By lunch time the rain had stopped. As we left the barn, I spied a pickup truck coming down the road. It had a utility body on it and had boxes and other things piled in the bed high above the cab’s roof and covered with a tarp. Into the driveway it pulled and as the driver emerged I recognized him. It was Barry, our auto mechanic. He was an unforgettable fellow. I remembered him as a jolly, smoking fiend and a very foul mouth. He and Dad would vigorously debate politics. Actually sometimes it would seem more like arguing, the way Barry would carry on. Yet in the end he’d be laughing about it. He had long hair and was extremely overweight. I often wondered how he could even get close enough to work in some of the tighter areas of cars. I thought I had heard Dad tell Mom one time about some of the health problems Barry had. Today, however, he looked different. Hard to describe; perhaps more humble, mellow, or subdued. Shorter hair, that was obvious. And definitely weighing less. It looked like he lost a hundred pounds.
“Good to see you, Barry,” Dad said. “What brings you out here?”
“My truck,” he said. So he had some jolliness left in him. “I’m out of business,” he continued. “When the gasoline supply dried up, no one needed their cars fixed, nor did they have money to pay for repairs. But I knew there were people out here, especially farmers, who had equipment that might still be in use and could need repair. So I packed up as many of my tools as I could, at least those I deemed to be most likely to be useful. Put all the gasoline I had in a couple cans, together with some clothing and the little food I had and hit the road. I’ve been going from house to house and farm to farm trying to trade my skill for some room and board. Hasn’t really been working out. I had to trade most of my gasoline for food. Fact is I probably couldn’t drive another ten miles before I’d run out of gas. Didn’t know this was your place. Soon as I saw you, hope returned. Is there something I can do here to earn some food?”
“Not a thing,” Harvey said. Some of the color drained out of Barry’s face. I almost couldn’t believe I’d just heard Harvey say that.
“This here’s Harvey Stump, my second cousin. This is his farm,” Dad said.
Barry remained silent. After a few moments Harvey extended his hand and said, “Glad to meet you, Barry. We’re getting ready to go to the house to eat shortly. Like I said, there’s ‘not a thing’ you need to do, except to join us. If you want to eat, you’re welcome to what we have to share.”
A big smile emerged on Barry’s face as he grabbed Harvey’s hand and shook it. “Thank you, thank you,” he said. He just kept shaking it as he looked at Dad and said, “You put him up to that didn’t you?”
“Didn’t have time to,” was Dad’s response. “But we had the same great-grandfather and they say he was a corker, so I had a pretty good idea what Harvey was doing. Let’s go eat.”
The boys were planning to tackle the project of preparing the butcher house for housing the milk tank after lunch. Of course, while it was raining they had been preparing. Larry had the sprayer pump all flushed out and cleaned up. Jake and Joe had started converting a bicycle into the drive for the pump. Aaron was working on Jean’s oven. Poppop and the rest were pulling the water line from the barn. Dennis had the least success. While we were eating, he explained the problem he was having making the blender run on 12 volts.
“I think,” he said, “the trouble is a battery is direct current and the blender as well as all these other motors around here are alternating current.”
“That would be correct,” Aaron said, “to convert it we need a transformer to go from DC to AC.”
“Sounds like a rock group,” Grandmom said. Chuckles from everyone.
“I guess the transformers we might have go the other way?” Dad asked.
“What transformers?” Dennis wanted to know.
“Like the one for a toy electric train, a re-chargeable flashlight, Mel’s laptop, the two-way radios, or an electric fencer,” Dad answered.
“Yeah, those convert from AC to DC,” Dennis agreed, “but still it makes me wonder…. I guess I should have played a little closer attention in school.”
“School?” Dad said, “did you hear that Alyssa? Dennis learned something in school.”
“Now don’t start that again,” I said.
“Enough already you two,” Mom said, “Boys, I have something on my mind. I’d like to ask you three questions. Address them whenever and in whatever order you wish.”
“What are the questions, Mom?” Jake asked.
“Number one - you are putting a lot of effort into powering our basic machines by people power, what with the bicycles and all. Rightly so, I guess, we need to do something quickly to meet some of our needs. But shouldn’t you be investigating using other power sources such as animals, water, or wind?”
“Number two - Just like practically every other farm and household in the country we have many things like motors, appliances, and tools that run on electricity. Additionally, we have a generator capable of making electricity if we only had a power source to turn it. Isn’t it feasible to spin that generator with one of the power sources I just mentioned? Or wouldn’t it be an even better long term solution to develop an alternative fuel source so we could use our tractors again to run the generator? Then we wouldn’t have put so much effort into converting all these machines we have to mechanical drive or to 12 volt. Number three…”
“Four,” Josh said, “You already asked three.”
“Don’t get picky,” Mom continued. “Number four then - A few weeks from now we are going to have more darkness in a day than daylight. So far we’ve been able to see well enough into the evening with a couple flashlights, lanterns, and candles. Without making electricity, recharging the batteries will end and our supply of them will be depleted. There is only a little kerosene left for the lanterns and it positively isn’t a good idea to have candles in the barn. Have you devised a plan to provide lighting for the winter?”
Aaron, Dennis, Jake, Josh and the others just looked at each other for a few moments, then Joe asked, “anybody get all that?”
“I think I did,” Jake said.
“Go ahead then; answer her. And give it your best shot,” Joe said.
“OK,” Jake started, “If I got them straight --- Yes, Probably, Yes, and Not entirely.” Dad and Jeremiah put their hands other their mouths in a weak attempt to keep from laughing out loud. Harvey and Larry couldn’t help it; they broke up, then the rest of us too.
Mom responded, “What the… what kind of answers are those? Yes, Probably, Yes and Not entirely?”
“Well you asked yes-no questions,” Jake said.
“You guys!” Mom shrilled, “you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”
“I’m sure they will,” Dad assured her, “I’m positive I will. Who’d we make fun of?”
“Oh shush,” she finished. “I won’t say another word.”
Joe took over. “Ignore them; those were good questions,” he said. “And Jake’s answers were accurate, but worthy of explanations. I’ll try, and anyone please jump in if I twist things. Yes, we should be investigating other mechanical power sources. Larry and I are designing a windmill and I think your husband has talked a little about damming the creek and building a water wheel. Design and construction might be the easy parts. The trick is getting a way to get that mechanical power to the machines we want to power.
“Probably we can spin the generator with one of those other power sources you mentioned. Problem is the generator requires a minimum of 45 horsepower to spin. Neither a windmill nor a waterwheel could produce that much, unless they were gigantic. Then the problem would be getting enough wind or water to turn them.”
Aaron chimed in, “A decent possibility, besides developing an alternative fuel, would be a steam engine. That’s kind of what the electric companies do. We have wood to burn and the excess heat could be used to heat Harvey’s house. But we haven’t come up with a design yet. It requires large pistons and some sort of control valve system.”
“Unless we could locate one of those old steam tractors that some of those antique farm tractor collectors might have?” Harvey said. “If someone would want to part with one.”
“If they aren’t being put to use already?” Dad wondered.
“Or a steam locomotive?” Josh added.
“Some of them around, too,” Joe said, “some even in museums. But no doubt someone already has claimed them.”
“And that would quite an endeavor to transport one here,” Larry said.
“So you see,” Joe said to my mom, “as we come up with ideas we often run into roadblocks. Now Aaron has already answered your third question. Yes, it would be a better long term solution to develop an alternative fuel for our vehicles. They’re all in the thinking stages for now. However your last question is a more urgent one. We need light. Especially in the barn as we will have to milk in the dark around the beginning of November. You were right about the lanterns. Kerosene’s soon gone. We thought of other fuels; it appears to just raise more questions. In the Bible they used olive oil in their lamps. Could we squeeze oil from the soybeans or render the beef tallow when we butcher? Would they burn? But still we’d like to stay away from open flame in the barn, so we’re leaning toward car headlights. A superficial solution would be to just pull two cars or trucks over to the doors and shine the lights in while we are milking. However, it would be a wasteful use of gasoline, for if we didn’t run the engines now and again, the batteries would go dead.”
“Actually,” Dennis jumped in, “charging the batteries is already a problem we need to solve. Remember we are using one on Harvey’s furnace. In fact we’re on the second one now; the first is too low on juice to keep the control working.”
Josh added, “When we rigged up the bicycle to run the water pump, we also designed it to run an alternator from my old car. But it just doesn’t seem to work right. We think it has something to do with the voltage regulator that’s built right into the alternator.”
“It never fails,” Joe resumed, “as soon as we have a good idea, glitches develop. We’re hoping as more and more people join us, they’ll bring some of the skills we need to overcome these obstacles. Our next step is to get Ben down here; remember he’s an electrical engineer. Maybe he can talk us through them.”
“I can help,” Barry said.
“Yes, Barry!” Dad said. “You’re an auto mechanic. Do you think you know what’s wrong?”
“Maybe two things,” Barry answered. “First, we’ll want to make sure the alternator is spinning fast enough, just to be sure. Second, more than likely your assumption about the voltage regulator is one hundred percent correct.”
“But can you do anything about it?” Jake asked.
“I used to keep that old beat up jalopy of a Pontiac you once had running didn’t I?” Barry remarked. “When I was a teenager back in the 60’s, my buddies and I spent a lot of time converting our hot rods with generators over to alternators. Did it for many farm trucks and tractors, too. We always had to rework the voltage regulators. I’m pretty sure I remember the intricacies of them. I can make it work for you.”
