The Desk and the Rat

I believe I mentioned the backroom of the farmhouse in the past.

Originally it was the kitchen area with a big old cookstove. 

You would come in the back door to this room to warm

yourself by the fire in the winter, and dry your clothes and boots! 

Or when you awoke on a cold morning would hustle down
one of the many staircases to get warm.
There was a narrow back stairs that came down directly here too. 

So now it was kind of a catch all room. 

There were the laundry tubs at one end 
...and the washing machine. 

A big double freezer in the middle. 
Various boxes and cabinets here and there.

And the big roll top desk at the other end. 

The desk had history. 

The family had been in the printing business 
for three generations. 

This was the great grandfather's office desk when 
he printed a local Ohio town newspaper. 

It came to pass that there was rustling heard in the clutter of the back room. 

The Old Farmer observed papers chewed up in the desk drawer

for the makings of a nest! The hunt for the miscreant was on! 

Of course all of us were in on it including the old beagle, our hunting dog,

perhaps we were supposed to circle the area so the "mouse" would be cornered. 

The Old Farmer's weapon of choice was a broom. 

He cautiously opened the lower desk drawer. 

Out burst the mouse who had transitioned into a RAT!

All chaos broke loose, the Old Farmer swiped at it with the broom,
the dog leaped forward, the rat ran between leaping feet, scurried

around the boxes, the Old Farmer all along trying to smack it with 

the broom, while usually hitting the dog who was right in the fray. 

Eventually the culprit was back in the corner behind the desk and
was dispatched to the great beyond.

Church Life

The Old Farmer's Wife was a good catholic. 

And the Old Farmer loved her so he promised to
go to church with her and raise the children as catholics too.

The Old Farmer and his wife were active community members

and both belonged to the church societies.
 The men of the church belonged to the Holy Name Society.
And the women had the Rosary Altar Society.

The men did the barbecuing at the yearly church dinner.
And helped run the lawn fete. This involved building booths
and running the games, there were darts and balloons, with one
small balloon in the middle for a bigger prize.
And the venerable ping pong ball in the goldfish bowls.
Pounding in a nail with hammer, can you do it in one blow!?

The women cooked and served family style at the church dinner.
They had a rotation for cleaning the church and bringing flowers in. 

My funny memory of the ladies was the teas at our house.
One older lady was something of a diviner.

I may have mentioned the Old Farmer's Wife had a teacup
collection and when she held the tea was proud to use these.
(No? well we will get to it!~)

She went out to buy loose leaf tea special.
And the diviner would read the tea leaves.
This always struck me as incongruous.
But it was "just for fun".

All Hallow's Eve Memories

I look out the window and see the leaves falling

The spiders are weaving the webs around the front door. 

I think the season calls for leaving the webs through the end of the month.

Why you ask? Its soon to be All Hallows Eve!

My mind wanders back to Halloween on the farm.

We always carved the pumpkins and roasted the seeds. 

The Old Farmer would get the pumpkins started by cutting out
a round lid with a notch to fit it in place. And carefully

held the knife on an angle inwards so the lid was beveled
to fit and would not fall in!

The pumpkins went out at sunset with a candle inside.

Then there was the year
The Old Farmer made a pumpkin man
to sit in a chair out by the road.
He stuffed an old pair of overalls with straw
and put him in an old pair of boots.
And he had a spooky pumpkin head. 

Something dark and scary happened overnight
and in the morning his parts were scattered to all corners. 

Halloween did not disappoint.

Fall Leaves and Walnuts

Does it feel like fall yet? 

Are the leaves blowing in the wind?
Is there a chill in the air?

On the Old Farm there was a front woods

and a back woods. 
There were beech trees and ash trees and oaks and maples.
There was a chestnut tree. And english walnuts.

The Old Farmer's children as children all over the world
would collect the prettiest fall leaves they could find.
Beech leaves were yellow. 

Maples were red and golden. 

We would bring our samples home and the Old Farmer's Wife
would iron them between sheets of wax paper to preserve them. 

