Cow barn.

This was Austin's cow barn the morning before the auction - extra sawdust and numbers marked on the cows for the impending doom.

A mix of Jeseys, Holsteins, Guerneys, Ayrshires.............

Note the AM radio halfway down the left main beam. This was on all the time. The cows were calmed by it and the early morning news was always welcomed by the milking team - Austin and the hired hand at the time. Don Mullally was the local am DJ and worked the radio for many years. I had the privilege of meeting and knowing Don. His son and I were on the same wrestling team.

Blue Boy the cow dog is looking for a morsel. Dogs are for sure ominivores. Nothing, I mean nothing is off limits. Mouth-to-mouth contact was not advised for him or any other dog that I've known. Blue Boy was a bordie collie and was probably only a year or 2 old at this time. This canine knew and loved cows. They thought otherwise.

The gutters behind the cows were used to collect the manure which on a daily farm is everpresent. A producing cow would easily dump 50 lbs of floor spatter a day. These gutters were cleaned by hand - daily in the winter. The steel rail running along the ceiling cross beams was for the gutter carrier which rolled along the rail and was loaded by hand. Once full it was pushed to the end of the barn, out the back doors and dumped into the manure spreader parked outside just beyond the barn doors. One cleaning would fill it. In the summer the manure spreader was pulled and spread by tractor. Of course, this is somewhat moot because in the summer the cows spent most of their time in the pasture and gutter cleaning was infrequent. In the winter the spreader was a flat wagon on skids pulled by horses and spread by hand.

The hay was stored in the hay mows on the second story of the barn, hence the large ceiling beams. The hay bales would be thrown down holes in the ceiling and fed to the cows. The other winter roughage feed was silage - chopped spring grass and fall corn. This was pitched out of the silo next to the barn. In the very cold months it was partially frozen and made for some frigging digging.

The de Laval milking machines were run off a cycling vacuum line. After each cow was milked the milking machine pail would be dumped into another pail that was then hand carried to the milkhouse tank at the other end of the barn. Each cow would normally be hand stripped to get the last pint or 2 of milk. This herd would take about an hour to milk with 2 machines.

This was mid '60's dairy farming. Hand and back work was involved in most all operations. Every dairy farmer that I knew had poyeye hands and forearms and a grip that could choke the life out of a fresh hickory stick. Hand calluses were tougher than 10 grit sandpaper. Obese farmers were a rarity.

Today's open pens and automated milking parlors with computerized self-feeders are hugh productivity improvements and work savers. But is today's dairyman tired at the end of the day and can they recall the names of each cow and production stats? I doubt it.

Peeking out over the top of the box.

It's scary! It's scary!!!!!!!

Life's simple principles.

Swat flies. Sleep late. Laugh often. Smile wide. Grimance never. Love long. Live passionately. Run hard. Ride downwind. Look far. Observe closely. Step lightly. Respect others. Live free. Drink beer. Eat meat.

Sugar House

When snow was deep. When sap dripped into tree hung buckets. When hauled by horse drawn sleds. When evaporator heat came from fall cut wood. When wet spring snows were welcome. When a maple syrup snow cone was dessert. When Vermont fancy grade was treasured.

Tom

This big boy was one of my Grandfather's draft horses. 1962-63 vintage with over 2 tons of horsepower. An era when skiis were wood and horses and men worked from before dawn to well after dusk. Note the mohawk clipped mane. Kick ass.

Save a horse

ride a cowboy...........

Summers of '68, '69, '70

This is the former Paul Nelson in Barnet Center on the side of one of the hills that forms a portion of the Stevens river valley. A classic Vermont hillside dairy farm of the 60's when Vermont had at least 2 cows for every person. This picture came from a 1975 calender and was likely taken in the early 60's or perhaps even in the late 50's. The picture shows a new milk house that has yet to be painted barn red. There's also a lumber pile behind the barn that was likely used to build a small house for Paul's wife's folks. They had passed by the time I worked there. One of those summers we burnt it down. The main barn was built in the '40's.

Paul Nelson was an educated engineer who graduated from Worcester Polytech but returned to his native land to farm. I worked there during three summers while I was in high school. Up at 5am for the morning milking and supper at 6pm after the pm milking and full day in between. There were around 100 milking Jersey cows with dozens of heifers and a young bull. The only other animals were the barn cats, 2 oversized house cats and a cow dog. No pigs, horses, ducks, chickens.... commonly found on other dairy farms in the area.

The motor pool consisted of a John Deere 70, 520 and 2020 and JD dozer. There was also a 1 ton farm truck with a floor mounted stick shift. A sweet drive to a teenager who had been driving farm trucks since he could barely reach the pedals but didn't get his license until he was a senior in high school - I have no idea why.