“That would be great,” Harvey said. “then we can remove some of the headlights from a few vehicles and position them right in the barn. We’d just have to keep charging the batteries as they run down.”
“And we wouldn’t have to depend on people-pedal power either,” Larry said. “We could use the windmill Joe and I are working on.”
“Right,” said Joe, “and maybe even rig it up to charge several at a time. Think that can be done, Barry?”
Barry answered, “Don’t know why not. A lot of things can be done if you try; nothing if you don’t.”
“That’s a good attitude, Barry,” Dad responded. “We should all remember that.”
“Yeah we should,” several voices echoed.
To be continued…. Mort
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Chapter Ten - Beasts of Burden (cont)
“And how would you like it if you weren’t able to read the Bible?”
“I wouldn’t,” I answered.
“You learned that in school, didn’t you?” Dad asked.
“Yes, but also at home when you and Mom read with me, and at church when following along in the hymn book,” I said.
“Sure, that’s right. And how are your math skills?”
Dad hit a sore spot; my math was terrible. In fact, I’d probably have liked school better if learning math had not been so difficult. “A problem with school,” I continued, “was that all the students had to fit the same mold. Those that had little math ability were taught using the same methods and were expected to achieve the same goals as those with greater abilities. Someone, somewhere in the educational system, once coined the phrase: ‘all children can learn’. The educational community fell for it, but it’s all a bunch of crap. It would be true if the word ‘something’ would be added onto the phrase, because we can all learn something. But not all the same things and definitely not to the same achievement level. Yet we were still all thrown into the same room with about 24 others of varying abilities and then all were expected to reach the same level. It’s horribly frustrating and not fair. Then they ignore the other skills we have, like music or craftsmanship. No wonder we hate school.”
Dad had a sorry look on his face. He and I were different. He was a great math student; it came easy. But play the piano or type. Forget it! He said his brain didn’t know how to tell his fingers what to do when his eyes weren’t looking at them. And read and consequently play two, three, four notes at a time? Impossible. He said it was physiological - some nerve synapses in his brain just wouldn’t let him do that. I thought it was psychological – his mind just wouldn’t let him. On the other hand, I couldn’t calculate worth a dime, but could play both the piano and the flute. Dad was very glad that I could and once said he’d be willing to trade his ability to do math for the ability to play the piano. That made no sense to my teachers though. So what if I can’t learn math? Let me excel at what I can. Allow me some level of achievement.
“I wonder how many feet of twine I’ve handled in my lifetime?” Dad asked. “A million perhaps?”
“Okay, so you’re going to push your point,” I answered. “How in the world would you know that? And who would care?”
“Well, you wouldn’t really know, we’d have to estimate.”
“Estimate! You know I hate that more than word problems. What good is it anyway?” was my response.
“Just to prove a point, and I’m curious and maybe you’ll learn something. Get that paper feed bag over there. Here’s a pencil. Do some calculations.”
“Oh great,” I grumbled.
“Look at this hay bale,” he started. “Every bale has 14 inches of twine up the end and maybe averages two and a half feet for its length. How many inches total would that be on one bale?”
“Okay, I’ll oblige you,” I said. So on the feed bag I wrote two point five times 12 as there’re 12 inches in a foot. “That’s 30 inches plus the 14 up the end equals 44 inches.”
“Yes, but that’s only one end and the top. How much then for all the way around the bale?”
“88, I don’t need the paper for that,” was my answer.
“Good, but how many strings on each bale?” Dad prompted.
“Two.” But now I needed the paper again. I scribbled 88 times two. “Comes to 176.”
“176 what?” he asked.
“OK, another point; always label your answers – inches.”
“Good,” he said, “how do we change to feet?”
“Divide by 12,” I said. The paper again. “14 point six, six, six, six...”
“How are we going to work with that number?” Dad asked.
“Don’t know,” I said.
“It’s just an average anyway,” Dad went on, “an estimate. Why don’t you round it off?”
He knew I hated rounding off, too. Couldn’t see any use to it. But, on the other hand, it sure would be easier to work with 15 instead of 14.6666.
“15,” I answered.
“So every time I pick up a bale, I handle 15 feet of twine. How many bales would it take for me to handle one million feet of twine?”
“Divide again, right?” I asked.
“Yes.”
This took me longer. It was that stupid repeating six again. “66 thousand, six hundred sixty-six point six, six, six…” I replied indignantly.
“66,666 what?”
“I don’t know…feet?”
“No – you divided feet by feet per bale. The feet cancel out. What’s left?” Dad asked.
“Bales I suppose.”
“You suppose correctly,” he continued. “So how many bales per year would I have to have picked up to handle that million feet of twine?”
“Don’t you ever give up? How would I figure that?”
Dad answered, “If the answer we’re looking for is bales per year, and remembering that ‘per’ means divided by, then we need to divide the number of bales by the number of years I’ve worked with them. This requires another skill – deduction. Let’s suppose I’ve handled bales fairly regularly since I’m ten years old. I’m now 53. How many years is that?”
“That I can answer – 43 years. So if we are looking for bales per year I divide 66,666 bales by 43 years?” I asked.
“That’s correct.”
It took more paperwork and a bit of time. “It comes to 1,558.” I paused. He gave me a funny look. “Bales per year,” I finished.
“Good. So in your estimation do you think that I have handled more than 1558 bales per year and then consequently handled a million feet of twine in my lifetime?”
“Easy,” I answered, “that’s only four or five bales a day.”
“Wow! How did you know that so quickly?”
“I don’t know. You’re just like our teachers who want us to explain our answers. Maybe I learned something?” I sarcastically commented. “There’s 365 days in a year, so four bales times 400 is 1600. Sounded like a good estimate.”
“It was,” Dad answered, “and you rounded off, too.”
“Whoopee!” I exclaimed.
“So do you think I’ve handled a million miles of twine in my lifetime?” he asked.
“You really don’t give up. Do I have to go through all these steps again?”
“No, just add one additional piece of information.”
“And what would that be?” I asked
“The number of feet in a mile. You all ready estimated four to five bales per day for one million feet. You just have to multiply by feet per mile to determine how many bales per day for one million miles. How many feet in a mile?”
“Five thousand and something,” I answered.
“5280,” Dad continued, “can you figure it out now?”
“As this is just an estimate I might as well just round it off to 5000. Times four or five bales comes to 20,000 – 25,000 bales per day. Didn’t happen.”
“No, didn’t happen. What did happen was you learned something about estimating and rounding off.”
“I suppose I did… and without a school!” I jubilantly declared. “So you don’t need to make me go to school!”
“Well, to repeat my answer to your original question. No, not now.”
“OK, I guess. What are we going to do with all this rope we’re making anyway?” I asked.
“Oh, for any need that may arise and for harnesses,” Dad answered.
“Harnesses?” I asked.
“Yes. Butch gave us a nice harness for Brutus, but you never know when it might tear or we’ll need to design some different or stronger rigging to pull a harrow or a wagon to bring Harvey’s crop in,” Just then Harvey walked in the barn. “And for the oxen,” Dad concluded.
“Oxen?” I quizzed.
“Yes,” said Harvey, “we’re going to take two evenly matched bull calves and pair them up to be oxen. We’ll have to castrate them like we do the steers now. Then maybe in a couple months we’ll start a second pair, and a third and so on. Unless we have a return of the fuel supply we are going to have some heavy work to do around here. Brutus and Butch’s other horses are pretty old and we’re afraid won’t be able to do a lot. The oxen probably won’t be able to do any real heavy pulling until they’re 15 months old, so we need to get started.”
“But how will they learn to be oxen?” I asked.
“They’ll have to be trained – taught by us,” Dad said.
That blew holes in my geese theory. “How will we do that?” I asked.
“First, after choosing the pair, we’ll use two saplings and tie the wood across and under their necks with the rope you’re making. At first they’ll hate it. They’ll struggle and bawl perhaps. We’ll have to stay with them diligently the first day so they don’t hurt each other. In fact, we’ll only leave them connected for an hour the first day, then two the second day, then three, until they get used to being yoked together. Eventually they need to learn to drink, eat, and of course, move together. They’ll have to do everything together. And get used to us. We’ll move them, walk them, pull them, talk to them. As they get older and larger, we’ll build heavier, stronger yokes for them. The whole thing’s an experiment. We don’t know how it’s going to work. We’ve plenty of animals here; more than we need for milk and plenty even for meat. As horses are in short supply, if we can successfully train several pair of oxen, we’ll be able to supply some of the neighbors with a pair or two to help with their work. Are you willing to help with the training?”
“Sure,” I answered, “I have Brutus to tend as my first priority, then cooking and dishes. I guess I’ll have some time if Dad doesn’t have me working all the time or sends me to school.”
“School?” Harvey asked, “what foolishness you telling this child? We got a lot of work to do.” It appeared I had an ally.
“Oh give it up you two,” Dad said. “I’ll remember - work first. And you know, Harvey, we can’t castrate all the bulls into steers. You’re going to need one to breed your open cows.”
“What are open cows?” I asked.
“Cows that haven’t been bred and are not carrying calves. They’re not… you know…pregnant,” he said a little sheepishly.
