RIDING AND HERDING CATTLE

I learned to ride when I was very young. At first I learned on a very large and very slow farm horse that we used to pull wagons and machines. Later, I had my own pony, and for a time I even had two. These ponies were not just for fun, however, but mainly for herding cattle, either in the open fields or when driving them to a pasture a half mile from our house. One of my duties in the summer was to drive the cattle to the big pasture every morning after breakfast, and then at the end of the day, to bring them back to the barn for milking.

In the autumn, when there was little grass in the pastures, I had to drive the cattle to the open fields. Then I had to herd them there while they grazed, so they would not wander over to the neighbor's fields. I had to drive them to the fields after breakfast, bring them home at noon when we had our "dinner," take them back to the fields for the afternoon, and then return them in time for milking at the end of the day.

To make the distance from the barn to the fields shorter, my father sometimes took down the fence that enclosed one of the pastures. He stretched part of the wire on the ground and held it there with heavy stones, and let the cattle walk across. At first the cattle (and especially my pony), were afraid to cross such fences, for they feared they might catch their hooves in the barbed wire.

One day, when I was driving the cattle home to the barn for milking, that is exactly what happened. I was sitting on my horse to make certain the cattle crossed the wire safely, as I always did. But when my horse was about half way across, he caught his fetlock in the barbed wire. He snorted, shied, jumped back and tried to free his front foot. Frightened by the pain, he then wildly tried to release his foot by sawing it back and forth on the tight barbed wire. And with each move the wire cut deeper and deeper.

I leaped to the ground and smacked him with my hand to drive him forward, but the damage had already been done— blood was spurting from the back of one of his front feet as if it were being pumped. I knew from my hygiene lessons in school that an artery had been cut in his leg. And I knew right away that I should lead him to the barn as quickly as possible..

As we proceeded, he left a small pool of blood on the ground with every step, and grew visibly weaker by the minute. I even began to wonder if we would reach the barn soon enough, but we did.

Luckily, my mother and my younger sister had seen from a distance that something was amiss, and they were already in the barnyard waiting for me. Mother looked closely at my horse's wound and decided that the best thing to do was to try and stop the bleeding by covering it with flour. She did this, but the blood kept spurting out, so she then told me to try to tie a piece of string on the cut artery that was visible in the wound. This proved to be very difficult because every time the string touched the artery, my horse moved his leg. But finally I succeeded, and I tied a knot. And it was none too soon, for my pony's head was getting closer and closer to the ground as he grew weaker and weaker. But the string stopped the bleeding and I was able to lead him into the barn, where I tied him up and put water and oats in front of him.

Through supper, and even after going to bed, I wondered if my pony would be alive in the morning. As soon as I got up the next day I hurried to the barn. He was standing, and the water as well as the oats that I had given him were gone. I knew then that he would live. But the cut in his leg was long and ugly- red. I would not be able to ride him again for a very long time.

For the rest of the summer I had to walk to the fields with the cattle and back. But I at least had my dog with me, and he was always a faithful playmate. Over time my pony's wound healed and I could ride him again, but he always moved with a slight limp. He also never ran very fast again. But as far as I was concerned, riding at any speed was still better than walking.

Harvesting time, perhaps in the summer of 1924.
With Dad, Chris and I (at age ten or eleven).
We used four horses to pull the binder.
A few years later I drove it myself.

HARVESTING GRAIN

W e always harvested our grain, which was mainly wheat, with a machine called a "binder" that was pulled by four horses. Father was skeptical about the economic advantages of a tractor, and not very adept with power machinery, and he continued to use horses long after most of our neighbors had bought tractors.

The binder cut the stalks of dry grain, formed them into bundles, tied them with twine, then kicked them one at a time onto a metal carrying tray. When three bundles were on the tray the driver on the binder would push a lever with one foot and they would drop onto the ground. Other members of the family, including myself in my early years, would form the bundles into upright groups of eight or ten, called "shocks." These were left standing to dry for several days, or until the threshing machine arrived to separate the kernels of grain from the straw. When the thresher came, a powerful fan inside it blew the straw into a huge pile, and directed the grain through a steel pipe to an empty wagon belonging to my father or a helping neighbor. Then the grain was taken to the grain elevator in the nearby town to be sold, or to the granary to be stored for later use.

