Life on the Farm

Ah, life on the farm, sunshine and rosy days. well, maybe not so much!

It was good to be a kid on the farm most days, this time of year the hay would be in the barns, the leaves are turning and the crisp air feels good from the summer heat.  My grandmother was not one for kids under foot, so she would kick us out of the house and we were to fend for ourselves all day. Only come in when called in, otherwise out of site.

On many of those occasions it may have been best that the parents did not know what we were up to.  One day while playing hide and seek or some such game, we hid back under the rear foundation wall of the horse barn. Well, to our surprise, someone has put a stash of old Playboy magazines there. I may have been the first time my eyes saw such sights. So that was what woman looked like. I mean its not the same to see your mother or sister in the house with nothing on. That was completely different and it did not even occur to me to make the connection that they were female also. The magazines were something altogether different.

Mostly we simply found games in the barns or down by the creek to keep us entertained, and most of the time we were safe. We knew better than to climb the ladder to the silo, well at least I did  I can not speak for my brothers though. There was an old barn owl who lived up in there and we didn't want to bother it so much.  My grandfather would get mad if we messed around with his cows, he said it agitated them. That did not stop us from time to time trying to ride them though.

The creek was a long winding thing that ran through the entire property, and has great pockets of shrubs, where you could always count on finding a big snapper turtle. Sometimes it took a few of us to wrestle it out of the mud, and carry it up to the house to show it off. Of course we were always told to not play in the creek, so well might imagine the first stop for us.

Sometimes we lived on the farm for months or years,I guess it depended on my fathers work, or if he was fired again. Maybe it was because my mother left him again and we headed back home. Home of course being the farm.

My grandmother took to keeping collies, and she raised them bred them and took them to dog shows. She would get lots of ribbons or trophies, and sometimes we went along. She had kennel dogs, ones who were not show dogs and she had breeder dogs. The horse barn was converted to a dog kennel and they had runs they could run out into. At night though they were lured into the barn with a bone and we dropped a trap door preventing them from going outside in the runs.  We had chores to clean the pens and refresh the feed and water for them, and we were lucky to get fifty cents a week for the work. In addition we had to clean the barn and help milk the cows.

The best times were taking what we called "Trips" with our grandfather. These were the special times. He would take a straight truck up to one of the Auction Houses and we would haul the cattle back to the meat packers, aka slaughter house. The ride was the best, there was an old eight track in the truck and we would listen to Arlo Guthrie doing Alice's restaurant mostly. How he put up with us I will never know. We were an unruly bunch.

At the Auction house especially the night trips, we would wander the barns there looking at all the animals and always amazed at the size of the pigs. These things were enormous and grunting and so forth. It wasn't all of that could take the trips at once, there were too many of us to do that, so that was what made it even more special. Sometimes we would even ride in the back with the cattle if it was a day trip with only the calves. Never with the full grown cows.

Life on the farm was full of work, but it was also full of play and adventure.