“You don’t need to explain. Between helping with the cows over at Chester’s and from what I learned in school, yes I know I said school Dad, I got the whole picture. Just didn’t recall ever hearing that term.”
“How many cows are carrying now?” Dad asked.
“Twenty-nine, that leaves about thirty that aren’t bred,” Harvey answered.
“How will they get bred, without a bull?” I asked.
“Same as before; Larry breeds them artificially, using semen stored in that liquid nitrogen tank in the milk house,” Harvey answered. I remembered Chester had a tank like that too. He told me never to play with it as it was very dangerous. Liquid nitrogen is something like 200 degrees below zero, much colder than dry ice, and it will burn you just as quickly. But it served its purpose well, keeping the semen frozen until it was needed.
“Do you have a good supply?” Dad asked.
“I think we have 35 ampules. We can split an ampule sometimes and breed two cows or heifers at a time. But then figuring some repeat services, maybe the best we can do is get 25 to 30 animals bred with the supply we have. Who knows? Maybe it will last six months if the nitrogen doesn’t lose its punch. Then we’ll need a bull to keep the operation running. There is one uncastrated bull calf in with the nursing cows, about ten weeks old. We can eventually use him, but he might not be old or large enough to get the job done until maybe next May. It would be best if we could trade for a bull with some other cattle producer in the neighborhood, doesn’t even matter what breed it is,” Harvey concluded.
“We’ll have to keep that in mind,” Dad said.
To be continued…. Mort
“I wouldn’t,” I answered.
“You learned that in school, didn’t you?” Dad asked.
“Yes, but also at home when you and Mom read with me, and at church when following along in the hymn book,” I said.
“Sure, that’s right. And how are your math skills?”
Dad hit a sore spot; my math was terrible. In fact, I’d probably have liked school better if learning math had not been so difficult. “A problem with school,” I continued, “was that all the students had to fit the same mold. Those that had little math ability were taught using the same methods and were expected to achieve the same goals as those with greater abilities. Someone, somewhere in the educational system, once coined the phrase: ‘all children can learn’. The educational community fell for it, but it’s all a bunch of crap. It would be true if the word ‘something’ would be added onto the phrase, because we can all learn something. But not all the same things and definitely not to the same achievement level. Yet we were still all thrown into the same room with about 24 others of varying abilities and then all were expected to reach the same level. It’s horribly frustrating and not fair. Then they ignore the other skills we have, like music or craftsmanship. No wonder we hate school.”
Dad had a sorry look on his face. He and I were different. He was a great math student; it came easy. But play the piano or type. Forget it! He said his brain didn’t know how to tell his fingers what to do when his eyes weren’t looking at them. And read and consequently play two, three, four notes at a time? Impossible. He said it was physiological - some nerve synapses in his brain just wouldn’t let him do that. I thought it was psychological – his mind just wouldn’t let him. On the other hand, I couldn’t calculate worth a dime, but could play both the piano and the flute. Dad was very glad that I could and once said he’d be willing to trade his ability to do math for the ability to play the piano. That made no sense to my teachers though. So what if I can’t learn math? Let me excel at what I can. Allow me some level of achievement.
“I wonder how many feet of twine I’ve handled in my lifetime?” Dad asked. “A million perhaps?”
“Okay, so you’re going to push your point,” I answered. “How in the world would you know that? And who would care?”
“Well, you wouldn’t really know, we’d have to estimate.”
“Estimate! You know I hate that more than word problems. What good is it anyway?” was my response.
“Just to prove a point, and I’m curious and maybe you’ll learn something. Get that paper feed bag over there. Here’s a pencil. Do some calculations.”
“Oh great,” I grumbled.
“Look at this hay bale,” he started. “Every bale has 14 inches of twine up the end and maybe averages two and a half feet for its length. How many inches total would that be on one bale?”
“Okay, I’ll oblige you,” I said. So on the feed bag I wrote two point five times 12 as there’re 12 inches in a foot. “That’s 30 inches plus the 14 up the end equals 44 inches.”
“Yes, but that’s only one end and the top. How much then for all the way around the bale?”
“88, I don’t need the paper for that,” was my answer.
“Good, but how many strings on each bale?” Dad prompted.
“Two.” But now I needed the paper again. I scribbled 88 times two. “Comes to 176.”
“176 what?” he asked.
“OK, another point; always label your answers – inches.”
“Good,” he said, “how do we change to feet?”
“Divide by 12,” I said. The paper again. “14 point six, six, six, six...”
“How are we going to work with that number?” Dad asked.
“Don’t know,” I said.
“It’s just an average anyway,” Dad went on, “an estimate. Why don’t you round it off?”
He knew I hated rounding off, too. Couldn’t see any use to it. But, on the other hand, it sure would be easier to work with 15 instead of 14.6666.
“15,” I answered.
“So every time I pick up a bale, I handle 15 feet of twine. How many bales would it take for me to handle one million feet of twine?”
“Divide again, right?” I asked.
“Yes.”
This took me longer. It was that stupid repeating six again. “66 thousand, six hundred sixty-six point six, six, six…” I replied indignantly.
“66,666 what?”
“I don’t know…feet?”
“No – you divided feet by feet per bale. The feet cancel out. What’s left?” Dad asked.
“Bales I suppose.”
“You suppose correctly,” he continued. “So how many bales per year would I have to have picked up to handle that million feet of twine?”
“Don’t you ever give up? How would I figure that?”
Dad answered, “If the answer we’re looking for is bales per year, and remembering that ‘per’ means divided by, then we need to divide the number of bales by the number of years I’ve worked with them. This requires another skill – deduction. Let’s suppose I’ve handled bales fairly regularly since I’m ten years old. I’m now 53. How many years is that?”
“That I can answer – 43 years. So if we are looking for bales per year I divide 66,666 bales by 43 years?” I asked.
“That’s correct.”
It took more paperwork and a bit of time. “It comes to 1,558.” I paused. He gave me a funny look. “Bales per year,” I finished.
“Good. So in your estimation do you think that I have handled more than 1558 bales per year and then consequently handled a million feet of twine in my lifetime?”
“Easy,” I answered, “that’s only four or five bales a day.”
“Wow! How did you know that so quickly?”
“I don’t know. You’re just like our teachers who want us to explain our answers. Maybe I learned something?” I sarcastically commented. “There’s 365 days in a year, so four bales times 400 is 1600. Sounded like a good estimate.”
“It was,” Dad answered, “and you rounded off, too.”
“Whoopee!” I exclaimed.
“So do you think I’ve handled a million miles of twine in my lifetime?” he asked.
“You really don’t give up. Do I have to go through all these steps again?”
“No, just add one additional piece of information.”
“And what would that be?” I asked
“The number of feet in a mile. You all ready estimated four to five bales per day for one million feet. You just have to multiply by feet per mile to determine how many bales per day for one million miles. How many feet in a mile?”
“Five thousand and something,” I answered.
“5280,” Dad continued, “can you figure it out now?”
“As this is just an estimate I might as well just round it off to 5000. Times four or five bales comes to 20,000 – 25,000 bales per day. Didn’t happen.”
“No, didn’t happen. What did happen was you learned something about estimating and rounding off.”
“I suppose I did… and without a school!” I jubilantly declared. “So you don’t need to make me go to school!”
“Well, to repeat my answer to your original question. No, not now.”
“OK, I guess. What are we going to do with all this rope we’re making anyway?” I asked.
“Oh, for any need that may arise and for harnesses,” Dad answered.
“Harnesses?” I asked.
“Yes. Butch gave us a nice harness for Brutus, but you never know when it might tear or we’ll need to design some different or stronger rigging to pull a harrow or a wagon to bring Harvey’s crop in,” Just then Harvey walked in the barn. “And for the oxen,” Dad concluded.
“Oxen?” I quizzed.
“Yes,” said Harvey, “we’re going to take two evenly matched bull calves and pair them up to be oxen. We’ll have to castrate them like we do the steers now. Then maybe in a couple months we’ll start a second pair, and a third and so on. Unless we have a return of the fuel supply we are going to have some heavy work to do around here. Brutus and Butch’s other horses are pretty old and we’re afraid won’t be able to do a lot. The oxen probably won’t be able to do any real heavy pulling until they’re 15 months old, so we need to get started.”
“But how will they learn to be oxen?” I asked.
“They’ll have to be trained – taught by us,” Dad said.
That blew holes in my geese theory. “How will we do that?” I asked.
“First, after choosing the pair, we’ll use two saplings and tie the wood across and under their necks with the rope you’re making. At first they’ll hate it. They’ll struggle and bawl perhaps. We’ll have to stay with them diligently the first day so they don’t hurt each other. In fact, we’ll only leave them connected for an hour the first day, then two the second day, then three, until they get used to being yoked together. Eventually they need to learn to drink, eat, and of course, move together. They’ll have to do everything together. And get used to us. We’ll move them, walk them, pull them, talk to them. As they get older and larger, we’ll build heavier, stronger yokes for them. The whole thing’s an experiment. We don’t know how it’s going to work. We’ve plenty of animals here; more than we need for milk and plenty even for meat. As horses are in short supply, if we can successfully train several pair of oxen, we’ll be able to supply some of the neighbors with a pair or two to help with their work. Are you willing to help with the training?”
