Farm Life

Farm Life: Gotta Have Guts

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Daddy loved home remedies and dosed his kids and livestock readily.   Mother did run interference for us on cow chip tea and coal oil and sugar, but did let him load us with sulphur and molasses for summer sores. We never got summer sores, probably because we reeked so much we didn’t tempt mosquitoes. I do appreciate Mother for putting her foot down when his ideas got too toxic. No telling what kind of chromosome damage she saved us. Continue reading →

Fluffy, the Species Confused Chicken

My little sisters, Connie and Marilyn, raised their baby chick, Fluffy, in a cloth-lined box in the living room. He spent his nights in their room, going to sleep as soon as they covered his sweet, little head. He woke them early in the morning, peeping around looking for them. Cleaning up after him wasn’t really a big problem while he was a tiny chick. Continue reading →

Good Old Champ (A Children’s Story)

Horse and HatI knew Champ, our horse loved me, since he trotted up to the fence every time he saw me. I carefully held my hand flat and let him snuffle up goodies with his velvety muzzle.  My big sister said it he’d love anyone who slipped him apples, sugar and carrots, but she was just being mean. I didn’t tell my friends and cousins the trick, so they were scared he’d bite them.  Before long, I found he could help himself to treats.

My grandmother had written that she was coming for Easter and bringing Easter outfits with hats and shoes.  I didn’t hear much except the part about outfits with hats and shoes.  I was thrilled!  I had been dying for a cowboy outfit with red boots, red hat, and shiny pistols in a holster  but Mother said I needed other things worse.  Good old Grandma knew what really mattered!  I was up before daylight waiting for her.  Breakfast and lunch dragged by…..…..nothing.  I was getting more and more upset.  Maybe Grandma wasn’t coming.  Maybe she got lost.  Just before dark an old black car crept up.  We all flew out to the car, trying to get to her first.  “What did you bring me?  What did you bring me?” Mother tried to shush us, but nobody listened. Grandma was slow getting out of the car and slower getting in the house.  No wonder it took her so long to get here.  We got busy and helped with her bags and a big brown box from the back seat.  There was plenty of room in there for a cowboy suit and lots of other good stuff.

Even though we were dying, Mother made us wait till Grandma went to the bathroom, got a cup of coffee, and caught her breath.  She was slow at that, too.  Finally, Grandma got the scissors and started cutting the strings on the box.  She was so old her fingers shook.  It took forever.  I could have ripped into that box in a second, but would Mother let me?   Noooooo!

Just before I died of old age, Grandma started pulling things out of the box.  I knew she always saved the best for last.  I got a gumball machine full of gumballs.  That was great!!  Next she pulled out a baby doll and handed it to me. Grandma couldn’t seem to remember I hated dolls, but I tried to be nice about it.  All baby dolls were good for was burying when we played funeral.  I tried to be patient till she got to the cowboy outfit.  Finally, she hit bottom.  She made me and my sister close our eyes and hold out our hands for our outfits.

I peeked just a little and was furious!!  This was a horrible joke!  We were both holding fancy Easter dresses, big ridiculous straw hats with flowers, and shiny white shoes.  I hated them! Where were my cowboy boots and guns? My mother gave me a dirty look before I could tell Grandma what I really thought.  I hated dresses, but Mother made us put on our Easter getups and pose next to the fence for a picture. It was hot. The clothes were scratchy. We looked stupid.  My prissy big sister kept dancing around like a ballerina while the mean kids from next door laughed at us across the fence.  I’d  be dealing with them later.  Boy was I disgusted.

Mother was as slow as Grandma.  While I stood there like a dope waiting for her to take that darn picture, Champ came up behind me expecting a treat.  We both got a big surprise.  I felt a big scrunchy chomp on my head. The strap on my hat stretched tight, snapped, and that horrible hat with the flowers was gone.  I flipped around, and Champ was eating my Easter hat.  He still had straw and flowers sticking out of his mouth, but I could see he didn’t think too much of it either.  He was the best horse ever.  I never had to wear that hat again.  He did love me!

