Haymaking didn’t happen without some consternation. Friday morning Jean was bound and determined to get some laundry done; the job had been neglected for nearly a week.
“Now Mother,” Harvey had said, “we have hay to make today; we need all the hands.”
“Maybe so,” Jean answered, “but you know hay drying weather is also clothes drying weather and besides that, soon all your hands will be walking round in dirty underwear. We need to get started today!”
Now Harvey didn’t rule his dairy farm as a king. On the family level, he was quick to consult Larry about farming matters and his wife as well on all matters. But with the arrival of the additional families, a new triumvirate had been formed. Harvey, Dad, and Joe collectively made the decisions. It seemed to be working so far. This being somewhat of a marital issue, it appeared Dad knew better than to interfere. Joe, on the other hand, had his own thoughts.
“It’s also time to butcher the largest hog we have. We need meat and I can’t have the butcher house full of laundry when I’m working on the hog,” he had said.
“But there’s hay to put away!” Harvey exclaimed.
“We need food,” Joe stated.
“And clean clothes,” was Jean’s response.
“And there’s two days to accomplish it all,” Dad finally interjected. “Joe, aren’t you going to roast the whole hog?”
“Yes, I was,” he answered.
“Well that you’ll do outside. You’ll only need the butcher stove to can the leftover meat. Isn’t that correct?” Dad continued.
“Yes.”
“And that you can do Saturday, instead, aren’t I right?”
“I suppose so,” Joe agreed, “if the tables aren’t being used to fold laundry when I want to go at canning.”
“If they get started right away, they should be done by dinner tomorrow. And Harvey, I believe there’s less than half of the amount of hay to put away today as we did yesterday.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Harvey answered.
“So we can do without ten or so women and girls and still get it all loaded and under roof. If we have to unload the last wagons on Saturday, then so be it,” Dad concluded.
“Then so be it,” Harvey concurred as he once again took the lead. “Mother, get started as soon as you can. Keep whomever you need. Larry and the boys will stoke the fire well so you have plenty of hot water. Joe, we’ll do the hog tomorrow. It will make a great dinner. The canning can be done in the afternoon. The women can finish folding in the house if they need to. Okay everyone?”
It was okay. The hay got put away, the laundry was done, we had a fine hog roast for Saturday dinner, the leftover got jarred in the afternoon for future use, and I guess we learned a lesson on priorities, urgency, and cooperation.
The following week the boys came up with several versions of wringers for the wash machine. They were patterned after the feed rolls on the forage harvester. These were spring loaded cylinders which pulled and guided the crop into the knives on the harvester that chopped the material fine. The rolls had serrated edges and were way too aggressive to use directly off the machine – would have shredded the wash. But they could use the drive and tension mechanism from the harvester and then replace the pair of rolls with smooth pieces of pipe. First they tried “schedule forty” plastic pipe which is about six inches in diameter, fairly heavy and is used for sewage lines both inside a home and underground. Harvey had several pieces lying around from his excavating days. The pipe being hollow, it was quite a challenge to put an end cap on the four ends that an axle could be mounted dead center so the rolls would run true. After a few tries, they had it working. They mounted a big crank to turn the wringer. Unfortunately, the pipe was way too smooth, so it would not pull the wash through; it just slipped, even after making several adjustments to the tension mechanism.
“Remember,” Grandmom said, “how the wringers years ago were made out of a semi-soft rubbery type material.”
“Yes, I believe I do remember,” Jean answered. “The boys really don’t know what they were like.” Then addressing them she added, “Could you find some sort of rubber like coating to put on the rolls or a different kind of roll?”
Aaron replied, “We looked at a lot of rolls from the farm equipment around here, and they were all too rough.”
“Suppose,” Dennis wondered, “we wrapped some of the duct tape that Bruce brought around the pipe. Would that be rough enough?”
“Maybe not initially,” Joe said, “we’d have to rough it up a bit with something like sandpaper, but then it probably would only last a few loads before wearing completely off. Worth a try though.”
They tried. He was right. Waste of tape.
Uncle Jeremiah suggested we stretch a piece of an old inner tube on the pipe and glue it fast. It was a project, trying to get the tube to just the right size so the glue would hold and the rubber wouldn’t be too loose on the pipe. But patience and perseverance won out and after a couple days of sticking to it, we had a working wringer. Finally, Barry and Dennis mounted a windshield wiper motor onto it so we wouldn’t have to crank. Great improvement, but we had to be more careful not to get our fingers caught between the wringers.
About the same time, Barry and Aaron had removed the circulator pump from Harvey’s furnace and mounted it in the line inside the house. They rigged a starter motor from Poppop’s Chevy onto it. After gearing it down, it worked fine.
“Still not sure how these motors will take the continuous use when it gets cold outside and will have to run for long periods. Nor how quickly we’ll have to replace the spent battery with a charged one,” Barry said. “If it becomes too burdensome, we’ll have to rig up another bicycle for people/pedal power.” This question, however, led to the determination as to where to put Larry and Joe’s windmill. On the porch right between the house and butcher house – that’s where we were using the most electricity and needing to have the batteries recharged.
When the windmill was up and functional there must have been a dozen batteries in line for charging at any given moment. They had built little carriers to move batteries where they were needed and we used a toy wagon to take four at a time to the barn for the lights later in the fall when we had to milk in the dark in the evening.
“You know,” Poppop said, “this reminds me of something. Before we had electric companies and wires bringing electricity to the farm, my grandfather Willis used to make his own with a generator. Gasoline was cheap and the generator was only run a few hours during the day to charge a bank of batteries that were stored in that small cellar beneath the butcher house.”
“Is that what those old electric controls in the corner of the butcher house were for?” Harvey asked.
“I think so,” Poppop answered, “remember I wasn’t around now mind you; only heard about it. Then all the lights in the house were direct current, running off the batteries in the evening. Wonder if we’ll regress to that?”
“Who knows,” was Dad’s response. “For the next several months, it might be hard to tell if we’re going forward or backward.”
At least we were going forward on the heating, laundry, and electric lighting front. But on the flour mill, I wasn’t so sure. Grandpop’s mo-ped had become a popular item when it came time to go somewhere in a hurry. The younger men could pedal it most of the time and only kick the engine into gear for the harder hills. It took very little gas. One day Larry had taken it to visit the two old flour mills in the neighborhood. The one was completely abandoned and all the milling equipment had been removed. Strike one. The other mill had been turned into a home and the current occupants were not at all agreeable to Larry’s request to look around. He tried to explain to them that we would be willing to trade for the mill if they desired or that a running mill, if they allowed us to donate to its repair, would be a valuable tool for the community as well as a source of income for them. They weren’t interested. I guess not everyone’s heart had changed. Or maybe Larry was sensed as a threat in these uncertain times. Strike two. Back to the drawing board for the boys to build our own mill.
To be continued……Mort
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