Though I was born in San Jose, California, my family moved to rural Utah when I was about five. We lived on a ten-acre spread in the midst of oil wells and dairy farms. My parents went through some kind of self sufficiency kick for a time and at one point or another we had about every type of common farm animal.
For me this meant chores. Spring, summer and fall meant planting, weeding and harvesting from our large garden. Year around there were pigs to slop, cows to feed, chickens, turkeys, geese or ducks to feed and egg gathering. More about that later on.
We also had a milk cow and for several years I shared the duty of milking the cow.
By hand. At least once a day. When I look back on those days, I feel bad for that old cow. I was slow and she would get impatient. I’m also not quite sure how my family survived drinking that milk which was often contaminated to one degree or another with…well…dirt. We strained it but there is no way those filters removed some of the nastiest contaminants.
Living in farm country also meant my earliest jobs were agrarian in nature. I think maybe I was nine or ten when my cousin hired me to drive a tractor while they loaded it with hay. Later I would graduate to bucking the hay for local farmers that didn’t have sons available to do it.
I got other jobs moving sprinkler pipes and hand harvesting potatoes. Mostly it was hot, monotonous work. But it put some coin in my pockets.
So back to my younger years living in farm country. I was introduced to a series of books known as Little Britches that my teachers and parents would read to me. About a young boy who became a cowboy. I wanted to be a cowboy. We had a shetland pony and I had ridden it a few times. I knew how to put the bridle on it but we didn’t own a saddle. I felt the need though to have saddle bags and fashioned a set out of something (probably old purses from the toybox).
One day I bridled up the pony and put on the saddlebags to go for a ride. I’m not sure what spooked the pony but it took off running. I and the saddlebags ended up on the ground and the pony ran away. A couple days later we found the pony hanging out in a willow patch into which the pony darted. My dad and I decided this would be a good place to catch the pony and crept into the willow patch. I was coming up from behind the pony…not a good idea. I ended up taking a hoof to my cheek. Which all things considered could have been much worse. My dad was able to catch the pony.
Time for one more tale. One of my frequent duties was to feed the chickens and gather the eggs. I was a little bit frightened by chickens. In spite of the name chickens can be quite aggressive sometimes. If I failed to get my chores done in the daytime I had to go out in the dark and do it. With a little bit of moonlight I was able to find all the nests and gather the eggs with the exception of one box that was apparently occupied. I was proud of myself for mastering my fear and petting the chicken in the box and left the eggs alone because this hen might be a “sitter”. I told my dad about it when I got back to the house. My dad wanted to know which hen it was and grabbed a flashlight. I followed him back to the hen house to tell him which box was occupied. He opened the coup and looked in with his light then Immediately popped back out.
“It’s a skunk!”
I didn’t want to believe it.
“You stay here I’m going to get my gun, I’ll be right back.”
I did not stay.
The next morning my dad showed me the dead skunk.