“Sure,” I answered, “I have Brutus to tend as my first priority, then cooking and dishes. I guess I’ll have some time if Dad doesn’t have me working all the time or sends me to school.”
“School?” Harvey asked, “what foolishness you telling this child? We got a lot of work to do.” It appeared I had an ally.
“Oh give it up you two,” Dad said. “I’ll remember - work first. And you know, Harvey, we can’t castrate all the bulls into steers. You’re going to need one to breed your open cows.”
“What are open cows?” I asked.
“Cows that haven’t been bred and are not carrying calves. They’re not… you know…pregnant,” he said a little sheepishly.
“You don’t need to explain. Between helping with the cows over at Chester’s and from what I learned in school, yes I know I said school Dad, I got the whole picture. Just didn’t recall ever hearing that term.”
“How many cows are carrying now?” Dad asked.
“Twenty-nine, that leaves about thirty that aren’t bred,” Harvey answered.
“How will they get bred, without a bull?” I asked.
“Same as before; Larry breeds them artificially, using semen stored in that liquid nitrogen tank in the milk house,” Harvey answered. I remembered Chester had a tank like that too. He told me never to play with it as it was very dangerous. Liquid nitrogen is something like 200 degrees below zero, much colder than dry ice, and it will burn you just as quickly. But it served its purpose well, keeping the semen frozen until it was needed.
“Do you have a good supply?” Dad asked.
“I think we have 35 ampules. We can split an ampule sometimes and breed two cows or heifers at a time. But then figuring some repeat services, maybe the best we can do is get 25 to 30 animals bred with the supply we have. Who knows? Maybe it will last six months if the nitrogen doesn’t lose its punch. Then we’ll need a bull to keep the operation running. There is one uncastrated bull calf in with the nursing cows, about ten weeks old. We can eventually use him, but he might not be old or large enough to get the job done until maybe next May. It would be best if we could trade for a bull with some other cattle producer in the neighborhood, doesn’t even matter what breed it is,” Harvey concluded.
“We’ll have to keep that in mind,” Dad said.
To be continued…. Mort
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Chapter Ten - Beasts of Burden
We couldn’t spend the whole day at Butch’s. There were cows to feed and milk, water to haul, Brutus to tend. I think everyone had a good time though. It was really fun for Lynette and me to be with a group of kids our age. Donna Smith, Robbie’s mother, had talked with Mom about spending parts of the day at each other’s farm. Monday afternoon we should look for them to come down and help us with our chores and then play something. Then on Tuesday we’d go up there. Sounded good to me.
We loaded everything up including a bag of oats for Brutus and headed home. After Josh and I used Brutus to haul water, I fed him and put him away for the night. When I went to help with the milking, sure enough Harvey was right; there was a new bull calf. Mother and newborn son were both fine.
After that fine meal we had at Butch’s, no one was really hungry for supper. But the men had worked hard since we came back and needed nourishment. Besides, breakfast was pretty far away. As there was plenty of milk to use (we had used none for lunch) Grandmom made potato soup. She didn’t use many potatoes, just digging a few from her husband’s potato patch. The soup was mostly milk. However, the addition of globs of butter and some hard boiled eggs from those we had received from Butch the day before made it pretty darn good. We just had enough crackers so that everyone had a few.
“That’s the end of our crackers,” Lois announced.
“And there is no bread or rolls, either,” added Jean. “How soon will you be able to make flour?” she asked the boys.
“Not too soon,” Jake answered, “We’ve figured we have to take two pieces of concrete, perhaps from a feed trough that we’re not using. They’ll be the grinding wheels, but it will take time to chisel them to the right shape to have the grain flow in between them. And they’ll have to be aligned just right to produce a fine enough flour or cornmeal with which to bake.”
“Then we’ll have to devise an apparatus to turn them,” Josh added. “It’s the best long term plan, but in the meantime we were wondering if anyone has an electric blender. We think flour can be made with one and we’d like to experiment if we can rewire it to 12 volts and still have it operate fast enough.”
“Sure, we have one,” Jean said. “Experiment all you want.”
“The oven’s another matter,” Dennis said. “The outdoor furnace is burning all the time to heat water and eventually to heat Harvey’s house. But the furnace is so well insulated, positioning any oven next to it wouldn’t do any good; it just wouldn’t get enough heat. So the butcher stove is the other option. It has fire going all the time for cooking and it’s mostly brick, so if we place the oven at the right spot, and maybe drill a few holes into the bricks, we think the oven would stay hot enough to bake. We’d have liked to build an oven from bricks, but we have no cement. Neither did we think clay from the creek’s banks would hold up as mortar in this application. So we decided to use Jean’s range; it has a larger oven than Poppop’s. Because it is so well insulated to keep the heat inside the oven and out of the kitchen in its designed use, we’ll have to take the back off to let heat in. Then replace it with a thin piece of steel that will let the heat through but not the smoke. We’ll probably remove the insulation in the sides and top so there’s an air space for the heat to travel forward, surround the whole stove with the insulation, cover it with more steel or aluminum siding, push the modified back against the bricks of the butcher stove, and presto, we’ll have a working oven.”
“Least we think we will,” Aaron added.
“Well it’s worth a try,” Jean said. “Get at it. Even if we don’t have flour yet, we can still use an oven.”
Joe jumped in, “I’ve been thinking a lot about our meat situation. If we kill a small hog, like Butch had today, there’s no problem. We can eat all the meat in a day’s time. But when we butcher a half-grown bull or heifer, or a full grown hog, or a cow, there will be a lot of meat to keep. In winter it will be less of a problem, but for this time of year I’ve come up with two solutions. I wish I would have thought of it this afternoon and told Butch, but any leftover meat can be heated to around boiling temperature and with a little salt be canned just like we did the soup we made from the freezer’s contents. Not to keep for months, but just to eat within a few days, so the jars are empty again for the next butchering.”
“The other way to preserve would be to dry some strips of meat. I know what parts to cut to make them real easy to hang. I wouldn’t want to depend on the sun to dry it like we did the fruits and corn or like the Indians once did, so again we’ll have to make use of the butcher house. We can build a nice rack out of some of the materials lying around here and position it around the stovepipe.”
Dad said, “We’re sure getting a lot of use out of this butcher house - cooking, laundry, eating, doing the dishes, soon baking and butchering. We’ll soon be falling all over each other in here.”
“Well it’s OK so far,” Jean said. “I suppose we’ll have to make some kind of schedule to keep us straight.”
“I suppose we will, Mother,” Harvey answered. “For now, let’s just call it quits for tonight; there are a lot of projects we have to tackle tomorrow.”
I said goodnight to Mom and Dad and headed back with Amy, Lynette, and Mel to Grandmom’s house. We stopped to check on Brutus, then off to bed. I kept thinking about what Robbie had said about Julie being a teacher. I really needed to talk to Dad about that tomorrow.
When I awoke Monday morning it was already starting to get light. I went out into the kitchen and found Jeremiah still there. “We’re late,” I said.
“No we’re not,” he answered. “While we were milking last night we had a little discussion about our milking times. As the hours of daylight lessen from now until Christmas, we know we will have to milk in the dark eventually. Even though we’re still in the month of August, the time for sunrise is rapidly becoming later and later making it very difficult to find our milking cows out in the pasture in the semi-darkness. Harvey had said we can afford to start later in the morning, wait the eleven and one half hours we usually wait to milk in the evening and still have light for the evening milking. By December it will get dark for the evening milking, too, but then we can at least gather the cows inside in daylight. He also said it was a good morning to make the switch because we started milking about a half hour later Sunday evening as we were up a Butch’s yesterday. His conclusion was that it wouldn’t bother the cows at all.”
“Some people would say we’re losing an hour of working time if we start milking an hour later and get to the fields an hour later. But we get the hour back in the afternoon because we don’t have to leave our fieldwork to start milking as early. The biggest change will be for Harvey who has been getting up at 5:00 AM for about 40 years. He’s finally going to get to sleep in a little, even if it’s just around an hour. I guess he’ll be able to handle it.”
“I know I’ll be able to,” I responded.
“Me too,” Jeremiah said.
“I guess that means Mom and Grandma can have breakfast ready at a little later time than usual and I won’t have to rush in to help them as soon?” I inquired.
“Grandma already knows,” he said. “Your mom will find out soon enough. And sure, you can help us a little longer.”
He and I went to the barn. I checked on Brutus then went with Larry and Patsy to bring in the milking cows. Patsy was his cow dog. Actually a Border collie, bred for herding sheep, but she worked well with cows, too. A Border collie doesn’t look like a regular collie such as Lassie. They’re smaller, maybe two thirds the size and often black and white, not sandy tan like Lassie was. Patsy was black and white and quite a go getter. No ornery Holstein pulled anything on her. We gathered the milking string together and had them headed toward the barn when I saw Harvey waving to me.
“Alyssa,” he called, “Come over here. I’ve something to show you.”
He was in the pen were the dry cows were kept. As I neared him I saw what he wanted me to see. Two more calves.
“With the one yesterday afternoon, that makes three,” he said. “And they’re all doing fine. Would you help me lead them into the barn?”