The threshing season meant long hours and hard work, but it also meant excitement, especially for the children. My cousin Ernest from a mile away, for example, nearly always came to play with me. His father, Uncle Paulsen, owned the threshing machine that separated the grain from the straw, as well as the tractor that supplied the power. To help with the work he hired "bundle haulers," often strange men who came from far away for this seasonal work, riding free on top of the freight trains as they followed the harvest. The "bundle haulers" always had interesting stories to tell, although not all their stories were meant for small ears. When I was fourteen I became a bundle hauler myself.

The power for my uncle's threshing machine came from a gasoline tractor, but when I was small other neighbors used what were to me the more exciting— steam engines. From the hill by our barn I could often see the long clouds of steam and smoke that they sent high into the sky. At times I rode my pony close to the engines to watch them work. At the back of each engine one or two men pushed straw into a roaring fire that heated the water in the boiler to make the steam that made the wheels turn. As the wheels drove the belt that carried the power to the thresher, the engine gave off a "puff, puffing" sound. When it was time to stop for dinner at noon, or to end the work for the night, the engine gave a long, loud whistle that could be heard a great distance.

Hauling the grain in wagons to the nearest elevator was also always fun for us children. The elevators were tall storage buildings, and each year a neighbor came to help my father transport the grain to them in a special wagon pulled by two horses. When the wagon was filled with grain the horses had to pull hard to move it, but when it was empty on the way back from the elevator, Father and the neighbor would make the horses go at a trot— to get back to the threshing machine before the next wagon was filled to overflowing. Then the wagon bounced and rattled over the rough places, and made a cloud of dust. If we children received a nickel for candy or ice cream, that made the ride even more satisfying.

To be able to drive the horses on a binder was a step toward manhood. I began driving when I was about thirteen. The binder was a fairly complicated piece of machinery that had to be oiled and kept in operating condition, so driving it meant I was treated more like an adult. When I drove it, I did not have to milk the cows, for example. But my father still gave me only ten cents for spending-money every Saturday night, and that didn't go very far, especially as I liked candy and also wanted to buy small gifts for my sweetheart for Christmas and Valentine's Day. The only way to get more money was to work for a neighboring farmer during the slack periods on our farm, when my father could spare me.

When I was about fifteen, some farmers in the community started buying machines called "combines" that cut the grain and threshed it all at one time. A combine was usually pulled by a tractor, but eight horses could be used as a substitute. When farmers first bought tractors many kept their horses, at least for a while. Horses could live on what the farm produced, but a tractor took gasoline and oil, and that had to be paid for with money.

Starting in 1929 we had a drought in North Dakota that lasted for nearly seven years. And at the same time we had an economic depression, which meant that prices for what the farmer had to sell fell very low, and money became very scarce. One of our neighbors, who had bought a tractor and a combine, found himself without enough money to buy gasoline, so he used the eight horses he still had, and hired me to drive them because he was not well. The horses only had to pull the combine; a small engine on it provided the power for the machinery that did the threshing.

I had driven five horses before on a plow, which had required holding four reins, or two in each hand, but I had never driven eight horses at once. The seat on the combine was also much higher above the ground than on a plow, and of course all the horses were strange to me. But I was never in doubt about my ability to do the job, and I did want those two dollars a day the farmer promised me for the work. Sitting on the big machine with eight powerful horses out in front of me and the roar and dust of the big machine behind me, I also felt very much like a grown man.

The farmer's son, who was a few years older than I was, was responsible for the combine. Among other things, he had to make certain the grain was moving into the big tank on the combine, and that we stopped to unload the grain before it overflowed onto the ground. For this purpose we had a wagon with a box on it parked in the field, and it was my responsibility to guide the horses so that the tank would come to a stop right above the wagon. Even though the sun was hot that first day, and we drove in a constant cloud of dust, everything went well. I also had a big appetite, and the farmer's wife served us delicious meals.

