We had many adventures and close calls with the farm
animals. One time I was riding my pony,
Sweetie Pie, chasing all of our work horses that had broken out and were in a
far field near the sand hills. We chases them up a hill at breakneck
speed. As we came over the top of he
hill, I was surprised to see a pond o water about thirty feet ahead of us. I jerked on the reins and hollered “Whoa!”,
causing the horse to put on all four legs stiff-legged. The grassy ground was
fairly wet, so we slid toward the pond.
We stopped at the edge, but I slid forward up its neck until I was
sitting astride her neck clear to her ears.
The horses got out another time, probably due to the great
skill of Bird, who could open most gates. All of the horses had gone east
toward Bear River. Dad told me to go
after and bring them home. So I took off
running in a light rain. The horses had crossed the river at the bridge and up
the hill to Fairview. When I finally
caught up with them, they were eating juicy grass at the top of the hill. Then they ran right for about block before
the road turned east again. I thought I could cut across the hay field and get
ahead of them. In angry frustration I started to hurdle the one wire fence,
only to find out in mid air that the fence was electric. What a shock! But the
shock ust have given me increased energy, because I ran like fury through the
wet alfalfa to head off the horses and turn them for home.
One of my most memorable memories was the time that the
horses broke out of the corral and into the pasture across the road from our
house. We were eating breakfast, when,
all of a sudden, Dad jumped up and out the door on the dead run. We watched him
race across the road and over the fence into the pasture out of sight. Pretty soon the work horses came up the hill
and turned into the corral. Then we saw
Snowball come up and veer away from the gate and back into the open field. Just
as she turned, Dad caught her by the tail, and away they went down the hill
with Dad holding on to the tail and taking giant strides caused by the pony
running scared at top speed. A moment
later we saw Snowball and Dad come up the hill, with Dad swishing her tail from
side to side. This time she didn’t head back to the pasture. Evidently, she had had enough of Dad hanging
on to her tail and swishing her from side to side.
Following this amazing performance, I asked Dad about the
danger of flying hooves by handing on to a horse’s tail. He told me that when
he was young, at celebrations or fairs, one of the contests was for men to hang
onto the tails of quarter horses (which are the fastest sprinters among horses)
for as long as possible. So he had confidence that he wouldn’t be hit by our
pony’s hooves.
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Other stories involving the animals can be recalled. My mother was deathly afraid of snakes. One
time a snake, wither garter or blow, got into our house. As I recall, I was sent to capture it and
take it away, but I could not find it (presumably it departed as it had
arrived, certainly afraid of humans), so I pretended to capture I and take it
outside, far from the house to appease my mother.
Usually we milked the cows by hand, which I disliked. Some of the stalls near the door had broken
mangers, so the cows were free to move about, or out One time Dad had finished
his cows at the far end and had released them from the stalls, while I was
still milking near the door. When the
cows began filing out, my cow got excited and backed out, throwing me across
the aisle in the path of the oncoming cows, which made all the cows
excited. They rushed toward the door
with their hooves hitting and missing me. I was stepped on several times,
including my head. I was scared but unable to do anything until they had all
exited. Was I relieved to be in one piece!
One year, big rats invaded the area. They made nests under a large woodpile in our
barnyard. In the morning milking
session, I would peer out the barn door to see the baby rats playing and eating
from the pile of horse manure. There
were so many rats around that Dad decided to destroy them once and for
all. We got our dogs out and armed
ourselves with clubs. Then we started to dismantle the woodpile. One by one the
rats tried to escape, but the dogs were afraid of them. So it was up to Dad and
me, and perhaps Dennis, to club them. We
must have been successful because I don’t remember having seen the rats again.
I recall one day in the barnyard seeing a chicken hawk
flying over us. Then all of a sudden, he dived from maybe 150 feet up straight
down to pullout at high speed and clip a chicken on the neck, severing it
cleanly. Unfortunately for him, I go the
chicken, and we had it for dinner.
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One of my most vivid memories of the farm was the time that
I was raking up tumbleweeds in the field east of our home. Old Maud was pulling
the big dump rake. We would go back and
forth to rake up the weeds that I would dump in a row so that we could burn
them. The ground was hard so that the
big iron wheels would bounce around as we moved back and forth across the
field. In order to finish this task as soon as possible, I conceived a plan to
start a small fire in the tumbleweeds caught by the rake so that the burning
could take place while I was raking. The
flaw in this plan became apparent when I tried to trip the big tines that held
the weeds but the weeds were so tangled that the tines wouldn’t lift high
enough to release the weeds. There were two ways to raise the tines: by
stepping on round trigger with my foot; and by reaching back to a long steel
handle and pulling it forward. Neither
of these methods seemed to free the weeds that were burning right below my iron
seat. The fire was very hot on my legs
and the smoke was suffocating. Since I
was concentrating on trying to raise the tines, and to avoid the heat, I pretty
much ignored Maud. With the reins rather
loose, Maud started to trot (maybe she felt the heat on her hind legs too) which
meant that the rake was bouncing around.
It was getting so hot under me that my rear end was too hot, causing me
to stand up, all the while stepping hard on the foot pedal and/or reaching back
to pull the lever…with no success.
Meanwhile, Maud was trotting faster, in fact she even started to lope,
so that I was fearful of being thrown off the rake that was bouncing all
over. But finally the weeds were
dislodged through our racing around the field in an area where we had already
gathered the weeds. Following my getting control of Maud and stopping the rake,
I sat there, contemplating my good fortune in surviving this crazy escapade,
and vowing that I would not try it again.
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