“Sure,” I answered. I always loved helping with the calves, especially feeding them milk from a bucket. To teach them I’d let them suck on my fingers, then lower my hand into the bucket so their nose would get into the milk and they would start drinking. Now, however, no one had to feed calves with a bucket. All of them were mixed in the pen with cows that they could drink from without our help. It saved a lot of our time, but I did miss it. It was amazing that the newborns would suck so soon after being born. I guess as newborns, we do too. Not that I remembered it. These two were no exception. As soon as I put my fingers at one’s mouth it knew what to do. Harvey did likewise with the other. We eased our way toward the barn, keeping our fingers right on their noses; the calves followed and right behind them their mothers. In this situation fresh cows can be a little dangerous sometimes, if they feel their young threatened. Jake and Patsy were soon out to help, just in case.
“That makes thirteen we need to milk now,” Jake said to Harvey. “I guess Alyssa will have to take one of these,” he teased.
“Oh, I guess she’ll get in for some share of milking duty sometime, but for now Joe, Jeremiah, or your dad can have the extra,” Harvey said. With everything settled in the barn, I headed for the butcher house to help Mom. Breakfast was uneventful except that while we were eating it started to rain. Not a storm, just a nice steady rain, but enough to keep us out of the garden. The men would still have to feed and move some animals around, but they could handle that. After breakfast, Dad and I went into the top of the barn to do some braiding.
Any farm that has animals to feed and makes a fair amount of hay and straw has a virtually endless supply of used baler twine. Twine held the bales together and had to be cut off the bales when the hay was fed or the straw was bed. It came in both sisal and plastic varieties and in different thicknesses. Back on our farm, Chester baled soybean stubble and corn fodder in large four by eight foot bales. They were very heavy so we could only move them using the skid loader or a tractor. Bales that heavy needed extra thick twine to take the pressure. For years farmers disposed of the used twine by burning it or if sisal, just throwing it in the dump to rot. Dad hated throwing anything away. So last year, he and I started braiding the extra thick plastic twine into a rope.
Braiding isn’t really that hard; it’s just like making pigtails in your hair except it goes on and on and on. You start with three strands then wrap left over middle, right over middle, left over middle, right over middle, and so forth. You don’t even think about it once you get going. We started three separate ropes with three strands each, and then braided the three newly created ropes into one thicker rope using the same method. It made the finished product nine strands strong. Each strand had a tensile strength of 450 pounds, so the new heavier rope had a tensile strength of just over two tons. We worked at it for months, but just on opportune occasions like rainy days. We quit when it was 245 feet long.
Dad put it behind the truck seat for emergency use. You never know when you might need to pull a tree off the road, or a bear up a steep bank in hunting season, to rescue someone that had fallen through the ice while skating, or to pull a vehicle stuck in the mud or snow. So be it, the twine wasn’t wasted. Today we were braiding sisal twine into rope. Although the braiding itself became boring sometimes, it was a great opportunity for Dad and me to talk. We had some good heart to heart discussions while braiding and I was hoping today would be no different. I really needed to talk to him. I didn’t need to beat around the bush with Dad either.
So I said, “Dad, you know that Julie lady with the twins is a teacher. You’re not going to make us go to school are you?”
Dad squinted his eyes, cocked a half a smile, took his hat off and with the same hand rubbed the side of his head just above the ear, a sure sign that the answer took some thought. He paused a little and answered, “Not now.” Dad was rarely accused of using too few words. I guess I’d have to pick up the slack.
“Let me ask you this,” I responded. “Do geese need to learn how to fly?”
Dad thought a little and answered, “I guess so.” It was a typical answer from Dad. He often said “I guess so” for “yes” and “I guess not” for “no”. His father did it also; showed they didn’t really want to commit to their answers. I’d have to accept that and go on.
“Do they have to be taught to fly?” I followed up.
“No, they can learn that on their own,” he answered.
“Without a teacher?” I retorted.
“Definitely, without a teacher,” he agreed.
“So if geese can learn without a teacher or a school, then so can I. Anyway I didn’t need a school to learn to do the things that need to be done around here, like pulling weeds, feeding Brutus, forking manure, putting wood on the fire, planting beans, drying vegetables, cooking, doing laundry, or washing dishes.”
“Yes, that’s correct,” Dad answered. “But think of some of the other things that get done here. Dennis rewired the controls on Harvey’s furnace to make it work off of a battery. Don’t you think he learned that at school?”
“No, at work!”
“Poor example I guess,” he said. “But believe me there are some things we do around here, some problems we solve, using the knowledge we gained at school.”
“Like what?” I asked.
Dad appeared frustrated and in my mind, losing the argument. “Like all this corn Harvey has growing here. Just putting the seed into the ground doesn’t magically make a crop. Not taking anything away from God, now mind you, but a lot of book learning has gone into crop production in the last century. There’s been years of research and experiments, things someone learned in a school, that have enabled farmers to increase their yields. How do you think Harvey and Larry knew how much fertilizer to put on the fields this spring?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“Well they had to read a report of a soil analysis done by a chemist that included a recommendation prepared by an agronomist, both of whom spent years in school learning. When Larry sprayed the corn for weeds, how did he know which herbicide to use, how much to put in each sprayer tank full, and how many gallons per acre to apply?”
“I don’t know,” I responded. “I guess there’s a lot I don’t know.”
“You got that right. I guess there is,” Dad continued. “He had to read instructions and make calculations. Yes, hard work will keep us going here for a while, successfully, out of necessity. But what’s going to advance us, make improvements to our situation, and actually cause progress to occur will have to come from book learning. Yes, and even from teachers. For centuries, few people went to school. Who needed to read or write or calculate? And what were we then? A bunch of people who thought the world was flat and that the sun revolved around us. We thought maggots were created from rotting meat and milk spoiled because of demons.”
“Yeah, I remember that from science class, Louis Pasteur and all,” I said.
“Oh, something from school?” Dad remarked.
To be continued… Mort
We loaded everything up including a bag of oats for Brutus and headed home. After Josh and I used Brutus to haul water, I fed him and put him away for the night. When I went to help with the milking, sure enough Harvey was right; there was a new bull calf. Mother and newborn son were both fine.
After that fine meal we had at Butch’s, no one was really hungry for supper. But the men had worked hard since we came back and needed nourishment. Besides, breakfast was pretty far away. As there was plenty of milk to use (we had used none for lunch) Grandmom made potato soup. She didn’t use many potatoes, just digging a few from her husband’s potato patch. The soup was mostly milk. However, the addition of globs of butter and some hard boiled eggs from those we had received from Butch the day before made it pretty darn good. We just had enough crackers so that everyone had a few.
“That’s the end of our crackers,” Lois announced.
“And there is no bread or rolls, either,” added Jean. “How soon will you be able to make flour?” she asked the boys.
“Not too soon,” Jake answered, “We’ve figured we have to take two pieces of concrete, perhaps from a feed trough that we’re not using. They’ll be the grinding wheels, but it will take time to chisel them to the right shape to have the grain flow in between them. And they’ll have to be aligned just right to produce a fine enough flour or cornmeal with which to bake.”
“Then we’ll have to devise an apparatus to turn them,” Josh added. “It’s the best long term plan, but in the meantime we were wondering if anyone has an electric blender. We think flour can be made with one and we’d like to experiment if we can rewire it to 12 volts and still have it operate fast enough.”
“Sure, we have one,” Jean said. “Experiment all you want.”
“The oven’s another matter,” Dennis said. “The outdoor furnace is burning all the time to heat water and eventually to heat Harvey’s house. But the furnace is so well insulated, positioning any oven next to it wouldn’t do any good; it just wouldn’t get enough heat. So the butcher stove is the other option. It has fire going all the time for cooking and it’s mostly brick, so if we place the oven at the right spot, and maybe drill a few holes into the bricks, we think the oven would stay hot enough to bake. We’d have liked to build an oven from bricks, but we have no cement. Neither did we think clay from the creek’s banks would hold up as mortar in this application. So we decided to use Jean’s range; it has a larger oven than Poppop’s. Because it is so well insulated to keep the heat inside the oven and out of the kitchen in its designed use, we’ll have to take the back off to let heat in. Then replace it with a thin piece of steel that will let the heat through but not the smoke. We’ll probably remove the insulation in the sides and top so there’s an air space for the heat to travel forward, surround the whole stove with the insulation, cover it with more steel or aluminum siding, push the modified back against the bricks of the butcher stove, and presto, we’ll have a working oven.”
“Least we think we will,” Aaron added.
“Well it’s worth a try,” Jean said. “Get at it. Even if we don’t have flour yet, we can still use an oven.”
Joe jumped in, “I’ve been thinking a lot about our meat situation. If we kill a small hog, like Butch had today, there’s no problem. We can eat all the meat in a day’s time. But when we butcher a half-grown bull or heifer, or a full grown hog, or a cow, there will be a lot of meat to keep. In winter it will be less of a problem, but for this time of year I’ve come up with two solutions. I wish I would have thought of it this afternoon and told Butch, but any leftover meat can be heated to around boiling temperature and with a little salt be canned just like we did the soup we made from the freezer’s contents. Not to keep for months, but just to eat within a few days, so the jars are empty again for the next butchering.”
“The other way to preserve would be to dry some strips of meat. I know what parts to cut to make them real easy to hang. I wouldn’t want to depend on the sun to dry it like we did the fruits and corn or like the Indians once did, so again we’ll have to make use of the butcher house. We can build a nice rack out of some of the materials lying around here and position it around the stovepipe.”
