Yvonne's Memoirs of the Early Years on the Farm!

We use to do our oats by cutting it with a binder that cut the oat’s stalks at their base and tied them into sheaths.   These were dropped along the way behind the binder.  I tried to work the binder but I wasn’t strong enough to release the sheaths after they were tied like they were supposed to be.  I was seven at that time so our father put me on the tractor and he sat on the binder.  We then shocked the oaks, he would prop up four sheaths, I did two more and then the last one capped the shock.  My mother worked by herself.  The binder had canvas on it and I remember my mother mending it on our old treadle sewing machine usually in late July (I still have that old sewing machine!).

In the middle of August we had the thrashers come over, one person owned the thrasher and took it around to each farm in our area.

We killed chickens the day before and my mother was an excellent cook.  Sometimes we had the thrashers for two or more days.  The farmers living in the area were in the thrashing ‘ring’ an each helped the others.

My mother mad big platters of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, and so on and use her finest white table cloth, dishes, silverware for them.   In the afternoon we took sandwiches, coffee and cool aide out to the thrasher.

We had a table outside with a bucket of water and a basin so they could wash up for dinner (dinner in our era was noontime), and the evening meal was supper!

The oats was shoveled into bins, all by hands and they used to put me up there when the oats was getting close to the top of the bin to spread out the oats so more could be shoveled up there.  I did that from the time I was ten.  Horses were used to pull the hayracks.

When I was 14 we started using the small tractor to pull the hay rack and guess who got to drive it?   My dad took me on the thrashing ring to drive it.  I was not well received by the ladies and they made me eat in the kitchen, my first hint of discrimination!

The second time was in high school when I wanted to be in the agricultural class.  I knew as much as the boys and probably worked as  hard or harder.  They talked about breeding and so on and I would embarrass them as if I hadn’t seen it all.

When we were shocking oats i was the first to go home.  Most often I drove the old Model B Ford so I was driving by the age of ten.  Of course I knew how to drive a tractor already.  I never could decently drive an automatic shift car, only the ones that had the toe shifted.

I would saddle my pony or later the horse, and go after the milk cows in the far away pasture and bring them home.  I would drag bushels of feed down from the haymow and feed the milk cows in their stanchions.  I had to carry water to the chickens and hunt the eggs.  We would get over 400 baby chicks in the spring and my job was to take care of them when I got home from school.  I changed the newspapers on the brooder house floor and wash the watering dishes, mix medicine in the water and then fill the water dishes.  I also put special food in little troughs for them to eat from.

We usually raised 200 baby pigs and had three barrels by the tank that we filled with water and mash to make slop for the pigs.  When I was twelve on I slopped the hogs, brought more mash from the bard to get ready for the morning slopping (such a nice word, slopping!).  It fermented nicely in 12 hours.  I guess that made the pigs get fatter quicker and they loved it!  We had 25 milk cows and way in the back pasture we had Herefords or steers!  They stayed out there all summer with their babies and we fed the calves until they weighted about 800 pounds and sold them to a feed lot dealer.

We got a combine when I was about 16 so no more thrashing, it was really great!  No more cutting and shocking, or thrashing.  The oats came out of the combine ready to go into the storage bins.

I drove the horses on the hayrack to gather the hay, then drive the hay-fork to get the hay up into the barn.  

The hay bailer was invented but we still had to go out into the fields and gather up the bales.  One summer when I was 16, we put up 2,400 bales of hay.  My mother and I lifted them all on the wagon and my dad stacked then on the hayrack.  My mother and I, each one end-lifted the bales up.  At this time Chuck was eight but we had him driving the small tractor!  There was lots of yelling in the beginning but eventually he got the hand of stopping in the right spot!

Then we would go up in the haymow and my dad hooked the bales on the hay-fork.  I initially drove horse, then a tractor on the hay rope that pulled the bales to the top of the barn, then hit a track that took them across the haymow where they were released.  My mother worked up there, stacking the bales and then my father would go up and help her finish stacking the bales. If we were lucky, we got a cold drink or the proverbial cup of coffee!  I learned later on this job was one of Chuck's favorites when he got older.  He loved working the huge tines that were used to hold the bales, sometimes twelve at a time, and then getting them from the wagon top up into the barn and then pulling on a release rope to drop them in the right spot!

One thing I never learned to to do the milking.  I really played dumb on that one but I did most everything else.  I cleaned out the manure in the barn but the worst was cleaning out the hen house in the spring.  I can still remember the strong ammonia smell and it also was really dusty stuff.  At least the cow manure was a little moist and no dust!

My mother and dad did the milking and in the evening I usually did the supper.  Sometimes we had scrambled eggs and Span cut into little squares.  Scary, the other day I was homesick and bought a can of Spam!

Breakfast was made while they milked.  I made eggs, bacon, and fried potatoes, but only in the summer.  During the winter milking was done later so I had to get ready for school, pack my lunch and leave at 8:15 to walk a mile and a quarter to grade school.   I took a school bus to high school but didn't get home until after 4:45 PM, a long day.  Then I still had to do chores if corn was being picked in the early part of November usually, a fall thing you know!

We got electricity when I was nine and we were living at the Polo farm. We didn't have indoor plumbing until I was almost 19, this was 1950!   In the summer we took a bath on Saturday night in a square galvanized tub in the kitchen.   We put a copper boiler on the stove to heat water.  Charles got to use the tub first.  I was second, mother third and father was last!  In the winter we did a full bath once a month!  It was just too cold!

 I was around three or four when we got a washing machine!  A great day for my mother.  It was run by a gasoline motor!  In the winter time on the Pecatonica farm, we brought the washing machine, electric by then, into the kitchen to do washing about once a month in the winter.  We would put up lines in the house to hang cloths to dry.  The basement was too dusty since we burned coal in the furnace, way too much coal dust!

We used the old wood burning stove until I was around 11.  We then got a gas stove, using propane tanks. That was another monumental moment.

I can remember when I was around three I decided to start the old stove like I had seen my parents do it!   Just put in cobs, pour in a little kerosene, and throw a match on it!  That was fine but, I stuck my nose down there and when it flared up, it singed the hair on my head and I never did that again.

Later I met my future husband Ken, when working in Rockford Illinois.  I had several jobs, one was at Western Union where I sneaked out one day to have my picture taken.  A little different looking from my eight year old photo!

You can check out the link at the beginning of the Chuck's Life web page at www.charlesbuntjer.com for more information about our growing up on the farm and memories I have from 1932 on!