HISTORY
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- At least once a day some childhood memory
pops up and most
- of those memories are from living on a
dairy farm in rural Pennsylvania.
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- In 1956 our parents purchased a 175 acre
dairy farm outside of Corry, PA. I was 5 years old when we moved,
- with everything packed on an
old truck . We had over 80 head of cattle at one time.
- The old barn was
built in the 1800's had 4 floors...2 silos.
- The farm was the first farm in the area
to have running water from an artesian spring well..
- My parents sold the farm when I was 20
yrs old.
- am over 50 right now and still some
of those memories seem to have happened just yesterday
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Click here to see a Winter picture of the barn.
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- Our parents were renovating
at one time and found old newspapers that were used for insulation in the
walls.
- One newspaper had a headline that Lincoln had been shot.
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Hector
our German Shepard knew every pressure point in the human body, was trained at
a police academy
- but was kicked out of the academy because he hated thunder
and would head for the basement
- every time it rained...breaking a window if he
had to, if we weren't home.
Click here for a full story on Hector
Most of these pictures you see on
this site were taken with a little brownie camera....
Anyone who owns a
farm knows that your whole life revolves around it, the animals come first,
they are the reason you have food on the table and clothes on your back, its a
24 hour job. Everyone in our family had chores to do. Cows needed to be
milked, hay needed to be hauled and yes, we also had to spread manure on the
fields.
When you think about
it the farmer has to constantly deal with cow manure. We had to clean the barn
daily....We had a barn cleaner that took the manure to the spreader. We spread
manure on the fields to help the crops grow.
The barn was huge, it had four
floors, the lower floor held 32 head of cattle, these were the milk cows.
The second floor had heifers and a box stall for our pony (Tinker).
We had an old chicken coop in
back of the house that Dad made into a calf barn.
My brother and I had to take care
of the calves. We threw the manure out through a small window into a manure
spreader.
We all worked hard and had fun at
the same time. I think that's why there are so many good memories.
We eventually rented another farm
down the road ......the manure spreader
went up and down the road a lot.
I remember one winter my dad
hooked the toboggan up to the back of the spreader before he headed out to the
field where there was a huge hill. When we got to the top he unhooked the
toboggan and went to finish his job with the spreader. We put our dog hector
right up front and all 4 of us hopped on the sled and rode it to the bottom of
the hill.
Once in awhile we did our
homework for school, while we were doing chores in the barn, that way we could
ask our Parents questions, if we needed. I remember reading a book on
Abe Lincoln and accidentally dropping it in a pile of manure. We never got
those stains out of the pages..
One Easter Sunday my Aunt and
Uncle came by to visit. My cousins had just come from church and were wearing
nice new suits, we were about 9 and 10 years old then. We were playing in the
barn and my cousin (wearing a nice new blue suit) accidentally slipped and
slid down a trench of manure. My Mother and Aunt quickly went to
work trying to remove the stains on that blue suit, but the stains were there
to stay. The suit was ruined and had to be thrown away..
I could go on and on but I just
wanted to show you why we would use cow manure with t-shirts....when we are
asked that question our answer is always why not?