Dad said, “We’re sure getting a lot of use out of this butcher house - cooking, laundry, eating, doing the dishes, soon baking and butchering. We’ll soon be falling all over each other in here.”
“Well it’s OK so far,” Jean said. “I suppose we’ll have to make some kind of schedule to keep us straight.”
“I suppose we will, Mother,” Harvey answered. “For now, let’s just call it quits for tonight; there are a lot of projects we have to tackle tomorrow.”
I said goodnight to Mom and Dad and headed back with Amy, Lynette, and Mel to Grandmom’s house. We stopped to check on Brutus, then off to bed. I kept thinking about what Robbie had said about Julie being a teacher. I really needed to talk to Dad about that tomorrow.
When I awoke Monday morning it was already starting to get light. I went out into the kitchen and found Jeremiah still there. “We’re late,” I said.
“No we’re not,” he answered. “While we were milking last night we had a little discussion about our milking times. As the hours of daylight lessen from now until Christmas, we know we will have to milk in the dark eventually. Even though we’re still in the month of August, the time for sunrise is rapidly becoming later and later making it very difficult to find our milking cows out in the pasture in the semi-darkness. Harvey had said we can afford to start later in the morning, wait the eleven and one half hours we usually wait to milk in the evening and still have light for the evening milking. By December it will get dark for the evening milking, too, but then we can at least gather the cows inside in daylight. He also said it was a good morning to make the switch because we started milking about a half hour later Sunday evening as we were up a Butch’s yesterday. His conclusion was that it wouldn’t bother the cows at all.”
“Some people would say we’re losing an hour of working time if we start milking an hour later and get to the fields an hour later. But we get the hour back in the afternoon because we don’t have to leave our fieldwork to start milking as early. The biggest change will be for Harvey who has been getting up at 5:00 AM for about 40 years. He’s finally going to get to sleep in a little, even if it’s just around an hour. I guess he’ll be able to handle it.”
“I know I’ll be able to,” I responded.
“Me too,” Jeremiah said.
“I guess that means Mom and Grandma can have breakfast ready at a little later time than usual and I won’t have to rush in to help them as soon?” I inquired.
“Grandma already knows,” he said. “Your mom will find out soon enough. And sure, you can help us a little longer.”
He and I went to the barn. I checked on Brutus then went with Larry and Patsy to bring in the milking cows. Patsy was his cow dog. Actually a Border collie, bred for herding sheep, but she worked well with cows, too. A Border collie doesn’t look like a regular collie such as Lassie. They’re smaller, maybe two thirds the size and often black and white, not sandy tan like Lassie was. Patsy was black and white and quite a go getter. No ornery Holstein pulled anything on her. We gathered the milking string together and had them headed toward the barn when I saw Harvey waving to me.
“Alyssa,” he called, “Come over here. I’ve something to show you.”
He was in the pen were the dry cows were kept. As I neared him I saw what he wanted me to see. Two more calves.
“With the one yesterday afternoon, that makes three,” he said. “And they’re all doing fine. Would you help me lead them into the barn?”
“Sure,” I answered. I always loved helping with the calves, especially feeding them milk from a bucket. To teach them I’d let them suck on my fingers, then lower my hand into the bucket so their nose would get into the milk and they would start drinking. Now, however, no one had to feed calves with a bucket. All of them were mixed in the pen with cows that they could drink from without our help. It saved a lot of our time, but I did miss it. It was amazing that the newborns would suck so soon after being born. I guess as newborns, we do too. Not that I remembered it. These two were no exception. As soon as I put my fingers at one’s mouth it knew what to do. Harvey did likewise with the other. We eased our way toward the barn, keeping our fingers right on their noses; the calves followed and right behind them their mothers. In this situation fresh cows can be a little dangerous sometimes, if they feel their young threatened. Jake and Patsy were soon out to help, just in case.
“That makes thirteen we need to milk now,” Jake said to Harvey. “I guess Alyssa will have to take one of these,” he teased.
“Oh, I guess she’ll get in for some share of milking duty sometime, but for now Joe, Jeremiah, or your dad can have the extra,” Harvey said. With everything settled in the barn, I headed for the butcher house to help Mom. Breakfast was uneventful except that while we were eating it started to rain. Not a storm, just a nice steady rain, but enough to keep us out of the garden. The men would still have to feed and move some animals around, but they could handle that. After breakfast, Dad and I went into the top of the barn to do some braiding.
Any farm that has animals to feed and makes a fair amount of hay and straw has a virtually endless supply of used baler twine. Twine held the bales together and had to be cut off the bales when the hay was fed or the straw was bed. It came in both sisal and plastic varieties and in different thicknesses. Back on our farm, Chester baled soybean stubble and corn fodder in large four by eight foot bales. They were very heavy so we could only move them using the skid loader or a tractor. Bales that heavy needed extra thick twine to take the pressure. For years farmers disposed of the used twine by burning it or if sisal, just throwing it in the dump to rot. Dad hated throwing anything away. So last year, he and I started braiding the extra thick plastic twine into a rope.
Braiding isn’t really that hard; it’s just like making pigtails in your hair except it goes on and on and on. You start with three strands then wrap left over middle, right over middle, left over middle, right over middle, and so forth. You don’t even think about it once you get going. We started three separate ropes with three strands each, and then braided the three newly created ropes into one thicker rope using the same method. It made the finished product nine strands strong. Each strand had a tensile strength of 450 pounds, so the new heavier rope had a tensile strength of just over two tons. We worked at it for months, but just on opportune occasions like rainy days. We quit when it was 245 feet long.
Dad put it behind the truck seat for emergency use. You never know when you might need to pull a tree off the road, or a bear up a steep bank in hunting season, to rescue someone that had fallen through the ice while skating, or to pull a vehicle stuck in the mud or snow. So be it, the twine wasn’t wasted. Today we were braiding sisal twine into rope. Although the braiding itself became boring sometimes, it was a great opportunity for Dad and me to talk. We had some good heart to heart discussions while braiding and I was hoping today would be no different. I really needed to talk to him. I didn’t need to beat around the bush with Dad either.
So I said, “Dad, you know that Julie lady with the twins is a teacher. You’re not going to make us go to school are you?”
Dad squinted his eyes, cocked a half a smile, took his hat off and with the same hand rubbed the side of his head just above the ear, a sure sign that the answer took some thought. He paused a little and answered, “Not now.” Dad was rarely accused of using too few words. I guess I’d have to pick up the slack.
“Let me ask you this,” I responded. “Do geese need to learn how to fly?”
Dad thought a little and answered, “I guess so.” It was a typical answer from Dad. He often said “I guess so” for “yes” and “I guess not” for “no”. His father did it also; showed they didn’t really want to commit to their answers. I’d have to accept that and go on.
“Do they have to be taught to fly?” I followed up.
“No, they can learn that on their own,” he answered.
“Without a teacher?” I retorted.
“Definitely, without a teacher,” he agreed.
“So if geese can learn without a teacher or a school, then so can I. Anyway I didn’t need a school to learn to do the things that need to be done around here, like pulling weeds, feeding Brutus, forking manure, putting wood on the fire, planting beans, drying vegetables, cooking, doing laundry, or washing dishes.”
“Yes, that’s correct,” Dad answered. “But think of some of the other things that get done here. Dennis rewired the controls on Harvey’s furnace to make it work off of a battery. Don’t you think he learned that at school?”
“No, at work!”
“Poor example I guess,” he said. “But believe me there are some things we do around here, some problems we solve, using the knowledge we gained at school.”
“Like what?” I asked.
Dad appeared frustrated and in my mind, losing the argument. “Like all this corn Harvey has growing here. Just putting the seed into the ground doesn’t magically make a crop. Not taking anything away from God, now mind you, but a lot of book learning has gone into crop production in the last century. There’s been years of research and experiments, things someone learned in a school, that have enabled farmers to increase their yields. How do you think Harvey and Larry knew how much fertilizer to put on the fields this spring?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“Well they had to read a report of a soil analysis done by a chemist that included a recommendation prepared by an agronomist, both of whom spent years in school learning. When Larry sprayed the corn for weeds, how did he know which herbicide to use, how much to put in each sprayer tank full, and how many gallons per acre to apply?”
“I don’t know,” I responded. “I guess there’s a lot I don’t know.”
“You got that right. I guess there is,” Dad continued. “He had to read instructions and make calculations. Yes, hard work will keep us going here for a while, successfully, out of necessity. But what’s going to advance us, make improvements to our situation, and actually cause progress to occur will have to come from book learning. Yes, and even from teachers. For centuries, few people went to school. Who needed to read or write or calculate? And what were we then? A bunch of people who thought the world was flat and that the sun revolved around us. We thought maggots were created from rotting meat and milk spoiled because of demons.”
“Yeah, I remember that from science class, Louis Pasteur and all,” I said.
“Oh, something from school?” Dad remarked.
To be continued… Mort
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Chapter Nine - Two Families (cont)
While we were still gathered, Dad gave a blessing for the food then as soon as he had finished, people sprang into action. More tables were brought and setting them commenced. From the four families that had moved in with Butch and Clare, there were plenty of plates, cups and utensils. For this meal we even needed knives. Besides the pork, Clare had mashed a huge pot of potatoes and some tomato gravy. I guess she didn’t need ours. Our salads were an excellent addition to the fare. And there were several pitchers of that good spring water and some even had a little powdered lemonade mix added. Soon Butch, with the help of a few others, came with four big trays of the pork and we sat down to eat a fine meal.