Then off to school for show and tell. 

And oh the bounty of walnuts. 

We would collect a basket full and spend

an evening in front of tv cracking shells and separating

the nuts into a bowl. 

These would make wonderful coffee cakes in the coming months.

 A RECIPE
This recipe is an easy quick coffee cake we learned in 4-H.
1 1/2 cups sifted flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup shortning
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup milk
Grease bottom of 8" x 8" x 2" baking pan.
Sift and measure flour. sift together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.
And shortening and cut in with pastry blender or fork.
Add beaten egg and milk. Spread in greased pan.
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp flour
2 tsp cinnamon
4 tbsp butter
1/2 cup chopped nuts
Mix topping ingredients and sprinkle over cake mixture.
You want it on chunky so it sinks and and forms pockets of deliciousness.
If spread evenly and thin it will not work.
Bake at 350' for 30-35 minutes, serve hot!

How We Got a Farm

I heard a story.

The Old Farmer got a deal on the farmhouse.
He had a growing family. The proposed house was in disrepair. 

An old gentleman lived there. He had an old horse. 

An arrangement was made that the old gent

would continue to live upstairs

and the Old Farmer and his family would live
in the downstairs and renovate as time allowed.
He had his farm! 

 

It was a grand old farmhouse, 

made for entertaining.
With double doors between rooms
that could be opened to make a large space. 

The whole ground floor could be opened 

but for the back room,

which had the huge wood cookstove

 and washtubs 

and a swinging door.

The plaster was coming loose from 

the lathe in several places.
A couple times a large section fell

 and it was luck for no one to be

 under when it happened.

 The Old Farmer's wife,
expecting a child was under one 

such fall, and had moved aside just 

before catastrophe might have struck. 

Over the years new drywall was 

put up and walls were papered. 

The Old Farmer's Wife made her personal project
stripping the paint off the main staircase railing and posts.
It was a beautiful thing of black walnut when done. 

That project took several months.
I can still see her sitting there step after step, 

moving upward as she worked on each piece.

The Bedtime Story

 

TV was not such a big part of life in the 50s.
Of course most homes had  ONE TV,

 ONE black and white TV.
And they had children to change the channels!

But storytime was very important at bedtime. 

The Old Farmer would sit between 

the two twin beds after we were all settled. 

He made up delightful stories 

about a little girl's adventures
for his little girls. 

One time he was going to read us a book, 

one chapter each night. 

I suppose the plan was that we would be eagerly looking forward to the rest of the story and go to bed without a fuss. 

I think the chosen story was 

Treasure Island.
I think I usually fell asleep 

before the end of each chapter. 

  

But the bedtime story taught us all the adventures
one might find between the pages of a book
and we all became voracious readers in our farm family. 

Good night Daddy.

The Old Road is Widened

The time came when the old crumbly one lane road was to be widened.
To a two lane road with no lines, but wide shoulders and ditches. 

This was BIG.

 
I think I mentioned in a previous blog how the pond came to be.
The state road people needed some fill for the new road
and asked The Old Farmer for it. Win Win!

 
Along the road in front of the orchard was a row
of old rough looking pines. They were taken out.
The Old Farmer's children went exploring along the destruction
and found a nest of baby owls had been upset from a hollow tree.

We were sorry for them.
But it was farm life, in those days nature fended for itself.
I was a young toddler so did not have the say to try and rescue them. 
Perhaps the mother herded them to a safe place....
That is the end of that sad story.

Old Advertising

 Old advertising was always entertainment when on a road trip.

The best were the Burma Shave signs. They came in a series of five or six

little signs, five or six little blurbs that told a story. 

 On the drive to visit family in neighboring town there was a row of these signs.
Everytime we drove by them The Old Farmer says look at these signs,
what do they say!~ And we would try to read them everytime.
Here is a selection of ones I found funny.

We Don't

  know how

to Split an Atom

But as to whiskers

let us atem

Burma Shave

The Wolf

is shaved

So neat and trim

Red Riding

is chasing him!

