The Dairy Farm-Filling Silo-Cows are People too-Excepting Christ- Russian Sputnik-Puttin up Hay

The Dairy Barn on the Dairy Farm

THE DAIRY FARM-----I think we moved to the dairy farm  by the Chicaskia River when I was in the 8th grade.   We milked about a dozen cows by hand.  With dad working away from home it was Arlene & My job to do the morning  milking  before the school bus came & before dark. Alan was pretty young so he may have milked 1 cow.  Arlene milked maybe 2-3.  I being the oldest, milked the rest.  After a couple years dad bought Surge vacuum milkers that hung on a strap under the cows belly.  We put the milk in milk cans that were put in water coolers &  picked up by Adrian Crews.  Later we built the concrete milk barn, put in a pipeline milk system & a large bulk tank.   A tank truck picked up the milk,  owned by R.R. Keller from Harper, Ks.     

Puttin on milkers

     The milking years has many stories.  Filling Silo was a big ordeal.  We went together with 3 other Dairy Families, Uncle Kenny Stitt, Kerry Creed & Pete Peterson, that way we had lots of trucks to haul the silage.  Dad and Kenny had field cutters.  Everyone had their own silage blowers for putting it in the silo.  Our silo was 60 feet high the others were only 45 or 50.  Our blower pipe was put on the back side. I would have to climb the ladder, sit on the top row of brick,  about 2 ½- 3 inches wide, schooch half way round the silo, try to maintain my balance, put the silo pipe into the proper place & wire it down.  I did that for many years, every year it gave me the Willies.
When we boys, from each family got older, we would go and milk for one of the other families while our dad did our milking  that way families finally could take a few day off and take a nice vacation.

      SUMMER HELP--- Mom had polio as a teenager & had trouble walking all her life.  So cousins of mine,   Sandy Littchum & Francis Stitt & maybe Cinda Spoon came during the summer & helped mom.  Sandy came the most, I don’t remember how many years but quite a few.  I had forgot the incident but after Mary & I had been married several years  Francis told a story at a Stitt Reunion about how one day I had got angry at her & locked her in the Chicken House when she had gone to gather eggs.    I had forgotten  about it but as she told the story I remembered exactly what I  did.  I was upset with her about something so I  locked one door before she noticed, she started for the  door at the other end  but  I ran as fast as I could & locked the other door.  I guess I left her locked in there almost an hour.

   
  MAKE YOUR OWN FUN--- There are two things I remember doing on the Dairy Farm.  I remember I took a hay sled & made some rails around.  Back then railroad Logos were coming in a Wheaties Cereal Box on a little metal plate.  So I wired or nailed lots of them to the rail, I either built benches on it or put some chairs on it.  I hooked it to the ford tractor & I would pull Alan & Arlene around the pasture pretending it was a train.  I don’t remember if I rode it or not.  Arlene might have been  big enough to drive, but I wouldn’t have let her drive much.  Another fun thing involved the big red barn down the hill from the house.  We always filled it with hay, in the spring when the hay was getting low we would either build a Fort out of the bales and pretend it was a Frontier Fort or we would make tunnels and rooms. We would turn a row of bales on edge & far enough apart they would just barely hold a bale crossways, making the tunnel as wide as possible.  I think the rooms were open topped, several bales high & wide,  maybe the room were supposed to be Castles & the tunnels secret passages. During the winter Dad would make a big sled and pull us over the snow on the small hill in the pasture.   Dad would pull the sled with the pickup or Ford tractor.

 

      RUSSIAN SPUTNIK—The first satellite to orbit the earth was Russia’s Sputnik in 1957.  I am not sure but I think I saw it while working the fields over at the dairy farm.  It was shortly after dark when I was making rounds around the field when I noticed a glowing object in the sky, moving very slowly it seemed.   At first I thought it was a plane and then I knew it wasn’t because it did not have the shape & lights airplanes have.  Then I thought it might be a star but it didn’t really look like one, I knew it couldn’t be a meteorite because it was moving to slow.   it looked more like a toothpaste cap, large on one end and narrowing down to the other.  Then I began to doubt it was moving, the field was getting smaller as I made rounds with the springtooth, so I figured I was the one doing the moving. But I finally was sure that it was moving whatever ever it was as by now it had moved a 3^rd of the way across the sky.  It was a few nights later when I doing the evening milking & listening to the radio in the Dairy Barn when I heard on the news that the Russians had launched a satellite a few days earlier & it was orbiting the earth.  So I concluded that what I had seen a couple nights before was Sputnik.

