25th of December

Early on Christmas morn, before the sun had begun to rise above the snowy hills, I decided to leave the warmth of the house and trek across the yard to the dairy barn, as I had countless times before.  Across the fields, the neighbour's farms are all silent. Their barns are dark and stables all sit empty.

The milkhouse door creaks open, the bulk tank sits empty, and the pulsators all hang in a row, covered with cobwebs and silent forever more.  The calendar on the wall sits frozen at April 1994, the month when the cows left.

The stanchions are layered with dust and it was cold and forlorn without the warm and friendly cattle.  The wind howls down the empty silo.  

I reflect upon the memories of countless Christmas mornings in the warm barn, protected from the blowing snow, and think that Christmas without all that, just isn't the same.

December Manure Spreading

 

Manure Spreading

It was a crisp early December morning.  The sun was only just begining to rise in the horizon.  The ground was frozen with only a faint dusting of snow.  It was a great day for spreading manure. The bare frozen ground gave for a rough ride, but at least the tires of the Minneapolis Moline gas tractor wouldn't get stuck in either the snow or the mud.  

Dad always insisted on spreading as late into winter as we possible could before he started piling the manure in the barnyard.  This meant that on most years we were still spreading manure daily in the weeks leading up to Christmas.  We didn't yet have a loader tractor, so the manure was dumped straight from the litter carrier into to wooden side New Idea spreader.  The Louden litter carrier was a big time saver when it came to cleaning the stable, but it still required the gutters to be forked out by hand, and some larger farms in the county had already installed new mechanical barn cleaners made by companies like Patz, Acorn, and Jamesway.  The litter carrier hung on a single rail track that ran around the whole stable behind the cows, before heading out the big double door into the cowyard.

Once I had a full load in the spreader, I headed straight to the field to empty it before it froze solid.  I was thankful for my thick coat and woolen mitts as I struggled to stay warm perched up on the seat of the Minneapolis Moline as the gas engine purred away.  Once I was finished I knew I would be able to enjoy my breakfast in the warm farmhouse.