.
The best part of a trip to the Tower was flying down the hill on your bicycle…it truly was like flying.
I have had adventures that my children and grandchildren will never have. I wonder how many of them will retire just two miles from their childhood home?
When I grew up on the farm, I hated haying time, it was hot dusty job, sweat rolls down your shirt and hay dust gets stuck everywhere and begins to itch. You have to wear long sleeves and pants or you would end up with prickles all up and down your legs and arms. (Prickles = highly technical word that means the red marks left on your body from hay stubble.) You need good gloves …to avoid blisters from the twine. Our baler baled and unloaded the small square bales that weighed about 50 to 60 pounds (sometimes more) onto the ground. The bales had to be picked up off the ground and loaded onto the wagon. This was a great improvement from the loose hay and hay stacks. Later my parents bought a baler with a kicker…the bales were deposited onto the wagon…thereby eliminating one of the hot dusty jobs. Sometime the baler would kick them out pretty fast..so several people were needed to stack on the wagon. Staying upright on a wagon moving through a hay field is a real talent.
I believe these large round bales are plastic netted..a netting surrounds the bale and holds it together. I think these bales weigh about 1,000 pounds and must be moved with a tractor. Todd puts most of his hay in a hay shed so it is undercover. Some people use these large bales as a wind break for their cattle. I have been told that these bales with their round shape shed water better than square bales. Some people have the kind of baler that encloses the bale in a white plastic covering.
Last evening my cousin Todd was combining Oats. It is the first oats to be ready in our area.
The fluffy rows are done…they have been combined. The flatter rows near the center of the field have not been done yet.
Looks like a John Deere Tractor and Combine to me. The tractor has a cab…it is reminiscent of one of the last tractors my parents had. The oats is being combined on Far Guy’s Maternal Grandparents old farm. Last year this small corner field was corn.
My Cousin Todd and our neighbors Steve and Donnie along with Paul are the only small farmers left in this area. How they eek out a living is beyond me…so their equipment may be a bit old…but I know they help each other out and borrow equipment back and forth. My cousin Todd is the youngest of the group, he must be just about 50 years old…and farmer Steve turned 70 years old this week…I think Donnie is in his 60’s. Older farmers.
My cousin Todd was out making hay. Next time I see him I am certain he will say “I should have charged admission cause you guys watched so long!”
This baler is more fun to watch than the old square bale balers.
So much for the evening entertainment….watching the relatives work.
We saw six deer in the bean field but they were too far away to photograph. Still dry here, no rain in sight.
We drive by the farm where I grew up quite often it is only 2 1/2 miles from where we live now.
That silo is newer…it wasn’t there when I lived there. The silo we had was closer to the barn…to feed silage. The barn has seen better days. Someday a wind or snow load will take it down.
Of course it was a tired looking barn when I was little…this photo was probably taken about sixty years ago.
It was always a white barn…not sure why? Perhaps the blue roof had something to do with it.
I believe that Loren Lemon probably built this barn or part of the Lemon family… he is a Great Uncle of Far Guys. Loren was married to Florence Graham Lemon…she was Walt Grahams sister. Years ago the three farms along the 6th mile of Highway 225 on the right side of the road would have belonged to Loren and Florence Graham Lemon, Curtis and Almeada Lemon Abbott( Far Guy’s maternal grandparents) and Walter and Dora Graham. I remember them all except for Loren and Florence because my parents bought their farm.
When you grow up on a farm, town is a long ways away. Other than going to school on the bus, we went to town once or twice a month for groceries. The ice skating rink was in town.
On our farm there was a low spot in the corner of the field on the south side of the driveway. If there was a early spring thaw and then a cold snap the water would collect in that corner of the field and freeze. It made for a wonderful place to ice skate.
This spot in a nearby field reminded me of Saturday afternoons in the spring. Remember those double runner skates that you strapped onto your boots…sometimes they came undone and you would fall down. We would put our skates on in the house and then tromp to the ice…either that or take a couple of pieces of wood to sit on to put on our skates in the field.
Round and round we would go skating faster and faster, cheeks rosy red, scarves trailing in the wind until we hit weeds coming up out the the ice…that would slow you down. Soon we were tired and still had to change into our now cold boots or walk all the way back to the house in our skates.
As a farm kid, I never knew about skate sharpening. When we were lucky enough to get ice skates they were never sharpened, they were what they were and sometimes you just had to make your own fun.
Yes it is still cold. I have given up, we might as well put up a big sign that says Siberia.
See what you can make out of an old fuel tank, a cream can and a stove pipe? I think the calf is some kind of barrel and a bucket.
We ran an errand and saw these whatever kind of horned cattle… Long Horns…Short Horns…whatever I would just call them STEAKS. Chance was impressed, one of them mooed at him.
Wonder where I should put up the Welcome to Siberia sign? I think we have been below zero without much of a reprieve since November 23rd 2013. That was 78 days ago. I wonder when it will end. Maybe we are at the beginning of an Ice Age. I laugh at the thought of Global Warming…bring it on!
A long time ago when I was a teenager I belonged to 4-H. It was an activity that I really enjoyed. The first club I belonged to was the Ponsford Panthers, they got too many members and some of us were siphoned off and began our own club called The Thrifty 39er’s. ( I have no idea how we came up with that name.)
