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.

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.