My Mind Wanders
Mowing the lawn today in such wonderfully comfortable temperatures was a treat. For me, pushing a lawnmower is “no-mind” work. I couldn’t help but let the mind wander back to Monday when we were at my cousin Dan’s rural farm for the threshing event.
This family grew up in the farm home that Dan now calls his home. My grandparents Christ and Laura are sitting in the front on their 50th wedding anniversary. From left to right: Kenneth, Janet, Lester, Corrine, Raymond (my father), Esther, Lenard, Jerald (Dan’s father), and Maynard. Janet and Kenneth remain.
My great grandparents settled in Penn Township. It may have even been my great-great grandparents. I will need to check on that. At the time that my great grandparents were too elderly to continue farming, my grandfather, Christ, took a wife, Laura, and continued farming while taking care of his parents within the family farm home. As Christ and Laura took the elderly role of the Penn Township farm, the youngest son, Jerald and his wife Marian, took up the reigns as Christ and Laura remained in the family farm home. It was by no means a large home. One bedroom on the main floor and three in the second floor.
Today, Dan at the age of 52, is the next in line and had taken the family farm and continues the heritage. Dan’s parents both died at fairly early ages. Dan has two sisters that are not involved in farming. Dan has never married. What has happened is Dan’s father’s identical twin sister is a widow and lives in a small town only eight miles away. More days than not Aunt Janet drives out in the forenoon to pick up the slack in the house. Dan fixes a huge breakfast for him and the hired hands after the livestock chores. It is a late breakfast. There is no noon meal or three o’clock coffee break. Supper is eaten before the evening livestock chores. Dan milks 120 dairy cows with another 50 head of stock in various stages. Monday, I did hear chickens as they pecked and scratched here and there and everywhere. Dennis had walked the farm site and there were also hogs on the farm place.
Monday, after the threshing was done, I helped Dan’s aunt, and she is also my aunt, get supper ready. There were seven of us to prepare for. Aunt Janet and I had gotten a pork roast into the oven earlier in the afternoon. It was a down-on-the-farm supper of pork roast, boiled potatoes with gravy, creamed cucumbers, broccoli and a baked dessert. Later on Dennis made a comment to me that a peck of potatoes would not go very far at that supper table after a hard days work.
We stayed long enough for me to help Janet do up the dishes and put away the extra chairs. I took the time to look through the downstairs rooms. I had spent many summer vacations in that house and even more so after Jerald and Marian began a family and I could be a go-for, for my uncle and his wife. Go for this and go for that. The wall papers on the walls have not changed in 65 years. The linoleum on the floors is the same. Dan is a very progressive farmer and has grown the 160 acres into 700 acres that he owns. Among the farm implements, Dennis counted seven different tractors, two mixer mills for grinding feed and a skid-steer loader.
Dan still preserves the traditions of his fore fathers. Last Friday after the evening milking, he and the hired man butchered three hogs and got them prepared to put into the walk-in cooler for the night. This cut up pork would be divided among him and his siblings and perhaps others as they tackled the job on Sunday afternoon. Saturday morning he and the hired man left after morning chores and drove to a destination close to the Nebraska boarder to pick up a six-week-old male pure-bred white German Shepard puppy, named Roscoe, to add to the farm and keep the two-year-old female Molly, also a pure white pure-bred German Shepard, company. They are both registered with the American Kennel Club. Dan’s 16-year-old niece did the 120 milk cow milking that night alone as well as the other livestock chores. An amazing fete that Dennis is still scratching his head over. A 16 year old who loves going out for track and basketball, staying on the honor roll and being able to step into Dan’s farming operation. Alisson did say it was the best part time paying job she could imagine. Her dream is to become a vet. I am sure sometimes during the summer it is a full time job.
Here is the kicker. Before Dan left for the puppy trip, he told niece Alisson to go into the house at three in the afternoon and turn on the oven to 300 degrees as he had huge roasters of lard to render out. By the time he would get home it would be ready to put the liquid lard into crocks and let it come into the solid form. You know . . . . he had that time frame down pat from previous times. You also know there will be lots of homemade baked goodies coming out of that huge kitchen oven with the lard giving it a taste that no cooking oil could achieve. With the help of my Aunt Janet, there is a lot of canning and freezing of produce as the garden brings the goodies to perfection. Dan’s married sisters love coming and raiding his fruit cellar where the rows of jars are standing tall and the freezers are overflowing.
This November Aunt Janet is going to be 84. Dan’s life will change so dramatically in time to come. It has been close to mother and son rather than aunt and nephew all these years.
As I mentioned, Dan is preserving traditions that have gone on in this farm home over the last 100 plus years. It was nothing that had to be learned. It is the day-to-day living that was handed down from one generation to another just as natural as breathing. Monday, it was if I was back in time at the age of seven standing beside my grandmother Laura, helping with peeling potatoes and cucumbers as soon as Grandpa Christ and Uncle Jerald would be sticking their feet under the table, waiting for supper. Priceless!