Farmer In The Valley

I was raised on a dairy farm in Northern New York's beautiful St. Lawrence River Valley. We moved there in 1941, and for the next several years we had no electric power. We milked cows by hand aided by the light of kerosene lanterns. We cooled the milk with ice cut from a river in wintertime, and packed in sawdust for summer storage. The cattle were turned outdoors at each end of the day to get water which we hand pumped into a large watering trough for them. I can remember our hand knit mittens, wet from throwing snowballs, sticking to the frosty pump handle.

It was several years, before our horses were phased out in favor of tractors and tractor drawn machinery. We had a team of roan Belgians. One was steel grey , while the other was strawberry. They weighed in at about a ton each. They were used for all types of dairy farm work, including mowing, raking, and loading hay. They were also hooked to the oat and corn binders in season. They were used in the woods for cutting firewood, logs, and cedar fenceposts.

We kept chickens for their eggs, and when they no longer produced them, they became dinner. The chickens were my mom's responsibility, and where she got her money for household expenses, as well as clothing for her thirteen children.

We also kept hogs for our winter meat supply. One of the eight boys always had the job of feeding them night and morning. I don't believe there is much of anything on this earth much cuter than a baby pig. We tried not to get too attached though, as their fate was known from the first day of our meeting. Among the first cold days of early winter they were turned into porkchops, ham, and bacon. As we had no refrigeration, the meat was hung in the rafters of the wood shed for winter consumption.

I started in the first grade of school, when I was four years old in 1942, in a one room school house, and continued there for my first six years. There were about twenty five children there at any given time scattered through the six grades. I went on through twelve full years of high school, and graduated in 1954 at the age of 15, all of this time living on my parent's farm. I enjoyed life on the farm, and believe still that it is about as good a way as any to bring up a family.

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