Burma Shave

 

If Harmony

is what

you crave

 get a tuba

burma shave

Toughest

whiskers

in the town

we hold them up

you mow them down

Burma Shave

 
 Said Farmer Brown

who's bald

on top

I wish I could

rotate the crop

Burma Shave

A Family Character

I remember Aunt Garnet...
I was very young. 

Aunt Garnet was known as a character.
I wish I had been older and knew her better.
One day an old MG Midget drove into the driveway
and out climbs a older woman of good girth.
And her adult mid aged son. 

There was no announcement of their impending visit.
They drove from Pontiac Michigan on the spur of the minute.

I guess the son told her to hop in the car, they were going for a drive.
I guess he was a character too. 

Going through Canada it was about about a 5 hour drive.
Aunt Garnet had no luggage, no extra clothes, no under garments extra!

The Old Farmer's Wife drove into town with me to buy a few necessities for her.
I had never seen undies like those before!

And one day they were just gone again...

Spring Is Just Around The Corner

Well, maybe spring is here and after last weeks post

about planting by the signs it seems a good time to

segue into how The Old Farmer planted his garden.

The old garden had been plowed under in the fall.

So come the spring it is plowed again to loosen up the soil,

disced the break it up and dragged to get out grass.

You had to wait until it wasn't too wet for these processes

or the soil would just clump and get hard.
You would take a handful of soil and squeeze it, if too wet
it formed a tight clump. if just right it was damp but broke up.
Dragging to get out the grass would help minimize how much would grow

competing with your garden (and having to hoe hoe hoe)

 The garden was laid out in neat rows using a long line.
The Old Farmer would hoe a trench along the line,
We would follow setting the seeds or plants
and he would follow and fill it back in.

He starting the rows with the shortest plants and going

to the tallest, which would be at the north end of the garden.
This was the corn so it would not shade whatever was next to it
and so on.

I think this fellow played in the plantain too long. He is all tuckered out!   

Taxes and the Farm Gas Pump

 

I remember The Old Farmer requisitioning the dining room table 

for several days each tax season.

Working a trade and being a farmer was no doubt complicated, 

what with the government paying you not to grow wheat and figuring the acres 

and yield and costs involved and the gas for the tractor...

Gas, now that was interesting...there was an old gravity fed tank 

at the back of the driveway circle. You would crank it up 'til it stopped 

and then reverse the direction and let it flow down, each cycle was one gallon of gas. 

The Old  Farmer kept a log of how much gas he pumped every time 

in a Half & Half tobacco tin kept under the tank.

 Of course I didn't know it then, but I suppose that had something to do with taxes.

Evenings when figuring taxes were frustrating The Old Farmer

 and there were occassional exclaimations, we were warned to play quietly 

and especially not to bother "anyone" with questions. LoL. 

I guess some things never change!

The Old Road

When The Old Farmer moved his family to the farm

it was a crumbling one lane road. 

In the summer us kids roved up and down the road.
There may have been only about 10 houses in 2 miles.
Most to the south end, going up towards the old schoolhouse.

We'd visit the neighborhood kids and play at each others houses.
A favorite place to play was the corrugated steel culvert at the creek.

This was big enough to play in, splashing and slipping

and catching minnows.

Of course there were the tar bubbles
to pop on the chip and seal road

in the hot summer time.
I am sure The Old Farmer's Wife
liked us tracking that in on our shoes :  )

I think that statute of limitations is safely past 

to retell this story...The big hill at the top of the
road came down the escarpment, a land
feature Niagara Falls goes over. 

For me it was famous for The Old Farmer
putting me on his lap to pretend to drive
when coming down the hill to see how far

we could coast! We usually could make it
 past the culvert to the dip in the road where
we could not get up the other side~

The Ice Storm

I remember the great ice storm...  

  Freezing rain came down and built up an inch on trees and power lines. 

No one was going anyplace. The power went out. For three days. 