As we ate, I surveyed the families that were now our new neighbors. There was one elderly couple, who probably couldn’t have fended for themselves. I was glad they found their way here. Of course there was Ben and his wife, with their three college-age sons. Another family, the Smith’s, with their six children, the youngest one named Robbie who was in my Sunday School class. And finally Dan and his wife Julie, who had two girls ages five and seven and a new set of twin boys, just two months old. They were the center of attention; every female there had to hold them.
As we finished, it was evident that our little bit of fruit salad didn’t go very far as the only desert.
“Eat up the pork, if you’re still hungry,” Butch declared. “It won’t keep til tomorrow.” So we did, in fact everything was gone, but no one was complaining they hadn't enough. We started cleaning off the tables and carrying the dishes.
“No hurry,” said Clare. “We have to wait for hot water. Butch and Ben
have put the big butcher kettle on the spit where the pig was. The water should be hot enough in about a half hour. Let’s just set a spell.”
No problem for me. Robbie produced a deck of UNO cards, so Lynette, I, he, and his two youngest sisters, Molly and Susan, started a game on one of the now cleared tables. Most of the adults were sitting right behind me.
I heard Dad ask, “I’ve been wondering about Reverend Schneider and the church; has anyone been there in the last few weeks?”
Lee Smith, Robbie’s dad answered, “Took the whole family last week. There were only a couple cars in the parking lot, but I bet 100 bicycles. We had ridden ours; Reverend Schneider rode his, too. I think he’s doing fine, by the way. Must have been 300 people there, but I bet not even a third were members. Most were just people who lived right around the church, those who could easily bike or walk. Some were members at other churches too far away to go to or perhaps were not having services. But I got the impression there were many who rarely if ever went to church. Seems like this collapse woke ‘em up a little. Church was sure different, too. In part I mean the building itself; no lights, no organ, no bulletins, no electric drums or guitars, no air conditioning.”
“But we’re getting used to no air conditioning,” Jean said.
“You might be,” said Mom, “But I sure miss it.”
“We miss a lot of things,” Sandy said, “What else about church?”
Lee continued, “The service itself was like.....well… one big explanation.”
“Explaining what?” Jake asked.
“Different things. Our beliefs, from the beginning. The Garden of Eden. Sin. Who Jesus was; why we confess sins. What the Lord’s Prayer is. Salvation. Being born again. I think Reverend Schneider was trying not to alienate the unchurched in attendance. I tell you he didn’t scare them away with the offering basket. There was none; it was weird. But why bother, nobody has any money, nor does the church need any. There are no bills to pay. However, people brought some produce or some canned goods for the minister. Also he kept his message simple, like your Dad’s; talked about faith and hope and to trust Jesus and not worry too much about what is going to happen in the future.”
“What is going to happen in the future?” Lois asked.
“Who knows?” said Clare, “Who knew this was going to happen?”
“Dad did,” Josh said. All eyes turned to Dad; we even paused our card game.
Dad held his hands up in front of him and quizzically said “What, am I E.F. Hutton?”
“No, you’re not,” Butch chuckled, “but you did know this was going to happen.”
“I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen. Just knew something had to happen. Couldn’t keep going the way it was. I just made some logical deductions or assumptions based on the facts and a lot on what other much smarter people than me had said or written. As to what is next, I don’t have any strong feelings one way or the other. We’ve been doing without the mass media now for what, six, eight weeks? I’ve little information to go on. Has anyone heard anything, perhaps by radio or from travelers? Has anyone heard about trouble in the region, anything?”
“I haven’t,” Ben said. No one else did either.
Dad continued, “So do we have to prepare for an attack and build barricades? I think not. China and Russia made a huge mistake by allowing Iran to destroy Jerusalem. It wasn’t only a holy place for Christians and Jews. It also housed the Dome of the Rock, an extremely sacred place to the Muslims. Plus, they’ve caused death, destruction, and radiation sickness in a sizable part of the Islamic world. Now worldwide the fanatical and even the more moderate Islamists are mad at Iran, China, and Russia. We are no longer the main enemy for either group. They hate each other now. I think our image as Americans appears much better to them than it did a year ago.”
“We just have to concern ourselves with food, water, heat, shelter and things here at Crystal View Farm and Harvey’s dairy. But I will make one prediction, which some of you have heard already. There will be more people coming and we need to be ready.”
“But the good news,” said Butch, “Is that whoever comes will have skills. They’ll have hands to work and brains to think. Look how we already have a butcher and contractors. Ben here’s an electrical engineer, Dan’s a chemist and Lee’s a machinist. Many who come will bring additional skills. Sure some who come might be dead weight, but we have to care for them just like the sheep did in Jesus’ description of the judgment.”
“Slowly but surely, we’re getting ready,” Larry said, “And Butch, would you finish that story about Roger? He hasn’t been around for several days.”
“He’s very busy,” Butch answered, “he must have over 400 hogs. With no electricity for ventilating fans and to run the water pump, he had to remake a lot of the pens so all the hogs could get some fresh air and be able to get to his creek to drink. Back when it was so hot, a dozen or so did die. They seem to be acclimated to the changes now. He still has to shovel or bucket all his corn and barley out of the grain bins and carry it to the herd. Even has to carry some water into the farrowing house for the sows that are birthing, plus milk those two cows you gave him. Fortunately several neighbors stop over every day to help. He’s been roasting a pig every day to feed his helpers and somehow get his herd numbers down. He’s gotten rid of about fifty to three other farmers like you and me, but I think he said last week alone he had three litters born which increased the herd by 41.The work just doesn’t go away; that we know from here. Maybe a greater concern is that some of his hogs are now about three to four weeks past market weight. He’s not feeding them as much, of course, but some are still getting mighty heavy. They’re too big to butcher and be able to eat all at once, even for a couple dozen people. That’s where you come in, Joe. You’re the butcher, right?”
“Yes I am,” Joe answered, “But we’re too busy at Harvey’s for me to run over to Roger all the time.”
“Actually,” Butch said, “he knows that. What he was hoping you could do was accompany me over there on our next trip, look over his operation and perhaps give him some ideas on how he could use some of those bigger hogs.”
Joe responded, “Until we get much colder weather, it’s going to be quite a challenge. It will be for us here, too. I’ve had it on my mind ever since we moved in with Harvey. I’ll think about it more and certainly I’ll be glad to go with you next time.”
“Roger has quite a few acres of corn and soybeans to harvest doesn’t he?” Dad asked.
“Yes he does,” Butch responded, “he told me he’s saving diesel fuel for the combine so the soybeans can be harvested; the corn can be harvested by hand.”
“Same as we’re thinking,” Jeremiah said. “He’ll be all right; we’ll all pull through this together.”
“Good attitude,” Dad replied. “Another thing, Butch, you and I need to talk about feeding Brutus. We have a good supply of clean grass hay and a little dry corn, but can he handle fresh corn? Pop says oats would be best. Do you have a good supply?”
“You can start him on fresh corn now – maybe three or four ears a day. With this spell of dry weather you must have some that’s fairly dry by now.”
“I think our driest corn is up here on your farm in the field next to the woods,” Larry said, “If you need it for your horses, help yourself.”
“Thanks,” Butch responded, “I noticed that field was pretty dry. That’s where I pulled some for the cows. As far as oats, I have a pretty big pile in the barn. Remember you harvested it for me. If you just take a bag a week for Brutus, that would be good for him, and still leaves me plenty for my horses.”
“We appreciate it,” Dad said, “What do we owe you?”
“Nothing, you’ve done enough already,” Butch answered.
“Also,” Dad said, “We need to save some oats to plant next spring. And don’t feed any to the cows or pigs; they can do without it.”
“Right, the horses are first priority. “And we do need to save some for seed; however, I have four full bags of seed leftover from this spring.”
“Wonderful,” Larry said. “now we have to figure out how to prepare ground for planting, sow the oats and then harvest them without fuel.”
“No, not now,” Joe jumped in, “we’ve time to plan that. Now would be a good time to have a soccer match. Aren’t you all tired of talking? Let’s go compete.” He got the attention of me and the other kids, but his directions were to the adults, too. The younger ones jumped up, just as we did.
“Where are we playing?” Jake asked.
“There’s a pretty flat hayfield, right behind the barn,” Joe answered, “Not too high; must have been one of the last fields you baled when you still had fuel.”
“It was,” said Larry, “and we can carry a few bales of straw out of the barn for goals, too.” We had a nice match, even with the adults helping. We didn’t keep score, of course, but our side won 6-4. Afterwards, we all got drinks and splashed ourselves with that cool water from the horse trough. As we headed back toward the house, Robbie called Lynette and me aside. His two older sisters and Amy joined us.
“See that woman over there?” Robbie asked, “The one who has the twins.”
“That’s Julie,” Amy said.
“Right,” said Robbie, “That’s the one. She’s big trouble.”
“Trouble?” I asked, “what you mean? She’s real nice.”
“Yeah on the outside,” Robbie said, “But when she’s not a mom, I’m sorry to say, she’s a teacher.”