After supper, the son decided that he would drive into the town and go to a dance, and I accepted his invitation to go along. We got home late, and I had only a few hours of sleep, but I somehow managed to get up for work the next day. The son, however, had drunk rather freely of "bootleg" liquor, which was illegally distilled and often of inferior quality. Although he had been able to drive his car home without mishap, he was quite unsteady on his feet, and when his father called him to get up in the morning he was still feeling the effects of the alcohol, and was sick to his stomach. When he finally made it to the breakfast table he drank only coffee, and sat with his head down. The disapproval of his parents was obvious, but they said nothing.

In the morning I fed the horses, and curried and harnessed them. One stop at the water trough for a drink, and they were ready to be hitched to the combine. The son managed to start the small engine, I flipped the reins, and we began another day.

Once we were away from the farm house the son climbed into the tank that held the grain as it came from the combine, and fell asleep. I kept on driving the horses. The sun mounted higher and grew hotter. I began to wonder about the rapidly turning machinery that always needed oil and grease to keep it from wearing out, but fortunately nothing happened. Eventually the son awakened, but by that time he was nearly buried up to his neck in the grain that kept falling around him in the tank. We emptied the tank, and by that time he was able to smile and talk again.

When we went to the house for dinner at noon, the son was even able to eat, and life seemed much more normal. I began to think about the dollars I would receive when the job was done. On Saturday night the farmer paid me in silver dollars, and with their weight and the clinking sound they made in my pocket, I felt even better than if he had given me dollar bills.

"The Bundle Hauler," when I was about sixteen years of age, in 1930.
The photo was taken in Uncle Paulsen's yard during threshing time.

MAKING HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES

"M aking hay time" was the way my father described it. This referred to the season,usually toward the end of June, when the grass in the meadows and in the sloughs had to be cut, dried in the sun, and gathered into large stacks to be stored until winter when the farm animals were fed in the barn. Sun was very important, because if it did not shine after the grass had been cut, the hay would simply rot. And that, said my father, is why it is important to "make hay while the sun shines."

One summer a large field of grass had been cut, dried the proper time in the sun, and formed into long rows called "windrows." Dark clouds were forming along the western horizon, however, and there was the distant rumble of thunder, which often meant rain— heavy rain — would soon follow. Everyone in the family, even my mother, was therefore mobilized to help in the hay field.

Although my mother had told me one time that in Denmark, where she was born, the farm women always had to help in the fields in the busy seasons (as well as take care of the house, the children, and milk the cows), this was not so common in America. It was a major reason, she said, that she had wanted to come to the "new country," even though she was already married and with six children when the opportunity arrived.

After gathering the hay into windrows, the next step was to pile it into small mounds called "hay cocks." This was done by two horses pulling a machine called a "rake." The driver sat on the top of the rake and made the horses walk on either side of the windrow, and as they did so the teeth of the rake gathered the hay into a large bundle. Then the driver had to step with his heel on a lever that caused the teeth to lift from the ground and thus let the hay fall out in a pile or mound. The hay could then be moved, by wagon or other means, to a central place for stacking.

Usually men operated the farm machinery when I was growing up, and the women had little or no experience with it, but on this day it was important to get the hay quickly into a stack shaped like a loaf of bread. That way the rain would run off when it did come. So it was decided that Mother could best help by running the hay rake, and she was told to do so, even though all of us thought it would be very funny to see her trying to operate it. She climbed onto the seat, gathered up the two reins, said "giddyap" to the horses. They started out at a fast walk, almost as if they too sensed a need to hurry.

Everyone was impressed. When the teeth of the rake were filled with hay, Mother brought her heel down hard on the lever, as she had been told to do. But what she had not been told, or had forgotten, was that it was equally important to take her heel off quickly, once it was done. As a result, the teeth continued to go up and down, up and down, as Mother directed the horses along both sides of the windrow. No hay was being gathered into cocks. We children laughed uproariously, yelling at Mother to lift her heel. Poor woman, she was never given another chance by my father. Time was too precious. Fortunately, she could see the humor of the situation, and thus laugh at herself, but ever after that, whenever there was another haying season, one of us would always recall the event with "`member the time..."

