The Farm's Buildings

At any rate, to get back to my brothers Marold and Verner and their egg hunting duties after our move to the farm. Vincent and I were soon involved with chores that were consistent with our older age. My parents had always had a cow and chickens at the little brown house (at least as far back in time as I can recall) and these activities were increased after our move to the country.

Eventually there were four cows (or more) and these provided enough milk for the family plus cream for selling to the local creamery. My father did some of the milking but it also devolved on me, and later Vincent, to handle this chore in part. Later I think Marold and Verner were involved but this was largely after I had left more or less the farm for good.

During his older years my maternal grandfather, having stopped most of his participation in the physical labor on the farm, did keep up one physical activity, namely pumping water for the stock. The farm had two wells, the lower well being for the stock and the upper, on the back porch of the house, for domestic use. The lower well was deeper and never ran dry even during the drought years — the upper one would on occasion run dry. The pumping of the lower well was a pretty strenuous task — I can recall hardly being able to do it for very long even as a high-schooler. So as long as he did it my grandfather would have had a good bodily workout. Probably the stock in those days, with a full complement of horses for the farm work, would require quite a bit of water.

At the time of my grandfather Peterson’s death, the Peterson farm was really in excellent shape, with a modern house (indoor plumbing and electricity) and good outbuildings. For quite some years my grandfather had actually worked only a little at the farm operations, these being taken over by my uncles — particularly my uncle Carl, though uncles Lawrence and Serenus also figured significantly. Uncle George worked some despite his infirmity, but uncle Milton was really too young by the time he had departed for his schooling.

The family move to Gowrie into the house across from the parsonage after its construction was completed about 1916. This was directly after my grandfather died. The house was largely designed by my uncle Carl and generally it was a comfortable house to live in. The outside was architecturally rather unattractive. The house was built on a lot that my grandfather had bought to store the corn crop on so that it could be readily delivered to the elevator. After the move to town the buildings on the farm suffered from neglect. For a time the house was occupied by my uncle Serenus, his wife Edith and their only child Eugene or at times by renters (who perhaps at times worked for my uncle Carl).

But uncle Carl intended to devote his time and his efforts to his mechanical operations (his threshing and corn shelling projects) and later on after he got the mounted corn-picker for the Farmall tractor, his custom corn-picking. He tended to ignore the upkeep of the buildings. After our move to the farm somewhat more attention was paid to the upkeep and the farm recovered some of its attractiveness. But after my parents move back to the little brown house at the end of WWII, it again suffered from neglect and rapidly deteriorated.

At the time we move to the farm the buildings consisted of the house, the “shanty” behind it (the “summer kitchen” of bygone days), the outhouse (though the house had indoor plumbing, extensive use was made of the outdoor facility), the barn, the granary (the oldest building on the farm), the chicken house, two machine sheds, the pig house, the corn crib, and a structure to keep the rain off the threshing machine.

The pig house and one of the machine sheds were structures dating from the time uncle Serenus was on the farm and interested in raising purebred hogs. The lasted until he decided to forsake farming for the ministry. The farm buildings other than the house had been painted not long before we came on the farm, but the house was sorely in need of paint. Perhaps a couple of years later it was painted — I helped with part of the job, doing the windows.