Of Cows and Pigs

Before leaving for California, I gave myself a two-week vacation at home. I don’t know just what I did, probably just loafed around. Although it was summer and there was farm work to do, I doubt I did any. Don’t even know if I tried my hand at milking a cow — it was probably the last time there was much likelihood of that happening to me. In fact by that time the number of cows may have dwindled so that only one or two remained, simply as a source of milk for the family.

Originally there were four or more, starting after we moved to the farm, as sort of a supplemental source of income for the family (i.e. from the sale of cream). We had had a cow at the little brown house and she (Spotty) along with the cow uncle Carl had (Brownie, mostly Swiss with some admixture) formed the nucleus of the herd.

Spotty was a Holstein. Other cows were acquired either by calving or purchase. Among the more distinctive cows were Dairy Maid (a daughter of Brownie, by one of the neighbor’s Swiss bulls), Buttercup (a purchased Jersey) and Ruby, sort of scruffy cow of nondescript parentage.

Cows are relatively fractious creatures, at least the ones we milked were, and the use of a kicking chain was fairly common. Brownie and Dairy Maid were most likely to kick when being milked but for me it was only Spotty who ever got her back foot into the milk pail.

Several years ago at an antique show at the Medford armory I spotted an old rusty kicking chain. Since it was priced at only $2 I bought it and I think I gave it to Vincent as a joke. I’m sure he appreciated it.

To get the cream required a cream separator and uncle Carl bought an old small-sized De Laval cream separator. After the milk was strained it was run through the separator (which was operated manually and the cream was accumulated in a 5-gallon cream can. About twice a week this was lugged out to the side of the road where it was picked up by the cream hauler and taken to the creamery in Gowrie. There were two cream routes, one of which was run by Vernoon Telleen, a member of my high school class and who grew up on a farm about a quarter of a mile to the east of the Peterson farm.

For payment for the cream we received butter plus cash for the remainder. Butter was of course a much used staple in our house. The skim milk went several ways, the most of it going to feed one or two hogs (also purchased by uncle Carl for that purpose). My mother used to make cottage cheese, whether it was from skim milk or whole milk I don’t recall. On occasion we would churn some butter by hand — whether this was when there was not enough cream to warrant a stop buy the cream hauler or not I don’t remember. I also don’t know where the hand church came from — it just arrived on the scene. I’m sure my mother did not have it, perhaps it had been used by my grandmother and had been stored away somewhere in the house in town. But I remember sitting on the screened back porch on the farm turning the handle and waiting for the butter to coagulate.

We always had names for the cows and calves. One really superb cow was called Susan —like Dairy Maid an offspring of Brownie by a neighbor’ brown Swiss bull. Then there were the twin calves John Deere and Farmall and such other calves as Edna St. Vincent Millay. Quite a few of the calves were sold for meat and never made it to the milking stage. Of course about half were bull calves.

Sometime after I left the farm for good there was an accident and most of the cows did not survive. Adjacent to the barnyard where the cows roamed freely was the old granary and at one time there were soybeans stored in the side facing the barnyard. The granary was old and decrepit and it developed a leak so that soybeans were spilled into the barnyard. The cows ate them to excess and I guess their digestive systems couldn’t handle the rich fare. My impression was that this accident sort of ended keeping more than just a cow or two to keep a supply of milk for the family.

I’ve often thought about the standards of cleanliness when we were milking cows and selling cream. It certainly wasn’t at a level that would be tolerated nowadays. We would only wash the cows’ udders before milking if they really needed it and I remember seeing little bits of straw etc. floating in the milk before it was strained. Actually with proper cleanliness sit shouldn’t be necessary to strain the milk at all but it was part of the procedure all the time we had a cow or cows, from the time we lived in Gowrie on through the days on the farm.

At least some of the pigs to which the skim milk was fes received names and in particular I recall one old sow whom we called Dracula. I remember her getting loose from the pig pen and the chase to get her corralled again. I suppose that some of these pigs were slaughtered for family use, but I remember only one specific case. Uncle Carl did the butchering. I steered clear of the whole operation because of my innate squeamishness at the sight of blood. I think I was supposed to assist but I just sort of drifted off and as there appeared to be sufficient help from other persons I wasn’t looked for.

I think my friend John Woodard was present (his uncle Will Lines was also there) and John described to me afterward in somewhat graphic terms what had transpired. I was glad that I had not been on the scene. On this occasion I can’t recall my mother canning meat or making salt pork as she had done once in the little brown house (I suppose when the Depression had really affected the family). But it was a time for making such meat items as gryn with the availability of pig’s liver.

I have the impression that the slaughter of a pig periodically was probably the practice in the Peterson household as my mother was growing up. But I also have the impression that the slaughter of a steer was not done though I’m sure that other farmers in the community did. I don’t know for sure though if my impression was correct or not.