Haying time in the summer of 1929.
Dad and I are on the stack. Two horses were used to pull the bull rake,
with which the cocks of hay were moved to the stack. We put nets
on the horses to protect them from the biting flies.

N ew-born calves are soft, cuddly and have big, beautiful eyes. They are also difficult to manage at times, especially when it comes to teaching them to drink from a pail. A calf knows from birth that to get food it must raise its head to the mother's teats. So when the food is down in a pail there is a problem. I learned very early from my father that a new calf must be taken away from its mother soon after being born, otherwise there would be no milk for our family. The mother cow produces only as much milk as is removed from her udder, so the farmer takes all the milk out twice a day, and gives the calf only as much as it needs. But then the problem is how to get the calf to take it from a pail, where it must be drunk, instead of sucked.

I was taught to dip my fingers in the milk at the bottom of the pail, then put my fingers in the mouth of the calf, at which point the calf would begin to suck, and then to gently move my hand toward the bottom of the pail. Usually the head of the calf would follow, particularly if I placed my other hand on top of the calf's head and pressed down gently. At least that is the way it is supposed to work. Usually, the more patience one has, the sooner the calf will put its head down into the pail.

My father was not a patient man, especially when he was in a hurry, or had other things on his mind. And when I walked into the barn late one morning to help with the daily milking of the cows and feeding of the calves, that was the sort of mood he was in. He was far enough along with the milking to begin feeding a very new calf, but much to his exasperation, every time he tried to force the calf's head down into the milk in the bottom of the pail, the calf would raise its head. And doing so, it breathed out, sending the milk it had inhaled, instead of drunk, all over Father.

Father lost his patience, and, with his jacket covered with warm milk, tried to vent his rage on the calf by punishing it. A young calf is very smooth, however, and there is not much that one can easily grasp, such as horns. Furious, Father instead grabbed the calf's tail, and then used it to lift the entire calf off the ground and shake it, much as one might a shake a puppy for wetting the floor. That did not solve the calf's drinking problem, but it apparently made Father feel better.

To me the scene was so hilarious that I nearly choked with laughter, but not out loud. I hastily went out the barn door lest Father see me, and vent his wrath on me as well. Once outside, I leaned against the wall and shook with silent laughter until my sides began to hurt. When I was finally able to control myself, I went back into the barn. Quiet reigned. The new calf looked bewildered, still wet from the milk that it had spilled over itself as well as over Father. When I looked at its sad, blue eyes, I vowed never to be late for milking again, and that I would always wean the calf myself in the future.

T he Red River valley, which formed the eastern boundary of North Dakota, had rich, black soil that was very good for growing potatoes to be sold on the market. But where I lived, potatoes were raised only for the use of the farm families themselves; grain was the main crop sold.

About the time I graduated from high school and wanted to go to college, money and jobs were scarce because of the drought and depression. My goal was to earn fifty dollars, an amount that I thought would pay my expenses in college for at least three months. After that I hoped to find other work to pay my way. My mother and father had no money to give me.

Because the drought caused very poor crops, I earned only a small amount of money working for my uncle during the threshing season— only $l.75 for every twelve hours of work. I had heard stories about job opportunities in the potato country, however, so with a few other boys my age I decided to go there to look for work.

We took blankets and some food so that we could camp along the way, and one afternoon one of the boys shot a squirrel with a pistol that he had brought with him. I skinned and cleaned the squirrel and hung it on a tree to cool overnight, intending to use it in a stew the next day. By morning it was crawling with maggots. I learned that fresh meat does not stay fresh very long in warm weather.

When we arrived in the potato-growing area we found there were almost as many people looking for work as there were potatoes to be picked. Apparently many others had heard the same stories about the "good" job opportunities.

