Early Memories On The Farm

I told somebody yesterday I grew up on a farm. My family remembers it as a resort on the Crow Wing chain of lakes.  Of course I remember that part of it too. But it was also a farm, however modest. We moved in when I was maybe 3 or 4, then moved into town in a different school system when I was already in third grade, so my tender age is my excuse for many gaps in my memories. What I write here is not all I recall, but is indelible, however, for what it is.

Looking back it seems kind of weird that those years split into two sets of memories when it was all one home on one chunk of land. The private parts were the family home except for the store it was built over, and the bits up the hill and behind the cabins that were farm, nothing much like the full farms our neighbors lived on, with fields and barns, cows to milk and pigs. The public part was the resort, with 8 fairly rustic cabins, separate plumbing for them in a shower building our Dad put in. This was the way my parents made their living for about 4 months of the year, their public identity. Our dad had a winter job at a tree nursery, which barely made ends meet but kept us going for a few years. Few people care to vacation in uninsulated wooden cabins in what back then were very cold winters, reaching -40 often enough to think of that as common, so the resort season was understandably very short.

Up on the hill behind the cabins was a corn crib. I can still envision it both full and empty. I still am not completely sure what ate the corn. We didn't even grow corn, so it's likely a neighbor who did rented the space, though those kinds of details were not part of my awareness. A fenced area which also enclosed the corn crib held sheep. I have great memories of shearing time, watching neighborhood experts run clippers over the sheep and neatly separating fleece from suddenly sleek skin. The sheep were released to go wander within the fence, just like we kids were when watching got boring enough. I was short enough to hide in the tall grass, and occasionally one of my parents remembered I was... somewhere, and called me in to prove I was still safe. In hindsight it's weird that the grass was so tall at sheering time, as that is done in early summer so the fleece can grow out enough to keep them warm for winter. But sheep eat the grass so short that nothing is left for cows, and ranchers tend to hate them. This of course is me looking back more than 70 years, not something that made any kind of impression on my carefree mind, not like hiding in the grass, or looking for butterflies or whatever other bugs that might have been hiding next to me in the grass, or even picking a stalk to see what it could do or how it came apart.

I wasn't allowed back there by myself, being so young, so sheering time took on a unique importance. Other things made much less impact. I'm sure there must have been a barn of some sort, as I kind of mentally place it as a backdrop to the sheering activity. But having a mental picture of it? I can picture the inside of a barn, without being able to swear whether it was ours or one belonging to the neighbors we kids visited with fairly often. It may well be overlaid with TV and movie images with the inside of barns as sets. There was hay up on the overhead platform, and a wooden ladder nailed to a hefty post. I could climb it easily, but transferring to the hayloft itself meant letting go of the ladder, a new thing at a young age.  I had to do it just to show that I could be just as brave and able as my older brother. He would tease me unmercifully if I didn't. So of course Mom decided it was too dangerous and I should stop climbing it. Somehow that made what I had been doing because everybody else did it into something scary, and made me doubt myself and whether I could safely do it. Still, I never did fall, and the views from up high and the games we could invent filled some otherwise boring days.

By the time I was five, my attention was drawn to the windmill tower on the property, down lower in the trees. It was just there and always had been in my existence, but once I really looked at it, I saw all the triangles it was made out of and figured out how safe it would be to climb. All I had to do was move and refasten one limb at a time and I'd be perfectly safe. One foot, the other foot, one arm, the other arm. The triangles got smaller and smaller as I rose, but the principle was the same. It was a fantastic adventure, written about here way back on July 28, 2011. It had been printed elsewhere while I was still getting comfortable with writing things to be read - actually read!!! - and finally brought over to my own blog to keep. It's title is "Reclaimed 3: Two Towers, Part 1. "

I bring it back as a different view of that day because I was a bit different when I wrote it, and did so then in large part because it contrasted with "Two Towers, Part 2." Today the climb contrasts with the hayloft ladder. Once again Mom freaked out, just much more so since I got much higher this time to the point where she couldn't even find me up above the tree line. After debating whether I could stay up there until my parents quit calling and went away, never knowing just where I'd been, I reluctantly decided that would never happen but only make what trouble I was in worse. Announcing myself, I climbed back down, one limb moving at a time, nothing else letting go until the previous piece of me was secure. I never was scared, never regretted doing it, and Mom never succeeded in making me feel scared for what I'd done. She was doing that adequately by and for herself. I gloried in that cllimb! I still do. What she did succeed in was getting me to promise never to climb it ever again! I never did break that promise.... Darn it! She made me unsure about hayloft ladders, but never the windmill tower.

