Brewer Chronicles - Men Worked Hard on Walnut Ridge



You would find no wimps farming on Walnut Ridge. It was mostly 24/7 of physically demanding and frustrating work. Did I mention that the pay is awful?

Unlike the ‘river bottom farmers’, most of the work is done at a steep angle – up, down, and/or sideways. The laws of physics are tested daily. In addition, there seems to be an abundance of roots and rocks (thanks to the glaciers, they ended up on the ridges). The fields are not neat rectangles so planning for the plowing requires a PhD in mathematics and triangulation.  The trick was to identify the route through the middle of the field, plow circles around that, and end with a single lap at the end. If it was done right, you didn’t have to make strange routes through the field. Dad was a genius at this. I apparently did not inherit this trait. Not only that, but I managed to slice off the last joint of my left pinky while taking the plow from the tractor. That was one of many times that I got the ‘stink eye’ from Dad since I had to take time for Dr. Huckleberry to operate on it and lost a few hours of corn planting. (Dad had the champion ‘stink eye’).

Farming is a complex game that makes all present computer games sophomoric. Indiana weather has a cruel sense of humor. (“I will warm up the ground in February to trick the plants and weeds to start growing, dump a LOT of rain in March, create a drought in April, have a blizzard in early May, rain every other day in May and June, then not rain again until August MUAHHAHAHA!”) .

Our farm was the equivalent of Walmart grocery. We sold beef cattle, dairy (milk and cream), hogs, chickens, apples, peaches, grapes, raspberries, plums, blackberries,  tomatoes (acres of them), potatoes, corn, garden vegetables, wheat, soybeans, alfalfa, walnuts, hickory nuts, and squirrels. Did I mention a LOT of firewood?

There was a secret to all of that – wonderful neighbors. The cooperation and assistance of fine neighbors made a lot of miracles happen. Even without telephones, they always managed to show up when help was needed. Help was traded without anyone maintaining a ledger. The only place that I have seen such relationships was during my vacation in Vietnam. They also had each other’s back. I learned a lot about life just watching this happen.

This was especially obvious in the hay fields. Gaming the weather to cut, rake, and bale the hay between rains and scheduling with the traveling baler while coordinating with the neighbors was quite the challenge. If you haven’t worked in the hay fields, be VERY thankful.  On the other hand, that is a big part of my heritage that taught me a lot as well. For one, it taught me to respect that people that do this. This is HARD work that is embellished by snakes and those damned sweat bees that gather in your arm pits. Did I mention chiggers?

After the baler did its work, the bales had to be stacked on the wagon (I kept the job of driving the tractor pulling the wagon as long as I could) VERY carefully since you never wanted to unload and re-stack a dumped load (I learned the tricks of ‘tying’ the bales through staggering their directions). My favorite way of getting the bales into the barn used a tractor or horse to pull a rope fastened to big set of steel hooks that were raised by pulleys up to the peak of the barn, trip the catch, travel along a rail at the top of the roof, and drop the bales when the rope was yanked. The dreaded method was to unload the bales from the wagon onto an elevator, be positioned inside the barn to remove the bales, drag them to position, and stack them neatly against a hot tin roof in a Hoosier July (I do not remember anyone getting frost bite doing this). It seemed like an endless cycle of helping the neighborhood do the twice yearly hay harvests.

In my early years, one of the major events was the wheat harvest. This was before the magic combines. It began with Dad rubbing a straw head in his hands to determine whether the wheat was mature and dry enough. When ready, Dad would harness our two horses (Baldy – the mellow one and Jude – the psycho) to the steel wheeled mower and cut the stalks close to the ground. Neighbors and hired hands would then gather them into bundles and stack them into ‘shocks’.

The exciting part was hearing this HUGE steam driven tractor coming down the lane pulling the ‘threshing machine’.  This massive chunk of engineering moved at about 5 mph so its presence was well orchestrated to schedule it with the harvests of our neighbors. That also made it possible for the neighbors to assist. The threshing machine removed the wheat from the shaft, separated it from the stalk and chaff, blew the straw into a stack, and deposited the wheat into a wagon.

