January 18, 2014

  • Bernard's Book Chapter 6

    CHAPTER 6: FARM LIFE

    In the early ‘30s Father started to add to his flock of sheep. The fall of 1935, a flock of very poor sheep were purchased from Lee Foss of Athens. This put the number of sheep over 100. Father learned from the County Agent how to castrate lambs. First he cut off the tip of the scrotum, push down and pinch next to the body. When the testicle popped out, he would grasp them one at a time with his teeth and pull them out. (Father's upper two front teeth were peg teeth. This happened when he was a young man. As he was pulling the rein over the back of a horse, the snap struck him in the mouth and broke off his front teeth.) When castrating the lamb, Father had to do the grasping on the side of his mouth because one of his peg teeth was missing. The reason for doing it this way was to avoid infection. Nothing touched the wound. What he grasped with his teeth, he spit out.

    At the same time as the castration, the lamb’s tails were also cut off. The shearing of sheep, which was done in April and May, was something I dreaded. Usually Mother or I had to turn the crank for the old clippers. Not being a professional, it was a good day’s work for Father to do from 25 to 30 sheep a day. It was my job to wade over the river at the Tailor interval and go to Dan Waugh's to get the sheering blades sharpened. Dan was a distant relative and would question me for all the news.

    We started binding some of the field corn at this time and shocking it in the field to dry. This was Indian corn, flint corn eight rows of corn on a cob. Late in the fall, we would take these bundles of corn and pitch them on top of the hay in the barns. We built a long feeder for the sheep in the barnyard and fed this to the sheep. They really liked it and got fat on it, but in the spring before the sheep went to pasture a lot of the best lambs couldn't walk. We would carry some of them to pasture. Many never recovered. At the time no one knew what caused this problem. The same problem can happen to cattle that have a complete diet of corn. It is the lack of selenium in the diet. Our soils in the east lack selenium, so we must give vitamin E, or feed a small amount of soy bean meal to the sheep, which comes from the west where the soils are high in selenium.

    We were gradually getting a little bigger in the dairy business. We always had cows to milk it seems. Mother made butter and it was peddled for 17 cents to 27 cents a pound. Mother also made cheese, not to sell but for our own use. She told me that she learned to make cheese from Gram Butler who was known as the best cheese maker around. Father put shelves in a closet by the old fireplace to store the cheese.

    We sold cream and when we didn't have ice, Father build a box at the spring, down over the riverbank, to set the cream in to keep it cool. This water was so cold you couldn't drink a full glass straight down without stopping. The water came right out of the blue clay in the bank. It was quite a job for us kids to get the can of cream up the steep bank until Jim Fentiman swamped out a new path down over the bank. Old Jim was a great woodsman he certainly knew how to lay out woods roads. We had to take the cream to the spring night and morning after separating. Two or three times a week we had to go down to the spring and get the can of cream, take it with the old Franklin car or a horse and wagon down to the old ferry road opposite the Pease Place. Then we put it in the boat, paddle across the river, and lugged it up the other side, where it sat in the sun until it was picked up by the cream truck.

    I think it was late in the summer of 1935 that we moved the camp that stood on the south side of the Butler House. This camp was used for summer sleeping when Father and his brothers were young. It may also have been used as sleeping quarters when Leander built the house. Jim Fentiman helped Father jack-up the building and put it on two beech skids. The butts behind and the front end was chained to a sled rocker and pinned to a set of forward wheels. The horses were put on the pole and the oxen were put on lead. I drove the oxen, Father drove the horses, and Jim walked behind to watch the rear. Of course, the road was a dirt road, but there was concern whether the skids would wear out before we got home. Everything went fine and this building became our new milk room. We soon got inspected to sell whole milk.

    That fall the icehouse was built, just east of the milk room. The icehouse never had a roof. We would fill it a couple of layers of ice above the walls. Sometimes the top layer would melt before we could get sawdust to cover it. Getting the ice was sometimes a problem with Father away in the woods. One year Uncle Maurice sawed the ice and Ellery Tuttle had to haul it from the river with his team. Ellery hauled ice the first day. On the second day he sent Emmons Young with the team. There was slush from a snowstorm that covered the hole. Emmons drove the team on the road right up beside the ice hole. He looked over and could see Maurice sawing on the other side and decided to go over to meet him. Emmons jumped off the sled right into the water. He said he never got his pipe or his hat wet. It was a very cold day, so he jumped on the sled and ran the horses to the house. Us older children were in school, but when we got home Mother told us how Emmons stood on the register, while she tried to find something for him to put on. Father had taken most all of his clothes with him to the woods. She finally found some old rags for him to wear while his clothes dried. Emmons told mother that if there were any fish there they would be all dead for he hadn’t had a bath for a good while. This was the story that mother relayed to us when we got home on the bus.

    Probably the last time ice was put up was 1944. I was home on furlough and Father put me to work driving the team hauling ice from the river. Father had George Walker with his machine to saw the ice. This machine was and old Hudson car engine mounted on steel runners with a big circular saw mounted on the engine. It would saw just about as fast as a man could walk and push it along. The cakes of ice were 2 feet by 2 feet by 3 feet and weighed over 300 pounds. Ten or twelve cakes to a load was a good load for the horses going up the riverbank by the Kennebec. In order to load the ice we used a wooden chute placed in the water. The team was stopped at end of the chute in the middle of the sled. Then we took one of the horses off and with a rope and a special made hook, the horse would pull the cakes of ice on to the sled.

