My Site - Hello World

Cats

We almost always had cats around the farm.  First there was Ginger, who was Carol & Donna’s cat.  Ginger was a big fat orange tabby cat who lets us dress him up in dolly clothes and push him around in the doll carriage.  Dad came in one day and told us the cow laid on Ginger and killed him.  This wasn’t the truth and I think Ginger was shot by someone and Dad just said that so that we wouldn’t be angry.

Manure

The smell of the cow crap that Dad and Wayne shoveled along the floor behind where the cows stood in the barn.  Along the floor and out the back of the barn.  Out a door a pile is forming – called The Manure Pile.  My Mom used this to fertilize our garden and her flowers.

Wayne’s memories...

Dad never let me plow because it was too dangerous.  If you hit a rock all hell could break loose.

Laundry

I have a memory of pulling the clothes through the old washer machine rollers.  But its not much, because I don’t remember the kitchen without the side-by-side washer and dryer there, just as you came through the door.  I also remember helping Mom with the laundry on the line, but possibly only in the later years, as I would have been too short to reach the line.

Harvest

During the baling season, there’s was always a smell of freshly cut hay. When I catch that smell now, I remember stuking sheaves – 3 and 4 in a group, like a Teepee.  We also stuked the bales sometimes, but not often.  The smell of hay was part of the air we breathed during that season.  I always thought of the baler as a monster swallowing rows of dry hay without chewing and then excreting it out in big tidy compressed rectangles. 

Mudpies and Other Edibles

The best mud to make pies was in a dip in the middle of the barnyard just before a climb up a hill to get to the backfield.  This dip accumulated rainwater and other farm excrement and made the texture here the best for being packed tight into little shaped and molded tins.  And they’d drop out as tidy little cakes and pies.

The Flowers

Daisies were the potatoes and carrots in the playhouse pots, and were the answer to whether Wesley Rose loved me or not. Buttercups were treats for the rabbits and cows and were the faux butter on the plates for the dollies in the playhouse.  Dandilions made a solid semi-circle bouquet in little jars then died to soon.  The stems made wonderful necklaces, with interlocking rings.  The white juice from the stems so bitter, but the big fat round bumble bees love dandelions.  We could catch them in jars, flower and all, and watch them buzz frantically, hitting their little heads against the glass.  We’d let them go with a scream as we opened the lids, we’d drop the jars and run.