On threshing days, Mom would work all morning preparing a feast for the crew. Multiple chickens would lose their heads, soaked in boiling water, feathers plucked, gutted, cut, breaded, and fried in lard (the best part) with associated chicken gravy. Ham or pork shoulder would be fried. Biscuits would be baked. Green beans would be prepared from the garden, Potatoes would be both fried and mashed. Gallons of lemonade would be ready. The ravenous appetites would be followed by an hour under the big ash shade tree in our front yard before going back to work. Mom would do dishes all afternoon.

Later years were easier. My uncle Harry Bottroff traveled the countryside with his HUGE John Deere combine to harvest the wheat, barley, and oats. It magically cut the stalks, separated the grain from the heads into the bin, and scattered the straw behind it. What had taken days before now took mere hours. The bins were loaded directly into the truck to travel to the storage bin and/or the market. This was determined by a complex game called ‘the futures’.

During my first eighteen years, our family took only one ‘vacation’ where we went to the Muscatatuck River in Haleysburg for a week, borrowed some boats from Doc Williams, and camped out along the river. Oh, I forgot to mention that we had to tend to the animals each morning and evening during this week, but it DID seem like a fun vacation.

Otherwise, (in addition to caring for the animals) our time was spent fixing fences (pigs are ingenious at finding weak points in fences), building stuff, cleaning fence rows, pulling weeds from crops, cleaning stables, fixing and maintaining equipment, castrating, and many other tasks Dad would dream up.

Corn harvests were especially trying. The long periods without summer rains would delay the corn maturity until the frost.  With alternating rains and frosts, it was often in very late fall or winter before all of the corn could be in the bins. If you haven’t ridden a corn picker on an early frosty morning, you have missed a growing experience. For some reason, Dad put a lot of our corn in the barn loft. Yeah, I can still feel those sore muscles from lobbing scoops of corn three feet over my head into the loft.

You really get to experience the circle of life on the farm. The joys of the newborn pigs and calves were offset by the usually awful weather that happened at the same time. No matter how nice you make a farrowing pen, the sow will undoubtedly have her litter in a brush pile in the back corner of the pasture after 10 PM on a windy and sleeting night. Gathering the piglet and moving them into the farrowing pen should be an Olympic event. Carefully putting the piglet into the basket while Dad distracted the sow had to be handled deftly so they wouldn’t squeal. Otherwise, you ended up dancing with a very angry protective mommy that can easily rip you apart. Then, you had to get the mom to follow you to the pen in spite of her intent. I always hated it when Dad would say “Make one of them squeal”. That created instant bedlam that I have blanked the details from my mind. I think I spent half of my childhood doing this. Safely in the pen, the attitudes change quickly. Soon, you are on your butt, playing with the piglets crawling into your lap. Likewise, the joy of having a baby calf butting you lightly so that you will scratch it is beyond words.  They all soon have their names on your heart. These are at the top of my ‘favorites’ list. 

Animals are a huge responsibility. They eat and drink a LOT!  The animals had to have sufficient water (some were in pens without access to a pond so it had to be hand pumped, carried a hundred yards, lifted over the fence, and make a run for the troughs). Dad had a stringent rule – we don’t eat until the animals are fed. This happened in the morning and again at night. In between, the corn and hay were jockeyed around to feed them. The animals knew the schedule and held us to them. They expected to be petted as well.

I learned to carry hay bales, sacks of corn, and two simultaneous 5 gallon buckets of water at a young age. Getting food and water into the pens for ravenous 150 pound pigs prepared me for football even though I never got the chance to play. Avoiding flying cow hooves really honed my reflexes while spreading straw in the stalls (and conditioned me to pain a few times).

A painful reminder that this was a farm followed. The mature animals were culled, loaded into a truck, and taken to market. No matter how many times that happens, it cuts deep (although the old farmers denied it, I noticed their expressions).

The circle is complete.

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