    At this time, I was sweet on Olive, you might say, and she was riding with me. We put a blanket on the ice to sit on. When we were on the river, I noticed George was real sweet with Olive and it reminded me of a story that I heard in one of the lumber camps. When I heard a man in camp mention the name George Walker I kept quiet never saying that he was married to a relative of mine. The fellow said, “Do you know George Walker the iceman in Madison? George is quite a man with the women. His wife, Annie, got word of something. She told George if he didn't cut it out that she would start doing what he was doing and catch up with him. George told Annie, “You might keep up, but you’ll never catch up.”

    In the spring of 1934, Father took a job to cut pine on Willie Hilton’s land. He landed it on Hilton Brook. He also cut pine on land owned by the Clark and Bunker heirs and put that in the river at Norton and Greenier. All the logs were for the Augusta Lumber Company. Father told me that he could buy a pair of oxen for the price of a horse and that was all he could afford. We had a pair of steers that made a four-ox team and Amos Buzzell drove them. Father would get upset with Amos because he tended to slow them down and maybe didn't put on a very big load. Father insisted that they could haul as much or more than a pair of horses.

    A truck and trailer owned by Uncle Benny Yeaton and driven by Uncle Maurice hauled some of the logs from the Clark and Bunker land. These logs were put in the river by the spring, at the farm where my brother Franklin lives. I drove the oxen to load the logs on the truck. We used a rope and the oxen to roll the logs up skids onto the truck. This nigh ox was a really nice ox. I used to hitch him up in the driving wagon and give the children rides. He was so strong that he broke two ox yokes. Father finally traded oxen for a horse. He told me that he saw one of oxen pull at Topsham Fair with another ox. They won first money in the sweepstakes class. A few years later Father saw the old ox again and said it was sad to see him. He was old and thin and didn’t do well at the pull.

    We had a pasture in Starks on a road out to the right of the corn shop. It was about seven miles to the pasture from the Butler Place. In the spring when the water was high we would put the cattle over on the ferryboat and drive them to the pasture. One of the last times that we put cattle there Franklin, about 7 years old, had a pair of steers that were about a year old. The steers were used, thinking that the cattle might see them and follow along with them. It was a hot day and when we got out to Jonas Greenleaf's place, the cattle were hot and left the road and went into the swamp. While we were trying to get the cattle back on the road, Franklin was talking with Jonas, who was an old man. After we got the cattle back on the road and were proceeding down the road, I said to Franklin, "What did the old man have to say?" Franklin said, "He said if I had been home, I would have had a picture of those steers." I said to Franklin, "But he is home." Pretty soon Father came along and I asked him what did Jonas mean. Father thought for a moment and said, "He meant that if his wife Fide had been home, he would have had her take a picture of the steers."

    Each summer we would try to go see the cattle at Starks pasture at least a couple of times, usually on a Sunday. We would go in the horse and wagon and take a lunch for us and some salt for the cattle. One time Caroline, Louise, and I went with Father. We left the horse in the pasture tied to a tree and went looking for the cattle, usually about twenty five to thirty head. The pasture had a large acreage so we went quite a ways from the horse before they would respond to Father's calling them. Finally they came a running.

    We were in a small opening that was once a field. In this field was a huge rock as big as a small house. Caroline, Louise and I were up on this rock when the cattle came and with the cattle was a Jersey bull about two years old that didn’t belong to us. Father didn't want the young heifers breed by him, if he could help it. So, as they were eating the salt, Father sneaks up on the bull grabs him by horns and threw him. I was sent, as fast as I could go, back to the horse, to tie the horse with a rein and bring his halter to put on the bull. And to bring a bag which we had seen hanging on a tree to make a blindfold to put on the bull. I now I had to part with my shoe strings and at least one of the girls did also. The shoe strings were used to tie the blind fold on the bull. We took the bull got him through the fence and Father deposited him in someone's barn.

    I think it was in August in 1936, I was cultivating corn with a pair of horses and everyone else was picking string beans. A truck came and Father went with the man named Dana Robbins, who was after bob calves. We had just had two Holstein heifers, out of several that were bred to a Hereford bull that had red and white bull calves. We all told Franklin that if he would hurry to the barn and show an interest then maybe Father wouldn't sell them. Well those turned out to be a great pair of steers. Franklin trained them well.

    One of the first jobs Franklin did with his steers was when he and his cousin Ray hauled Gram Kate's wood from a pile around the turn, and put it down cellar. I guess there were 5 or 6 cords of wood and it was quite a sight to see these 2 boys in operation. In the winter of 1939, when Father was in New Hampshire logging in blow down of 1938 hurricane, these steers were our transportation. I fixed the old pung up with a pole. This pung had two seats and a little room for a couple of children to stand on back. One day that winter, after a big snowstorm, that blocked the road so the school bus couldn't get through, we decided to go to school with the steers. Franklin was nine. I was sixteen and a half and could run faster than Franklin, so I drove. There were high snow banks on the sides of the road. All we had to do was hang on. I would stand. If the steers happened to take a wrong turn, all I had to do was jump off, run a few steps, and I would have them under control. We put the steers in a lady’s stable, across the street from the school.

    Next Posting: Chapter 7 Letters From Home

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