Perhaps she should have left well enough alone, and me able to climb, since my next self-taught skill was learning how striker matches worked... in singles and multiples... right behind the house... in a pile of dry leaves. I scared myself just fine that time, but got the fire out before any real damage was done. I smuggled the box of matches back to where they were supposed to be without getting caught. I also had the presence of mind to bury the black leaves under brown ones to hide the rest of the evidence. I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations has worn out by now anyway, so you have my full confession written down for the very first time.

In addition to the sheep, we had a chicken coop. It wasn't back up on the hill, but down on the level with the cabins, just back a bit behind them. I remember most clearly the part where it was time to eat one. Whichever parent was to dispatch one pulled it out by the feet, held it down with its head extended, and brought down the hatchet. Then the fun began, this headless feather-shedding thing flopping all around, this way and that, taking what felt like a full minute to die. My parents kept telling us it was dead the second its head came off, that all this wild activity was "just its nerves". I'm not sure whether we believed that then, but we tried to take comfort that it wasn't in pain. The rest of food prep details are fuzzy, but I recall dunking the bird in (hot?) water to help get the feathers off. I also recall spending what seemed like hours anyway removing them. We must not have had chickens long, because I also recall visiting a neighbor a few miles away and waiting while she "candled" eggs so Mom could buy them. I couldn't tell how she did it, perhaps because I had a bad angle for watching, but when the eggs got home none of them had the blob of blood that said they were fertilized and ready to become a chick instead of breakfast.

There were two more things involving animals, though not necessarily farm animals. There was a fairly long hike from the house up the hill to where the school bus picked us up. Something drew my attention to a pile of brush in the woods next to the road a bit more than halfway there. I wasn't in a hurry, nor was my brother along, so it must have been just an errand up to get the mail, also at the entrance to the property. There was a litter of new kittens in a pile under the brush, eyes still closed, happy to stay put rather than run away from those two small hands reaching in, gently petting them, picking them up for a cuddle and putting them back. Mom was nowhere around, likely hunting so she had milk to feed them. Eventually I went on my way, keeping the secret of what was under the brush pile. As always, had I told anybody, I would have been forbidden from doing at again. They were there the next day, and the next, so it was a total shock when they'd been moved. I never saw them again, not as kittens, not as wild cats doing rodent cleanup. But for years afterwards, any time I saw a brush pile, I'd wonder about what kittens might be hiding under it, sure that there must be some somewhere.

The other animal was memorable both for it's size and for the tragedy almost breaking my heart. A pine snake came visiting. A huge one, possibly 6 feet long and as thick as the 4x4 my dad used to kill it. They are harmless, except to rats or perhaps your pet cat, but we didn't have a pet cat back then. What we did have were customers on the resort part of the property, and they noticed the snake. How could they not? Just because many people fear them, and that's bad for business, the snake had to go away, and in a way that reassured everybody it would never return.  It could so easily been put in a gunnysack, into the car, and driven a few miles away to go about its business of rodent control. I didn't fear it, for two reasons: there are no poisonous snakes in that part of Minnesota, and my brother and I were well acquainted with chasing and occasionally catching garter snakes. We'd never been told to fear snakes. Our parents didn't seem afraid of it, but while they were intent on my Dad doing his grim job of pounding it over and over,  a crowd had gathered to watch, with nobody telling them to stay back for safety. Eventually it quit moving, and once the curious had examined it, the body was disposed of. I'm not sure I ever forgave that unneeded brutality. 

The last memory involves no animals. I got to drive a tractor! If memory serves, I was way too small to have had any sane person put me up in the seat by myself, tell me where to put my feet (I assume there was a clutch as well as the gas pedal) and how to move them. Yet there I was, getting it moving, steering it to avoid knocking over the swing set, and all too quickly asking how did I stop this very intimidating piece of machinery. Once again I did it to show big brother I was just as good as he was since he'd just driven it, but this time I also knew it was sheer luck that I did as well as I had and didn't do any damage. I never drove anything again until high school driver's ed, and after than not until I was married and had my first kid. Oddly enough I love driving now, and just in my working career as an IC courier over 29 years clocked over 2 million miles. (I kept track for tax purposes.)