The Feed Mill

 One Friday in late January, Dad sent me to run down to John Dixon's Feed and Hardware Store for some calf grain and fencing supplies.  The reports were calling for mild weather in the upcoming week, and Dad wanted to get a head start on replacing the fence at the northern end of the cow pasture, along the woodlot.  An ice storm earlier in the winter had taken several trees down, and they in turn had left the page wire fence as a crushed and mangled mess.

I left the farm right after breakfast, and before long I was parking the farm truck alongside the loading ramp at the side of John Dixon's store.  The sign proudly stated that the business was established in 1895, and it seemed to me like everything was always exactly the same every time I visited, ever since I was a small child.  The Purina checkerboard sign hanging up on the side of the mill was starting to show rust stains, and the snow had been shoveled away from the Texaco gas pumps out front.

The inside of the store was filled with almost everything that was required on a family farm of that era.  From boxes of nails and rolls of wire, to chicken feed and rubber boots.  Mr. Dixon was behind the counter going over a ledger and I recognized old Mr. Anderson leaning over the counter reading a farm newspaper.  His farm was next door to ours, but he had just sold his dairy herd the previous fall. After telling Mr. Dixon what I needed, I turned to Mr. Anderson and innocently asked if he was enjoying the freedom of no longer being a dairyman. 

He didn't reply right away, and at first I thought maybe he hadn't heard, but then I realised that he had tears in his eyes.

"Son," he said.  "I've been a dairy farmer all my life, I hardly know what to do with myself.  Every morning I walk to the empty barn like I've been doing every morning for the last 60 years, and just stare at the dust and empty stalls for a spell.  I feel like part of me died when the cows left"

At the time I didn't fully understand his sentiment, but many years later there would be a time when I too would share those same feelings.

Winter Problems

In the year of my 17th birthday in the early 60s, the winter started off pretty mild.  It was a green Christmas that year.  That all changed shortly after the new year when a cold front moved in.  One Monday morning when dad and I entered the barn to start morning chores, we were dismayed to discover that a jersey heifer had gotten loose and had somehow opened the door to the silo room, allowing a cold draught to come in and freeze the two closest cast iron drinking cups, causing them to crack.  We watered the affected cows with buckets and finished milking.  

As soon Jerry's Farm Service opened up at 8:30, dad sent me the ten miles into town in the farm truck to get replacement drinking cups.  Thankfully Jerry had just what we needed and we had everything fixed by lunch time.  That day was another good reminder that sometimes you never knew what what to expect on a winter day on a family dairy farm in the 1950s.