The Original Farmers Daughter, Part 2

So we became farmers. This was my dad's big dream. He had quit school very early, around the 8th grade to go to work and help out his struggling family. Back in those days, getting a job did not require a great deal of protocol, if you were good at what you did, you got the job! Schooling and education were the least of anyone's worries. My dad was highly intelligent and very mechanically inclined. The mechanical part came in handy as a farmer, since SOMETHING was always broken down!

My brothers and I always had interesting pets on the farm. There was the goat, Heidi, who spent a great deal of time on top of the chicken house munching on the huge Gravenstein apples off of the tree that grew out of the chicken yard. 'No need to pay for expensive fertilizer! We had a real Collie, just like Lassie. There were cats of course, but they were "barn cats" and very wild and came close to us only at milking time when they lined up next to "the gutter" begging for a squirt of milk.

Then there were the rabbits. My brother and I used to get the big buck out of his cage and throw him in with the female, just to see all the funny, amusing things that they did there. What fantastic entertainment! We had no clue as to what was happening in that cage, and since we always put the buck back where he belonged, I am sure my dad scratched his head for a long time over where all the baby bunnies came from!

My dad butchered the young rabbits. He hung them from the ceiling in the basement and skinned them and we often had rabbit for dinner. I do not recall what happened to the skins. I no longer eat rabbit, ugh.

We had our own chickens and butchering chickens was just another day on the farm. The big block of wood, the hatchet, and the chicken flopping headless all over the yard. We didn't think anything of it. It was our way of life. I can still remember the smell of the wet feathers after my dad dunked the chicken in boiling water to ensure that the feathers come off easily. Phew! We always saved the old,old hens for boiling for stew. It took all day to get them tender enough for chicken and noodles. Nowdays you boil a chicken for an hour and you wind up with wallpaper paste!

My mother never planned to be a farmer's wife. She did not care for all of the hard work and eventually she got a job away from home at Nabisco where she remained until retirement. Her job provided us with many extras that a farmer's wage could not offer us.

My brother and I climbed onto the big yellow school bus each morning for the ride to the grade school several miles away. 'A medium sized red brick building with no cafeteria, we all took our lunches and ate at our wooden desks in our respective classrooms. I recall that the room always smelled of overripe banannas and rubber boots.

When you go to school and mix with other children, there are always the childhood ailments lurking in the background. We had the usual, chicken pox, mumps, the occasional runny noses, nothing serious or threatening -- and then my brother brought home the measles!

To be continued