   

   FILLING SILO---Dad and Uncle Kenny had silage cutters, Dad a Papec, Uncle Kenny a John Deere.  Each one would cut two jobs.  If they weren’t cutting they drove a truck.  Kerry, Pete & I would  drive a truck & dump trucks in the silo blower or run the tractor, driving up & backing down to pack silage in the Trench Silo.    Everyone drove the truck the same & I started learning in High School.  For a short time you set in the cab when you could see through the back window, when the truck started filling up you adapted the following procedure.  You opened the door & stood up with one leg  on the running board.  The other leg was stretched across the truck so you could reach the accelerator.  With one hand you hung on to the door so you wouldn’t fall out & the other operated the steering wheel.  You weren’t supposed to let  any silage blow over or on the side of the truck bed onto the ground.  But you were supposed to speed up & slow down, pull over & pull back and fill every little spot in the truck with silage.  When I first was learning I had a terrible time.  Stretching the foot across made it difficult to regulate the speed.  If the field was bumpy and you might start a lurching motion, jump FORWARD then BACK, UP-BACK, UP-BACK.  That would affect the operating of the foot feed.  You’d automatically push down, and then have to let up.  PUSH DOWN-LET UP, PUSH-DOWN-LET UP.  Sometimes the truck would die  if you were heavily loaded, before you could get in the truck you got hit with a blast of silage from the cutter & the Tractor/Cutter driver would have to stop, they didn’t like that. The other problem was turning corners.  The truck had to make a bigger swing so you had to speed up to catch everything & then slow down so you didn’t get over shot.  That was tedious. 

    Uncle Kenny, Pete & Us also had trench silo, which had its own technique system.  We put Corn Silage in the Silo & forage sorghum in the Trench Silo.  Not everyone put up corn silage. After a few dumps there was a big pile & you would drive out on the pile, lift the bed & then go roaring down slope of  feed to make sure it all came out.  To pack it you drove a tractor up & down the pile of silage.  If it got really steep it could make you nervous. 

        About the Corn Silage, the silo was in our cow lot by the Milk Barn.  As the silage settled & compressed the juice out of the Corn it drained out the bottom of the silo in a little stream.  It had a fermented smell.  We had a couple of cow that really liked to guzzle the juice when it reached a certain point every silo filling.  I never saw them staggering around, but they would really suck it up.

 

puttin up hay

      PUTTIN UP HAY---One chore I will always remember was bringing hay bales in out of the field.  We never had a 4-wheel hay trailer, we brought bales in by pickup or an old homemade trailer I had welded together that had been an old truck bed.   When a rain was coming we would put hay bales every where on the pickup.  on the cab roof, the front fenders. We even put a few bales on the hood leaving only a narrow strip of window to look out of to drive from the field to the barn.  Another thing about hay bailing was that I got hurt playing football my Junior year in High School.  I was on crutches for 10 month & the leg always hurt when a weather change was coming.  We would listen to the weatherman in the milk barn and try to decide if we should cut and bale hay before rain came. Just a day or two before a rain my leg would start to hurt.  The weatherman would say no rain, we would cut hay &  before the hay was dry enough to bale & get out of the field it would rain.  Often when the weatherman was predicting clear weather I would say, “I don’t know dad, my legs been hurting, I think it’s going to rain before we can get the hay in” and  it would.  Dad & I finally started cutting hay by whether my leg was hurting or not.  It was quite often more accurate than the weatherman.  We’d pull a sled behind the baler.  Stack 18 bales or so & then use a long pipe to slide them off.  Then we’d load all the stacks on the homemade trailer to haul to the barn.   

     

  A SICK COW---- Over the years we learned that the cows had personalities.  One of my favorite stories is about a cow named Dolly.  She was not milking at the time and got sick and was lying down & couldn’t get up.  We had the Vet out to doctor her, she would lay in the cow lot wheezing terribly, I would carry her food & water twice a day & make a big fuss over her, patting her head & talking to her.  Usually I approached from the front & she always was breathing terribly.  One day I came up from the back & she could not see me.  I thought it was Dolly but she was breathing normally, so I thought that couldn’t be Dolly, but when I got where she could see me she started wheezing terribly.  I thought  “Old Gal, I’ve been hauling food and water to you for 2 weeks and there is nothing wrong with you anymore.”  So I slapped her on the rump pretty hard.  She jumped up off the ground and that was the end of her sick spell. 