I was lucky to find work with the owner of a large farm, but his potato crop was unfortunately very poor. It was difficult for us pickers to make any money because we were only paid a couple of pennies per bushel, and rain interfered with the picking. But we at least continued to receive our meals and a place to sleep.

Telling stories also helped to pass the time. The pickers were from all over the United States and from many different backgrounds. One said that the farmer who had hired us was widely known as "Moonlight" Decker, because he had a reputation for making everyone work even at night if the moon was out during the busy threshing season.

While the ground was drying out after the rain, "Moonlight " Decker hired me to pull a weed called a Russian thistle, or "tumbling weed," out of his field. There were many of them, and he wanted me to stack them in small piles. While working away, I discovered a garden nearby with ripe cantaloupes. I knew how delicious they were, and I was also thirsty, so I made a very high pile of the thistles between the garden and the house of the farmer so he couldn't see me, and then ate them. Never did cantelope taste better, even if hastily eaten without a spoon.

A short time later my companions and I decided to return to our homes; we were just not making enough money. Fortunately for me, however, one of my companions had made a contact with another farmer who wanted to hire two pickers in about two weeks, and although he wasn't free to take the job, I was. I managed to persuade an adult who had just returned from Los Angeles, where he had lost his job, to go with me. We drove to the potato picking area in his very old and rickety car, with the radiator leaking so much we had to stop at a farm about every half hour to replenish the water.

When we arrived at the new job site it was rather late in the evening. We had only averaged about twenty-five miles an hour. The first night the farmer asked us to sleep in the hayloft, but after that we slept in a bed in the house, both in one bed.

Picking began the next morning after a very big breakfast. This was followed by lunch in the field about l0 a.m., a big dinner at noon, lunch in the field again about three, and a big supper at night. The family was of Norwegian origin, and eating five times a day when the work was hard was apparently a tradition. In my family we never ate more than four times a day throughout the year.

This farmer's potato crop was quite good, with the result it took the two of us only a short time to fill a bushel basket. At three cents per bushel, by the end of the day we had filled enough baskets to earn about three dollars each.

I had picked potatoes for my father before, but never for very long. Here we were in the field about ten hours a day, during which we had to keep bending to pick the potatoes off the ground and put them into baskets. Then we had to put them into sacks, of which each of us carried several.

Toward the end of the day my back was aching so much I started crawling along the rows of potatoes on my knees to avoid the up and down motion as much as possible. Finally the day ended and a very big supper helped me to forget the misery in my back. However, when I finished eating I found I could hardly get up from the table.
The next day, after a good night's rest, my back was a little better, but in the field the pain returned as I filled basket after basket. My companion did not seem to have the same problem, but I never got to the point where the pain disappeared. I was cheered along, however, by knowing I was going to earn nearly enough money to reach my goal of fifty dollars.

In addition to earning the money, I left with many new experiences to think about, including my aching back.

SLEEPING IN THE HAY

C ity people think it must be fun to sleep in the hay, and it is when you do it for only a night or two. The hay has a fresh smell, and it is usually soft. But sometimes it also includes weeds and thorns, and when it gets old it often has a musty smell.

When I was small, my brothers and sisters and I always had fun playing in the new hay stored in the hayloft of our barn. One could jump into it from great heights and not get hurt, or slide down from a high mound and then be buried in the loose hay at the bottom.

Hay stacked out of doors for cattle to eat in the winter was off limits to us, however. Father said that if we played in it we would make depressions in the top of the stack, and the water would run into the depressions when it rained. Wet hay usually rotted, and then even the horses and cattle could not eat it, so to keep hay from rotting when it was stored out of doors, it had to be in stacks with a rounded top, well packed and sloping toward the edges.

We children never slept in the hay in the barn. At the end of summer, however, when the grain had been threshed, we took the old straw out of our mattresses and replaced it with the new. We thought this was fun because the new straw had a fresh smell, and it also made the mattresses smooth and hard. But by spring the straw was lumpy again, and also a little musty smelling.