One year I took photography as a project. Photography was an easy project, you had goals and filled out your project paperwork, took pictures and put them on a piece of tag board to display at the fair.
I took a number of photos in the pasture.
I was kinda close to the cattle with my Mom’s Brownie Flash Camera. Of course I could run faster back then..and our Mama cows were quite tame..except if you got too close to their calves.
1967 that was the year that I was a Sophomore in High School. We had a good crop of calves that year.
That was the summer I learned about persistence.
One of the bred heifers ( first time Mama) had a complicated birth. I think the calf was too big and died. The cow was a mess..the birth did something to her spinal cord or nerves…she couldn’t stand or walk on her own. We took her food and water and cleaned her area..she wasn’t in the pasture.. we moved her over by some piece of equipment where she would have some daytime shade in the farm yard. Every day sometimes twice a day my Mom would get out the tractor and we would hook up to the makeshift sling around the cow and lift her in the air until her feet touched the ground. Little by little she gained use of her legs, it wasn’t a pretty sight but she learned how to walk again..then I think she was shipped off. Back then it was bad enough to lose a calf..you didn’t want to lose a cow too.
I always liked to watch the calves in the pasture..they would kick up their heels and run like the wind..and then return to their Mamas. If they were gone for too long the Mamas would start bawling and the calves would usually come a running.
The old pasture January 14 2013.
The old pasture has changed over the years..it is primarily Oaks now..back in the 1960’s there were a number of pines in the pasture:)
I was nine years old when my other baby brother was born in 1960. I helped to teach him important stuff..how to drink out of a cup..how to use the potty and how to stay out of trouble.
I remember the day that he fell on an old fire truck and put a huge gash in his arm..it bled and I wrapped his arm in a towel..he still has a scar on his arm. I am sure he forgot all about it..I never have..I was responsible. I should have been watching him closer. He cried and cried..and so did I.
This photo must have been taken about 1963. I was 12 and he was 3. Nice of me to show him the finer points of a bow and arrow. The bow, arrows and the quiver belonged to my baby brother Carey ( who would have been 9)..we probably stole borrowed it.
I like this photo..he is trying so hard! In the background is the old garage, the old chicken coop and the corn crib on the farm where we were raised.
Well that little boy is in his 50’s now..his birthday was yesterday. Happy Birthday to my other baby brother:)
I was two years old in 1953. I was still an only child. Spoiled. The center of attention. It was my last year of being an only child.
I used to go along to the barn. I liked being in the barn. I had to go along to do chores. If both of my parents were in the barn..then that is where I was. Dad made a pen for me to play in, it was made out of straw bales...I loved the kittens..the Banty roosters and hens not so much.
In the winter when it is cold outside it is cozy and warm and aromatic in the barn…wet straw with a slight ammonia smell..fresh cow pies plopping into the gutter…steaming…very odiferous. The smell of silage thawing out.. a little fermented.
The nails in the walls of the barn covered in frost. The hay dust gleaming in the sunlight as the hay is thrown down from the hay mow. The cobwebs hanging in the windows.
The sounds..the cattle munching their ration of grain, shuffling their feet..mooing softly or sometimes not so softly. The swish swish of the milk hitting the bucket..making bubbles on the surface. The sound of milk being poured into the strainer that sat on top of the milk can. The kittens meowing for milk in their dish.
My parents trying to carry milk in buckets while the barn kittens swirled around their legs. Hollering at the Banty’s to leave me alone.
The terror of being pecked by a mean old Banty Rooster that was flapping his wings ninety miles an hour while pecking my legs! Crying..
Walking back to the house.
My boots must have been too large for my little feet. The dogs..I think one was Frosty..and the other was maybe.. Fido? My Maternal Grandparents were always bringing me a dog..cause they knew I liked dogs!
Smiling for the camera:)
A very long time ago. Something happened in a pasture..I do not recall exactly what the circumstance was. I believe a tree went down in a storm and a nest was disturbed.
Our neighbor Walt showed up with a gunnysack slung over his shoulder. Inside were two baby owls. The other baby owl went to live with his grandson just down the road.
Carey named our owl George Washington, Danny named his Theodore Roosevelt. Very patriotic names for owls!
We fed them grain and bugs..lots of bugs. Owls grow really fast on a diet of bugs. We may have fed them some ground up pocket gofers too because we always had a trap line going in the summer. I believe all this happened in the summer of 1962. One day towards Fall we released them back into the wild.
That is my baby brother giving the owl his arm he would have been 7 years old, I am holding my other baby brother who was almost 2 years old and I would have been almost 11 that summer. I cannot remember where we kept that owl..most likely in a rabbit cage in the barn. That is the old picture tree behind us and I noticed a set of concrete lawn ornaments in the background..a Hen with four chicks.
We always wore long sleeves when handling the owl. My baby brother took very good care of that owl. Have you ever been pecked by an owl? I have:)
My baby brother adds his version:
The baby owls were on the ground in the pasture, couldn't fly or run. I and Danny B found them. They were Great Horned owls. The Owl Mother didn't like the fact that her babies were removed and would sit on top of the barn and watch. The owl George lived in a case by the side of the chicken coop. Sharp claws. Ate hamburger. Released into Smoky Hills state forest, not sure how he faired.