“A teacher!” Lynette exclaimed.
“Yeah a teacher, and like I said, BIG trouble!”
To be continued… Mort
As we ate, I surveyed the families that were now our new neighbors. There was one elderly couple, who probably couldn’t have fended for themselves. I was glad they found their way here. Of course there was Ben and his wife, with their three college-age sons. Another family, the Smith’s, with their six children, the youngest one named Robbie who was in my Sunday School class. And finally Dan and his wife Julie, who had two girls ages five and seven and a new set of twin boys, just two months old. They were the center of attention; every female there had to hold them.
As we finished, it was evident that our little bit of fruit salad didn’t go very far as the only desert.
“Eat up the pork, if you’re still hungry,” Butch declared. “It won’t keep til tomorrow.” So we did, in fact everything was gone, but no one was complaining they hadn't enough. We started cleaning off the tables and carrying the dishes.
“No hurry,” said Clare. “We have to wait for hot water. Butch and Ben
have put the big butcher kettle on the spit where the pig was. The water should be hot enough in about a half hour. Let’s just set a spell.”
No problem for me. Robbie produced a deck of UNO cards, so Lynette, I, he, and his two youngest sisters, Molly and Susan, started a game on one of the now cleared tables. Most of the adults were sitting right behind me.
I heard Dad ask, “I’ve been wondering about Reverend Schneider and the church; has anyone been there in the last few weeks?”
Lee Smith, Robbie’s dad answered, “Took the whole family last week. There were only a couple cars in the parking lot, but I bet 100 bicycles. We had ridden ours; Reverend Schneider rode his, too. I think he’s doing fine, by the way. Must have been 300 people there, but I bet not even a third were members. Most were just people who lived right around the church, those who could easily bike or walk. Some were members at other churches too far away to go to or perhaps were not having services. But I got the impression there were many who rarely if ever went to church. Seems like this collapse woke ‘em up a little. Church was sure different, too. In part I mean the building itself; no lights, no organ, no bulletins, no electric drums or guitars, no air conditioning.”
“But we’re getting used to no air conditioning,” Jean said.
“You might be,” said Mom, “But I sure miss it.”
“We miss a lot of things,” Sandy said, “What else about church?”
Lee continued, “The service itself was like.....well… one big explanation.”
“Explaining what?” Jake asked.
“Different things. Our beliefs, from the beginning. The Garden of Eden. Sin. Who Jesus was; why we confess sins. What the Lord’s Prayer is. Salvation. Being born again. I think Reverend Schneider was trying not to alienate the unchurched in attendance. I tell you he didn’t scare them away with the offering basket. There was none; it was weird. But why bother, nobody has any money, nor does the church need any. There are no bills to pay. However, people brought some produce or some canned goods for the minister. Also he kept his message simple, like your Dad’s; talked about faith and hope and to trust Jesus and not worry too much about what is going to happen in the future.”
“What is going to happen in the future?” Lois asked.
“Who knows?” said Clare, “Who knew this was going to happen?”
“Dad did,” Josh said. All eyes turned to Dad; we even paused our card game.
Dad held his hands up in front of him and quizzically said “What, am I E.F. Hutton?”
“No, you’re not,” Butch chuckled, “but you did know this was going to happen.”
“I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen. Just knew something had to happen. Couldn’t keep going the way it was. I just made some logical deductions or assumptions based on the facts and a lot on what other much smarter people than me had said or written. As to what is next, I don’t have any strong feelings one way or the other. We’ve been doing without the mass media now for what, six, eight weeks? I’ve little information to go on. Has anyone heard anything, perhaps by radio or from travelers? Has anyone heard about trouble in the region, anything?”
“I haven’t,” Ben said. No one else did either.
Dad continued, “So do we have to prepare for an attack and build barricades? I think not. China and Russia made a huge mistake by allowing Iran to destroy Jerusalem. It wasn’t only a holy place for Christians and Jews. It also housed the Dome of the Rock, an extremely sacred place to the Muslims. Plus, they’ve caused death, destruction, and radiation sickness in a sizable part of the Islamic world. Now worldwide the fanatical and even the more moderate Islamists are mad at Iran, China, and Russia. We are no longer the main enemy for either group. They hate each other now. I think our image as Americans appears much better to them than it did a year ago.”
“We just have to concern ourselves with food, water, heat, shelter and things here at Crystal View Farm and Harvey’s dairy. But I will make one prediction, which some of you have heard already. There will be more people coming and we need to be ready.”
“But the good news,” said Butch, “Is that whoever comes will have skills. They’ll have hands to work and brains to think. Look how we already have a butcher and contractors. Ben here’s an electrical engineer, Dan’s a chemist and Lee’s a machinist. Many who come will bring additional skills. Sure some who come might be dead weight, but we have to care for them just like the sheep did in Jesus’ description of the judgment.”
“Slowly but surely, we’re getting ready,” Larry said, “And Butch, would you finish that story about Roger? He hasn’t been around for several days.”
“He’s very busy,” Butch answered, “he must have over 400 hogs. With no electricity for ventilating fans and to run the water pump, he had to remake a lot of the pens so all the hogs could get some fresh air and be able to get to his creek to drink. Back when it was so hot, a dozen or so did die. They seem to be acclimated to the changes now. He still has to shovel or bucket all his corn and barley out of the grain bins and carry it to the herd. Even has to carry some water into the farrowing house for the sows that are birthing, plus milk those two cows you gave him. Fortunately several neighbors stop over every day to help. He’s been roasting a pig every day to feed his helpers and somehow get his herd numbers down. He’s gotten rid of about fifty to three other farmers like you and me, but I think he said last week alone he had three litters born which increased the herd by 41.The work just doesn’t go away; that we know from here. Maybe a greater concern is that some of his hogs are now about three to four weeks past market weight. He’s not feeding them as much, of course, but some are still getting mighty heavy. They’re too big to butcher and be able to eat all at once, even for a couple dozen people. That’s where you come in, Joe. You’re the butcher, right?”
“Yes I am,” Joe answered, “But we’re too busy at Harvey’s for me to run over to Roger all the time.”
“Actually,” Butch said, “he knows that. What he was hoping you could do was accompany me over there on our next trip, look over his operation and perhaps give him some ideas on how he could use some of those bigger hogs.”
Joe responded, “Until we get much colder weather, it’s going to be quite a challenge. It will be for us here, too. I’ve had it on my mind ever since we moved in with Harvey. I’ll think about it more and certainly I’ll be glad to go with you next time.”
“Roger has quite a few acres of corn and soybeans to harvest doesn’t he?” Dad asked.
“Yes he does,” Butch responded, “he told me he’s saving diesel fuel for the combine so the soybeans can be harvested; the corn can be harvested by hand.”
“Same as we’re thinking,” Jeremiah said. “He’ll be all right; we’ll all pull through this together.”
“Good attitude,” Dad replied. “Another thing, Butch, you and I need to talk about feeding Brutus. We have a good supply of clean grass hay and a little dry corn, but can he handle fresh corn? Pop says oats would be best. Do you have a good supply?”
“You can start him on fresh corn now – maybe three or four ears a day. With this spell of dry weather you must have some that’s fairly dry by now.”
“I think our driest corn is up here on your farm in the field next to the woods,” Larry said, “If you need it for your horses, help yourself.”
“Thanks,” Butch responded, “I noticed that field was pretty dry. That’s where I pulled some for the cows. As far as oats, I have a pretty big pile in the barn. Remember you harvested it for me. If you just take a bag a week for Brutus, that would be good for him, and still leaves me plenty for my horses.”
“We appreciate it,” Dad said, “What do we owe you?”
“Nothing, you’ve done enough already,” Butch answered.
“Also,” Dad said, “We need to save some oats to plant next spring. And don’t feed any to the cows or pigs; they can do without it.”
“Right, the horses are first priority. “And we do need to save some for seed; however, I have four full bags of seed leftover from this spring.”
“Wonderful,” Larry said. “now we have to figure out how to prepare ground for planting, sow the oats and then harvest them without fuel.”
“No, not now,” Joe jumped in, “we’ve time to plan that. Now would be a good time to have a soccer match. Aren’t you all tired of talking? Let’s go compete.” He got the attention of me and the other kids, but his directions were to the adults, too. The younger ones jumped up, just as we did.
“Where are we playing?” Jake asked.
“There’s a pretty flat hayfield, right behind the barn,” Joe answered, “Not too high; must have been one of the last fields you baled when you still had fuel.”
“It was,” said Larry, “and we can carry a few bales of straw out of the barn for goals, too.” We had a nice match, even with the adults helping. We didn’t keep score, of course, but our side won 6-4. Afterwards, we all got drinks and splashed ourselves with that cool water from the horse trough. As we headed back toward the house, Robbie called Lynette and me aside. His two older sisters and Amy joined us.
“See that woman over there?” Robbie asked, “The one who has the twins.”
“That’s Julie,” Amy said.
“Right,” said Robbie, “That’s the one. She’s big trouble.”
“Trouble?” I asked, “what you mean? She’s real nice.”
“Yeah on the outside,” Robbie said, “But when she’s not a mom, I’m sorry to say, she’s a teacher.”
“A teacher!” Lynette exclaimed.
“Yeah a teacher, and like I said, BIG trouble!”
To be continued… Mort
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