Paul had a full time farm hand, Arnold. He had been there many years and lived in a spare bedroom in the main house. He had a speech impediment and was difficult to understand until you had worked with him for awhile. I was able to decifer him after a short time and we got along well together. Arnold always had a pipe in his mouth. He was great help but would not have done very well off the farm. In fact, he had an old car which I don't believe had been used in years. I never recall him leaving the farm.

Paul's wife, Elinor, was originally from Worcester and didn't drive. She tended the house and prepared the meals. She and Paul made a weekly shopping trip to town. I don't think she felt very at home on the farm. Their 2 sons and daughter and respective families would occasionally visit but otherwise it seemed like a very quiet existence for her. She passed away in 1977 a few years after my last summer there. I believe from cancer. Paul lived almost another 30 years.

During the Christmas break of my freshman year in college I worked at the farm. It was the week in winter hell. A day or so into the break a major ice storm hit the area and took out the power. The milking machines needed power to work and hence the problem. Three of us spent at least 3 full milkings doing it the old fashioned way - by hand. Only a hardcore dairy farmer would appreciate the scale of this. And all the cows were Jerseys. Many Jerseys have small sized teats meaning you have to use the 2 finger method versus the full hand method. After a 5 or 6 cows hand cramps set in. And the cows are not used to hand milking and are reluctant to let their milk down. We milked pretty much around the clock for 36 hours. Of course, mastitis set in - utter infection. The power finally returned and after a few days things were back to normal. Paul drove to the local John Deere dealership a couple of days later and had a backup generator installed. That was the last time I worked on the farm - not because of the the ice storm but a new job was in the waiting that next summer.

After Paul's wife died he sold the farm to his son. The son built another house on the property and sold at least one lot at the "scenic overview" from where the above scenic picture was taken from. A house sits there now. Since then the farm has changed hands again at least once. A large manure capture pit sits in front of the main barn. The scenic view so well captured in the calender picture hasn't been available for many years and will never be again.

Austin and Paul vacationed in California in 1978 and stayed with us for a week in Simi Valley. We let them use our car to explore the area. Paul lived into his late '90's and passed away just a couple of years ago after spending a few years in a nursing home.

My three summers there were a bit sterile and very monastic. Every 3 weeks I'd get Sunday off to go home for the day. The work was hard, long and routine. Basically work all day, 3 squares and sleep. Pretty boring for a teenager. It certainly didn't help my social agilities or enhance my then myopic world and social view. Paul subscribed to Time magazine and I spent the noon breaks devouring them cover to cover. The work did make and keep me physically fit and my high school wrestling prowess was greatly helped. My first summer's pay was $30 per week and progressed to $60 per week my last summer - about 75 cents an hour. I did get lots of tractor time. Those were the first paychecks that paid into social security.

I admired Paul's approach to farming. It was very business like with incremental expansion. However, I always felt he would have enjoyed being an engineer more and would have been very good at it. Elinor would definitely found that more to her liking.

Irony

On the local news last night were stories that by themselves were unnotable. But next to each other makes them very notable and highlights one of our cultural ironies. The first story was about the local food banks having a tough time due to the reduced state funding and fewer local donations. Apparently, their inventories are nearly depleted. The immediately following story was about a group of locals that had been dieting and had lost a total 3 tons of weight.

Ok. My mind went right to thinking that 3 tons of fat is equal to 21 million kCalories. A normal person needs about 2500 kCal per day. Therefore, the chubbo's lost 8400 person days of equivalent meals!! I would guess that the normal inventory of a local food bank is considerably less than that.

Therefore.....................

The Summers of '66 and '67.

This is where I spent the summers of '66 and '67 - the Russell and Mabel Moore farm in East Barnet next to Joe's Brook just before it enters into the Passumpsic River. This is one of the few still standing round barns in the world. Russell had semi-retired by this time but he still hayed the fields and filled the barn. I had the pleasure of working for and with him for two summers.

We lived 2 miles up Joe's Brook Road that meandered along the brook. At 9 am every morning I would ride my bike to the farm and we'd spend the day haying, splitting wood, fixing the old Chevy truck and whenever it rained we'd go fishing. Russell loved to fly fish. So did I, almost as much as not working.

I learned a lot those two summers. How to split wood with an axe. No it's not the mighty swing. The trick is a quick but subtle twist of the wrist just as the axe hits the round. It still amazes me how effective this is.

He had an old Chevy pickup. I have no idea of the vintage but it was old. I learned how to drive an on the floor stick shift that first summer. I've heard this truck was still on the farm as recent as a couple of years ago. Russell and Mable sold the farm back in the 70's to his nephew who only recently sold it.

His river meadow was on the other side of Joe's Brook and he used a temporary bridge to access the field with his tractors and haying equipment. We would spend a day putting it up early in the summer. I learned that the fun part of a project that seemed impossible for an old geezer and "more brawn than brain" kid was in figuring out ways to getting the nearly impossible done. We would float the two large main timbers in the water to the earth abutments and use levers, ropes and two tractors to work them into place. Russell never cussed, but I did - under my breath.

