Eleven

            I was getting older and had more of the chores to do in the morning and evening, like giving the cows their grain, the horses too.  Then there was the chickens and we always raised a pig, sometimes two.  We butchered and sold one.  We always raised a beef or veal calf for our meat.  There was eggs to gather every evening.  We always had about twenty or twenty-five cows to milk so I got so I could milk four or five. 

Then there was about eight or ten dry cows that wasn’t giving milk and would soon give birth to calves.  They had to be cared for too.  After two or three days they would be taken away from their mothers.  Then they had to be taught to drink from a pail.  We put one finger in their mouth, they would suck the finger and at the same time we pushed their mouths down into the milk in the pail so they would be sucking up milk too.  After once or twice we would ease the finger out and they would soon be drinking milk themselves.

I didn’t like the job of cleaning the cows and horses about every other day with a curvy comb and brush.  They didn’t like to have their bellies and legs cleaned and would do a lot of kicking.  I used to get kicked a lot and had some sore places on my legs where they hit me.  The horse stepped on my feet sometimes and they would be sore or lame for a couple of days but the job had to be done because every once in a while the inspector would come around to the farms to see if the barns and animals was kept clean and the milk pails and strainers too.

Once a year we had the truck with a big tank and hose come to white wash the cow barn inside.  One time the man let me hold the hose and do some of the wall, and as always, leave it to me, I turned the hose on the cat.  Boy, he took off and didn’t come back.  He was white fur for a month before it all came off.

We never had a dog.  I used to ask for one quite a few times but for some reason my Father and Mother never liked dogs and didn’t want one around.  Father used to say they chased the chickens and the other animals too much, but I could tell when they were around where they was dogs they didn’t care for them at all.

Father used to do some trapping on the farm.  There was a small brook and he set traps for muskrats and there used to be some beavers around the brook and a lot of gray and red foxes.  He used to get up at four in the morning to go look at the traps.  He asked me if I’d like to go along and learn how to set them.  I used to like to go but it was so early in the morning I got tired of it after a few weeks but I did like to help skin what ever he caught and stretch the hides over boards he made.  The foxes was hard to catch.  There couldn’t be no tracks or human scent left any where near where he set and covered the traps or they wouldn’t come around any more.  He had some stuff in a little bottle he used to drop around and it took all the human scent away. 

Father caught a lot of coon and weasel.  He had to send all the hides to the company in the spring, when trapping season was over.  He made out pretty good every winter.  I used to like it but it was too early in the morning for me to come back and do my work and get ready for school. 

Father used to have a pair of snow shoes he let me try but I never could learn how to use them just right and I kept getting them tangled up and falling more than I could walk.

It was always real dark at that time in the morning.  Sometimes the moon was out but then I’d see all kinds of shadows up ahead and would think it was some kind of animals.  I’d always stay behind Father all the time.

He caught a lot of skunk but I didn’t care about them because of the smell.  They came out and traveled around when the weather wasn’t too cold at night.  Them and the foxes was great for getting into the chicken house if they could find any place to get in.  Father always had traps set around with bait.