Cows

Although Uncle Carl was not a livestock man, he did acquire a herd of cows for we Strand boys to milk. Our dad had brought a cow with him from the small town (Gowrie) that we lived in. Uncle Carl had one too, a brown Swiss, which soon had a calf, “Susan,” which was raised to be an addition to the small herd. As time passed, two Guernseys, a Shorthorn, and a Holstein were added to the herd. Unconventional as he was, he did believe in diversity When we Strand boys get together in these years, there are many talks of this rather nondescript group of cows. Sanitary conditions for milking were atrocious, and the feed for the cows was meager. Since we had no bull, we soon learned the facts of life as we chased the “bulling cows” to the neighbor’s cow yard for the necessary act.

The winter months with cows around brought a pile of manure (“joy”) heaped up behind the barn. One of the jobs we boys were assigned to was to pitch this into the manure spreader and haul it to the field for spreading. This would have been simple enough except that the spreader was continually breaking down. Not an implement of high priority, Uncle Carl kept patching and fixing it beyond reasonable time, and we had special instructions from him as to how to load the contraption to alleviate any undue strain on its mechanical parts.