    
  COWS ARE PEOPLE TOO-------The cows all had personalities when it came to milking time.  When you opened the holding pen gates there were the  'Chargers' who would run to the milk barn to be the first one in the milk barn to get feed.   We had 4 stalls,  2 on each side, one behind the other & after they were filled & doors were closed, the late ‘Chargers’ became 'Door Pounders'.  They would stand & butt the door until the doors were opened to let 4 more cows in.  Some of the smarter ones learned to be 'Door Openers’, & used their nose to push the doors open which were on rollers.  Sometimes this was OK and sometimes not.  If the two cows in back were done eating but not done milking they might back out with the milkers on & they would fall off causing a mess.  Or the ‘Door Opener’ would crowd in along side the other cow to get to the feed.    Some of the smaller cows actually fell  into the pit where we operated the milkers a time or two.  Then there were the 'Lingerers'. They would hang back & not  come in the milk barn.  Most you could fool by pretending to put more feed in the stall.  One cow named 'Julie'  figured out I wasn't  adding any grain & she had to see the grain leaving the can & running into the  feed box before she would come in,  but that was OK as she was one of the best milkers and producers so I figured she deserved the added grain.  Her udder was up high, much of it in her stomach.  She let down milk quickly and all quarters milked out at the same time.  On some cows every quarter finished at a different time and you had to take the milkers off one cup at a time, as suction on an empty quarter would cause udder damage.  When you got to 1 or 2 quarters you had to stand & hold the milkers so they wouldn’t fall off.       For some no amount of enticing would get them in the milk barn and you would have to crawl out of the milking pit up onto the floor where the cows stood and go out of the barn go into the lot and drive them into the milking parlor.  Which often earned them a good swat on the rump, but they never learned.

    As  Alan became older he showed Julie in the 4-H Fairs, She loved the show ring.  Dairy showmen walked backwards,  beef showmen lead walking forward & set up their steer with a show stick.  With dairy animals you used pressing your thumb behind their front shoulder to move them backwards, or pull on the halter lead so they  would step forward.   You wanted the udder showing on the side where the judge was standing.  Julie knew the exact size step to take.  It only took her one step, with most cows it took both pushing and pulling.   Fathers would spend an hour milking each quarter at the fair so they looked uniform.  Not with Julie.  Dairy Judges always talked about how desirable a uniform and good milking udder was.  Because Julie carried her udder high she never placed top in Class, it didn’t look like she gave a lot of milk.  I decided Dairy Judges wouldn't know a good milk cow if one stepped on their foot.  But Julie always won the Showmanship Contest.  She loved the show ring and was a perfect show cow.  You could take her out & practice.  She would tolerate that for a short time and then start acting up wanting to go back into the fair barn.  Only to come out a few minutes later and perform flawlessly in the Showmanship contest.


VACATIONS--I only remember a 2-3 vacations and they were taken when we were living at the Dairy Farm.  On one Steve Littchum went with us.  I think it was the year we went to Colorado.  There is a story to go with that about me being ornery to my sister, Arlene.  We had been driving through the mountains when Arlene had to 'Go'.  We drove a ways not finding anything and she was getting pretty desperate so dad pulled off where there was lots of trees and dad says, ''Go in the trees', which was quite natural for a farm family.  Well, there was a barb wire fence between the car and the trees.  Arlene hurried over and was crossing the fence, but she only got half way over with a leg on each side of the fence when her jeans got caught on a barb and she couldn't get unstuck.  Alan was laughing hysterically & I had started to help her and then an impulse hit me, and I went back to the car to get the camera and take her picture.  Of course she was yelling at me all the time for 'HELP', but I didn't until I had got her picture caught on the barbwire fence.  That picture is in a scapbook somewhere today if I'd look for it.
    Another vacation was to Mt. Vernon & Washington D.C . We saw all the Presidential monuments but what I remember most was driving around and around looking for a parking place, giving up and parking blocks away & then walking to what we wanted to see.  I vowed I'd never go to D.C. again in a car.
   The only other vacation I remember was to Yellowstone Park.  We were limited on time so we visted all the spots very quickly.  We only saw Old Faithful erupt once.  [When Mary, I and the boys went we saw it 5-6 times] We stayed one night in a cabin.  Arlene had gone outside and came back in all scared, excited and hollering,  ''There's a Bear out there!!'' I went outside and there was a little cub scournging in an overturned garbage can.

     EXCEPTING CHRIST---I was a freshman In High School when I accepted Christ as a Personal Savior.  We had moved to town.  The dairy farm was down a path & no cars came by the house.   Mom felt like she was the only person in the world being in the house all day & not seeing anyone go by,  it bothered her so much we moved to town for the winter. We’d drive to the farm morning & night to milk. That year Hershel Thornburg did a series of Special Services at Argonia Friends Church.  He did his chalk drawings and played several instruments, among them the Harp. It was the last Sunday Morning of the Special Services. Mom and Dad had not gone to Church. It was during the Alter Call at the end of the Services that I went forward as did some other people, both young and old.  After the Alter Call instead of going and sitting back down in the pew I went home.  As I went outside the Church I noticed two sensations. First it was like I heard every bird in the world singing, never before or since have I ever heard such a sound. The 2nd thing was that there seemed to be a light brighter than the sun shining.  I remember shading my eyes all the way home. We were living in a on a corner, west across from the Grade School,  I had hurried home to tell mom and Dad about excepting Christ.  It was an experience and decision that affected me the rest of my life.