Goats in Love

Goats are always in love. They are also great fence breakers.  This is a bad combination.  I don’t know why Daddy kept goats. In theory, they’d eat brush and he’d have one to barbecue on Memorial Day, Fourth of July, or Labor Day.   The fact is, goats are not stupid.  They are born knowing flowers, grass, garden vegetables, and almost anything Continue reading →

Farm Life: Gotta Have Guts

Daddy loved home remedies and dosed us and the livestock readily.   Mother ran interference on cow chip tea and coal oil and sugar, but did let him load us with sulphur and molasses for summer sores. We never got summer sores, probably because we reeked so badly we were rejected by mosquitoes. I do appreciate Mother for putting her foot down when his more toxic ideas. No telling what kind of chromosome damage she saved the gene pool.

The livestock weren’t so lucky. They got coal oil for pneumonia, distemper, to bring on labor, and as a tonic, should they be so foolish as to look puny. Daddy hung ropes with black oil soaked bags for cows and horses to rub against as protection against insects, which they gladly did. When an unfortunate cow bloated from green hay, he inserted an icepick in her distended belly to release gas. She ceased her moaning and resumed cow business as usual, grateful for the relief.

Farm kids grow up with a lot of responsibility. In addition to our daily chores, Daddy left us other jobs to do before he got home from work and started on his farm day, expecting us to figure things out without explanation, not always the best plan. When my brother Billy was around eleven, Daddy remarked that the old hound dog nursing eight puppies was off her food. He told Billy to pour some syrup over her feed(country for dog food) so she would eat better. Bill got a jug of syrup and headed out the back door. After a while, he came back in, smeared in dog poop, shirt torn, scratched and bitten from head to foot. “Boy, what in the world happened to you?” Daddy asked, incredulous at the sight.

“Oh, I was putting syrup on that old dog’s feet and she tore me up. She dragged me through the dog yard fence and all over the dog yard, but I did finally get syrup on all four  feet.”

As I said, Daddy frequently set us to tasks with inadequate instructions. On one occasion a sick duck foolishly allowed Daddy to spot him. The specific instructions to my brother were, “Go out there and get that green-headed duck staggering around out back, and knock her in the head. No wait, first pour a couple of drops of kerosene down her throat.” Billy picked up the kerosene and was gone a few minutes. When he returned in a few minutes, my dad inquired, “How’s the duck?”  He was obviously surprised Daddy would even ask, knowing he’d sent him out to knock it in the head.  Daddy didn’t mean to tell us to do anything twice.

Bill replied, “It’s dead.”

Daddy said, “You didn’t give it the kerosene?”

“Sure I did,”said Bill, “and then I knocked it in the head, just like you told me to.” Even Daddy had to admit, clearer instructions would have been better.

We butchered a beef late one Saturday evening after Daddy got home from work, finishing really late. Our place was the last house next door to a huge nature preserve. To Daddy, this meant, “not private property,” a perfect place to dump off guts.  He told my brother to load the mess into the ancient farm truck and dump it near Peter Spring Branch, a couple of miles back in the woods. (Yes, Billy was underage for driving but did drive the farm truck on the farm and in the woods. It was the sixties in the South.) It was way too late to haul it off that night.  Then Daddy remembered the truck was broken down(as it often was) and left the nasty mess in a tarpaulin-covered wheelbarrow tellng Billy to dump it first thing in the morning, not amending his earlier instructions, assuming Billy would understand he didn’t expect him to push a barrow of guts a couple of miles. Wrong!!

We got up early the next morning. Billy and the wheelbarrow of guts were gone. An hour passed…no Billy. My mother was furious when he was gone past time to get ready to church. She was trying to raise us right. We went on without him, much to my envy.  Still not home when we got home after noon, Mother knew something was obviously wrong.  He would never have voluntarily missed Sunday dinner. Mother was really worried now.

Finally, after two o’clock he came into view pushing the empty wheelbarrow, circled by flies and trailed by all the hounds in the country covered in congealed blood, guts, mud, and vomit. He had wheeled the guts the entire two miles over muddy roads, through deep ditches, and rough terrain, pestered by flies and dogs to the original site Daddy indicated. The trail was so rough and muddy, his load dumped several times, making a horrible job even worse. He didn’t dare not follow his orders, so he scoopd the stinking guts up every time they dumped, fighting dogs and flies for possession of the prize, vomiting as he wrestled them back in the barrow.

He was sick the rest of the day, not even able to eat Sunday dinner. If he did fake misunderstanding as I suspected, just to miss church, he was welcome to all the gut-hauling he wanted.