The Joys of Growing up on A Small Ranch

While my childhood held some rocky spots, I have more fond memories than I have of the rocky road times.

There are memories of family events, that as a child, I took for granted.

Most of my extended family lived in close vicinity as I was growing up. My mother’s family, my dad’s family and my step dad’s family, rarely lived two hours apart during my youth.

I remember moving to the farm when I was in the fourth grade. For my parents raising eight children, (his, hers and ours), I think the farm was a great place to raise children. We learned to be responsible as we fed pigs, chickens and milked cows. We learned to work together doing the chores our parents gave us. Some chores required us to be independently motivated.

There are many activities on a dairy ranch. I believe my mom and step dad were very ingenious in the way they diversified and incorporated these activities to not only make a living for their family, but to also give each one of us fond memories of growing up together and learning work ethics we still use in our daily lives.

Sundays on the ranch are one of the many fond memories I have. We all looked forward to Sundays as this was the day the extended families would come to our house or we would go to their homes.

When the families came to our house, my mother and aunts would spend the morning frying chicken, making homemade dinner rolls, Jell-O salads, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans and cake for dessert to feed between thirty and fifty adults and children. It was a good thing our house was pretty large as some of the relatives would come the day before and spend the night.

While the women were cooking the men would be outside keeping watch over the children. I remember playing softball in one of the fields in front of our house. There were enough kids to have two teams with the parents coaching, the older uncles and cousins would be on the side lines making up an encouraging audience.

We had a horse, named Seavy, that the kids would take turns riding. I remember this horse as being a very smart horse. He was a Shetland/Welsh pony with an ornery disposition, in my opinion.

He didn’t mind when we put on the bridle but the saddle blanket and saddle, were not his favorite accessories. He would bloat up, making it difficult for a child to tighten the girth straps. A saddle not cinched tight would make it too loose to stay in place when mounting, upsetting the unsuspecting kid that tried to use the stirrups to get into the saddle. Most of the time an adult or older cousin was on hand to make sure the saddle was cinched tight.

Once in a while we could actually go for a horseback ride. More likely, this ornery critter would not be in the mood to be ridden. He would take his rider under a low hanging tree branch to brush them off. When he succeeded in unseating his rider he would trot away looking back to see if anyone was going to chase after him.

Another favorite escape of his, to keep from being ridden, was following the fence line, getting as close as possible. The rider would have to move their leg to the top of the saddle to keep from getting hurt. As children, we were not experienced riders, so trying to stay in the saddle was a challenge. Yes, this horse had a mind of his own.

Sometimes, for the real inexperienced rider, he would just stand still. No amount of mouth clicking, heel hitting or rein pulling would make him move. Some of us brilliant children had the idea that if we took a carrot or a piece of hay and put it at the end of a stick, dangling it in front of this stubborn horse, we would maybe get a ride. This little antic worked for about three rides, before Seavy figured it out. We would then have to give him a taste of what we were using, if we wanted to fake him out again.

Whether we had company or not, the chores still had to be done. The relatives, that didn’t have to leave, to take care of their own chores would stay and help us with our chores. We milked 30 head of cows morning and evening, separating some of the milk, saving the cream and feeding the skimmed milk to the calves and pigs. We would feed the chickens and ducks and gather eggs.

Not all of the chickens we raised were laying hens. Some would be butchered for those Sunday dinners. Mom believed in having enough food for her family, so butcher days meant killing and plucking at least 200 chickens at a time. I remember this event as being gruesome and smelly. My mom would wait until her parents could come and stay with us for a few days, to butcher the chickens.

My grandmother was very proficient in wringing the heads of the chickens, when tiring of that, she would use the chopping block and hatchet to cut off their heads. I would curiously stand by watching this. If you have ever been involved in this kind of activity, you know the chickens flop around for a while without their heads while they bleed out.

My grandmother would have to take time out of her head chopping, to laugh at my antics when one of them beheaded chickens would land close to where I was standing. (My children think my snake dance is funny, they have never experienced my response to a beheaded chicken landing near me). That was a story my grandmother enjoyed sharing.

Feeding the calves was another favorite chore. We had bottles and pails with a nipple we fed them from. You always had to watch the calves as they were feeding because they would butt the bottle or the pail, (both of which could fly out of your hand) if you weren’t paying attention.

One of the chores we had to work together on, was mucking out the holding pen and the calves beds. We would divide up, three of us would muck out the holding pen, the other three would take care of the calves’ beds. We made a game out of this chore, seeing who could get done the fastest. As I remember, most of the time it was a tie because being kids we would get to playing. Mom could count on six kids coming to the back door, covered in manure and pointing fingers at the culprit, that started that game. I don’t remember making it into the house, before getting hosed off with water, from the outside faucet. We would then have to remove our clothes on the back porch before going on into the house. The younger ones got to go first meaning the older ones had to freeze while waiting their turn.

My mom had a friend who liked to bring her children out to the ranch about the time we would begin milking. It didn’t take long for her to understand why we didn’t allow others into the milking parlor when the cows were being milked.

My dad had bought a Jersey/Holstein mix cow. He had been informed she produced a “goodly amount of milk”. Now this cow had feet that turned in, with overgrown hooves, so she was not the most coordinated of cows. She had a very bad habit of coughing and splattering manure when she finally got settled in to be milked.

My mother’s friend and her children just had to come into the milking parlor. They of course, happened to be standing behind this cow when she cut loose. We had tried to warn them not to stand where they wanted to stand but they being “townies” couldn’t understand why this spot might be a hazardous place to stand.

Of course they all ran off, crying to my mom, complaining of how the two mile trip back to town was going to be pretty messy and smelly.

“I don’t think I will ever get this smell off of my children or out of my car!” I remember this woman complaining to my mom.

My siblings and I remember incidents like that, as being very entertaining, even though our mom and dad tried to instill in us, to laugh at such things, was rude. We didn’t want to be rude, but we couldn’t understand why the woman wouldn’t listen, when we told her to go outside, and watch us milk the cows through the window. A much safer place to observe from.