I also experienced one of my almost didn't make it out of pre-adolescence moves. There was a small hay field tucked back on a hill away from the main buildings. One of his tractors was an old Farmall Cub that we used for raking the hay. One mid morning I was raking this field and was doing stupid stuff. I was circling the field with the rake in tow and was climbing the back hill in 3rd gear. I already knew that I would have to shift but also knew I was the master shifter. I mean I had been driving tractors since I had become as tall as July high corn. Not this morning. I was almost at the top and the tractor started lugging down and it was time to shift. I pushed in the clutch and the tractor immediately started rolling backwards. I pressed the brakes (brakes on these old tractors are friction with no hydraulic assist so leg force is all there is) but they were useless. The tractor was picking up speed and the woods were approaching fast. I instinctively released the clutch as a last measure and fortunately it was still in 3rd gear. But the nose of the tractor instantly reared up and came within a heart beat of somersaulting over backwards. It would have left me as a messy grease spot on the field. It recovered just before we slammed into the woods. I got the thing stopped and realized my heart was running at red-line and probably pee'ed myself. I have respected Vermont hills from that day on. I still, however, miss clutch every now and then.

I made $20 a week and got to chow on Mabel's Vermont hot dinners. A working man's dinner in the 60's in Vermont on the farm was served at noon with a short nap afterwards.

I would have worked there for free.

Beware of innocent bunnies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCI18qAoKq4

Gun Rack

This big boy is out looking for love in all the wrong places.

Faux Fur

This catalog showed up yesterday amongst the dozens we get in the daily mail. The under weight but the for sure hot babe and the especially the fur caught my attention!!

Some history. When I was 14 I worked at a neighbor's farm on weekends and after school. This farm had 25 - 30 milking cows, a couple of Arabian show horses and an acre of outdoor penned mink. My pay for a 6am to 9pm weekend workday was $4 with meals. My skilled labor (I could milk the cows, handle the horses and run all the equipment including the John Deere B with the hand clutch.....) was worth 27 cents an hour in 1967. But I digress.

I worked there from Sept to May and experienced pretty much the full mink pelting cycle. In the fall the mink were heavily fed with fatty protein to fatten and shine them up. Feed was also processed and stockpiled for the winter months. Horse meat was the main ingredient. Surrounding famers and horse owners would leave their nags and we would "process" them. This consisted of a 410 slug to the forehead, a day of gutting, skinning, quartering and grinding the carcass. This was then mixed with a grain into a slurry and frozen into chunks of future mink feed. More on this part of my childhood in another posting.

Mid winter was pelting time. This process included killing, pelting and storing the pelts. I was one of a kill team of two. The other was a kid 2 years younger than me. One of us would reach into a mink pen with a mitted protected hand and grab the mink by the back of the neck and turn it over so its belly was exposed. The other would drive the needle of a steel syringe into its heart and inject a dose of strychnine. The mink would be dead nearly instantly, unless the needle missed the heart. Then the death might take minutes if we didn't drop it from the mad frenzy. Think OSHA would have approved?

The next step was the pelting which was done by a husband/wife team hired for this occasion and done in the basement of the farmer's house. These two were also the parents of my kill team partner. They would cut the hide of the mink at the neck and feet lines and then pull it back over the body of the mink in whole so it was completely inside out. It would then be stretched over a mink board for scraping and then drying and cold storing. The skinless carcass would be thrown into a pile with the others and hauled off to a back field and dumped. The smell of the dead carcasses and wet hides I'm sure still lingers.

Early spring was breeding time. The choice mink were spared from the pelting process and used for breeding stock. This was fun time for all. The males would be placed into a pen with a female and they would do nature's willy wag for hours on end. Each day the males would be moved to another pen until all the females were eventually covered. Little did they know that the deadly cycle was on repeat.

Why do I share this ugly history, especially with detail that would make most cringe including me? Anyone who wears or would even tolerate an animal fur item needs to understand the process by which these items are produced. When one is 14 and the extent of their world has been limited to a 50 mile radius of geography and culture then their viewpoint is extremely myopic. At the time it was just part of someone's business in the back hills of northen Vermont. Only after years of seeing a larger view of the world and gaining a better understanding of nature does one understand that this was so wrong on so many levels.

Back to the magazine. I was about to go ballistic when I noticed in the upper right corner the word "faux". A faux pax may have been in the making or perhaps not. Doesn't a faus somehow validate or at least acknowledge at some level the real thing?

That summer I took another job at a different farm that only had dairy cows but a 100 of them. And I got a raise to 36 cents an hour with room and board.

All night, every night.

NCIS reruns.

Monkeys don't wear underwear.

Why should I?