When I was old enough to work on a threshing crew, I slept in the hay every night, as did all of the other workers. When I was fourteen, I began to work for my uncle who owned the threshing machine my father hired each year to thresh his grain. In addition to our hourly pay, we were fed three good meals a day and given two blankets. We used the blankets to make our bed in the hay of the barns of the different farms where we went to thresh the grain. Sometimes we slept in the same barn for two or three nights, and sometimes longer, depending on the size of the farm and on whether or not it rained. Rain meant no work, and no pay, but we still received our three meals and our bed in the hay.

Every night about ten men from the crew had to find a place in the hayloft to put down their blankets. Sometimes it was easy to find a smooth place, and other times the hay always seemed bumpy, even if it had seemed smooth when first going to sleep,

I often awakened in the middle of the night and found myself out of the covers and deep in the hay. And then the hay always felt prickly to the bare skin. It was always hard to make a new bed in the pitch dark, and it always seemed that right after I had gone back to sleep the call would come to get up and go to work.

We usually got up around 5 a.m., and as a rule it was still dark then. I had to feed my two horses, eat a huge breakfast, hitch the horses to the hay wagon, and then drive to the field to be ready to begin work at 6 a.m.

When the threshing work was all over, aside from the pay that I received, one of the things I looked forward to most was going to sleep between two clean sheets, in my own bed, in my own home.

FARM AUCTIONS AND A BROKEN LEG

F arm auctions were usually held in the spring of the year, and going to them was always fun. Farmers usually held them to sell off their own farm animals and machinery, and to attract as many people as possible they served free doughnuts, sandwiches and coffee. That, and the chance to play with other children, was the main reason I liked to go to auctions with my father.

The farm auction I remember best is one that I never attended. One of my older brothers, Harry, went instead. As it turned out, a farmer at the sale, who lived several miles from the auction, bought a horse, and he needed someone to ride it home because he had driven to the auction by car. He therefore offered Harry a dollar. In those days, a dollar seemed like a lot of money, so Harry mounted the horse and started off for the neighbor's barn.

Everything went well until Harry came to a small stream. The horse refused to cross, so Harry dismounted and tried to lead it over. But unfortunately for Harry, the horse suddenly decided to leap across the stream, and it landed with one of its feet on one of Harry's legs, instantly breaking it. Harry dropped the reins, and the horse ran away.

There was no one within either shouting or seeing distance, and the neighbor's barn was still miles away, so Harry began to crawl, dragging his broken leg as he went. It seemed like hours to Harry, but the owner of the horse eventually came looking for him in his car, and found him. He brought Harry at once to our house.

We had no telephone, but a doctor was hastily summoned from the nearby town. The doctor put Harry on the kitchen table, gave him ether to put him to sleep, set his broken bone, and bound his leg in a plaster cast made out of a powder. My whole family was both concerned and excited; nothing like this had ever happened before.

Harry recovered in time, and was able to walk and run as well as ever, but the experience made for bad relations between my father and the owner of the horse. In my father's opinion, the neighbor had hired Harry to ride his horse, and he should therefore have been responsible for paying the doctor's bill. Hard words were exchanged between the two. I could feel the tension even if I did not understand the arguments.

One day, fifty years later, I visited the farmer who had been the owner of the horse. He was, as can be imagined, already retired. Although half a century had passed, I had barely said "hello," when he brought up the incident of his horse and my brother's broken leg. He spoke about it with regret, as if it had weighed on his mind all those years. I listened with sympathy, and as I did the events came back vividly to my mind.

I told the farmer that whatever hard feelings my father might have had at one time, they were surely long forgotten and now locked with him in his grave. As we parted, the old farmer seemed to feel relieved.

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LEAVES FROM A FARM BOY'S DIARY by Eddie W. Schodt

Story Copyright 1994 Eddie W. Schodt
All Rights Reserved
Line drawings by Frederik L. Schodt
Black and white photographs printed by Misao Mizuno

http://www.jai2.com/farm4.htm
Copyright 1998, Frederik L. Schodt
Revised -- Dec/25/98