That was unheard of in those days. Three days! 

Perhaps because there was less population? Things were fixed faster than they are now. Now a storm on that scale you could be out of electricity for 1-3 weeks.

 An electric wire came down by the corner of our woods on the road. 

It was early evening and the wire danced and bounced firey in the dark of night

 against the mirror of ice.

After a couple days we wanted a warm meal and The Old Farmer fired up the grill 

in the basement under an open basement window. He warmed a pot of soup.
And grilled some pork chops. So good!

The house did not freeze with the gravity fed hot water radiators
and the coal fired furnace. Many people took advantage of the offer
of a warm place at the town community center.
And so we survived!

Spring Tonic and Haircuts

Every spring The Old Farmer's Wife 

gave The Old Farmer's Daughters
THE hair cut.

This was not anticipated with glee.
Which made it something of an ordeal.
Then to further torment us the Toni home permanent
became popular.
So we got short curly hair! 

After an hour

and a half of sitting

 getting end papers

and curlers put in,

 saturated with perm,

 timed, rinsed, and conditioned.

                          

                     

Then came the 60s 

and we wanted our hair 

 to be straight.

Big curlers or ironing 

were the solution.

Yes, we laid our heads on the ironing board and ironed away!   Or we used orange juice cans, or with really long hair even a coffee can! as a roller! 

 

I still have not recovered from the humiliation of
The Old Farmer's laughter and attempt
 to get a picture of me.

 Another old way was dosing with cod liver oil.
It was good for everything! (Probably hair too)
Then Dr. Spock came along and said vacinations were better, toss the cod liver oil. 

Now Cod Liver Oil is back. Full of vitamins,
good for the heart, etc. So the old ways are redeemed.
Then it was in a spoon and tasted yechtttt, now we have capsules.

Halloween, What May We Dare! Redux

Leaves under our feet in the cool night air
Full moon in the sky, what may we dare? 

Brooms are flying, beware beware! 

The farm was on a rural country road with neighbors few. 

All the Old Farmer's children would go out together
looking around warily. There were about 7 houses in 1 mile uphill
and 3 houses in the mile to the north. It was a long trek with small reward. 

Then the fire department held a Halloween Party for the children.
There was apple bobbing and a Parade of costumes for different age groups.
One year the Old Farmer's Wife made a costume out of old draperies.
Shades of Scarlet O'Hara. It was a heavy red brocade.

A cane was spray painted silver and a bow tied on. The finishing touch
was a stuffed sheep toy with jingle bells in its ears! 

This costume was a prize winner that year! 

In later years we might go to stay in the suburbs or city
with a cousin and really cashed in on the candy :   )

But the lights of the city do not compare with memories
of the dark country roads!

What is your best Halloween memory?

What was your best costume?

What was your worst deed?!

Barn Number Two Battle of the Yellow Jackets

Barn number 2
This appears to have been the first barn here. 

(Refer to picture in The Three Barns)
It has a standard roof, not gambrel, and the loft door opening
on the right side that was built inside the barn next to it at a much later date.

This barn was a wonderland of old junk.

 

The main floor was the big storage area. Under the "junk wall"
was a work bench. Well the work bench was under more stuff.

You could weave your way through the floor to some barrels full
of old beer bottles, all different brands and sizes with
the original paper labels. On around a bit more was the old stairwell
with no stairs in it, there hung horse collars, hames, leather net. 

A little farther on was the old rocker 

and beautiful door leaning up against a post.

   

Newspapers were piled just inside the door to be recycled
when enough were accumulated.  

One year yellow jackets decided there was a perfect nesting
place down inside the papers. They became somthing of a nuisance
when trying to go in and out of the doorway.
The Old Farmer and his brother devised a plan of attack.
After dark (we know bees to not fly after dark)
they crept down to the barn, The Old Farmer with a can of spray
and his brother with a flashlight to pinpoint the target area.
They soon found out that yellow jackets will fly up a beam of light
from the flashlight! Plan foiled!

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