Sunday, February 12, 2012

First Job of Bob - The garden; the buildings; the barn; the house; and, the rhubarb - Jobs of Bob - book version

28 February 2012

First Job of Bob - The garden; the buildings; the barn; the house; and, the rhubarb - Jobs of Bob - book version

This entry was posted on 2/28/2012 1:30 AM and is filed under Jobs of Bob - book version.

The spring of the year always brings back memories of my mom's large garden.  It was tucked between two large machine sheds and south of the old apple orchard.  There was grape vines, strawberries, raspberries, asparagus, and of course..., rhubarb.  I was never a fan of rhubarb, but it is a Wisconsin thing for sure. There was often a rhubarb pie sitting on the kitchen counter.  Also, asparagus is rather hard to get growing and then keep growing.  Many people would peruse the roadside at times in the summer hunting for wild asparagus.  Keeping it in a garden plot is quite another story.  

At times of the year my mom would prepare the various produce in what we called, "putting-up" the product, or "canning."   Some people call it "preserves."  At any rate, at times the kitchen smelled and looked like a production facility.  In the end, there would be jars of grape jelly, grape juice, rhubarb, and asparagus.

There was a pear tree around to the east side of the large old apple orchard and at the north end of our big barn.  We did not have time to care for either pears or apples. I do remember the pear tree was prolific and pears dropped from the tree in the fall coating the ground all around it.  We all thought the pears produced from that particular tree were a bit hard in texture. 
There was a gaggle of buildings on our farm.  There was the huge old but reliable barn.  It ran to the north and south as also did  Lima Center Road at our stretch of that old and notoriously winding township road. The barn had the consummate gambrel barn roof (a change in slope and pitch part way up both sides of the roof).  Three lightning rods with stained-glass balls topped off the peak of the roof at equal intervals. When I was young they built a pole barn at a right angle off the north end of the barn and it pointed to the east.  It was then we verified the legend that the original barn burnt down about the turn of the century (1900) a decade before my grandfather bought the place.  During construction while laying cement forms, melted glass and pieces of old buried foundation and wood were revealed at the end of the barn.  What we found indicated the original barn was mammoth, going 50 feet further than the already existing giant structure.  

The barn was unique in that it is the only barn I have ever seen that actually had a slope in the dead center of the lower milking area.  The barn had been built on a slight ridge and the original builders did not let that deter them in the least.  When the first barn burnt down, the re-builders just put the new one on the same foundation and spot.  The slope stayed in the design by default.  It presented some challenges, but like all farmers, we adapted. That lower south end of the long barn was mainly used for pens to hold calves and heifers.  The milking stanchions that did exist down there were designated to my Uncle Art's purview and he took care of all things on that end of the barn.  When we built the pole barn on the north end, that old south end was fitted entirely to milking stanchions and a modern electric powered and chain driven barn cleaner gutter - dairy farm state-of-the-art at the time. 

Of course the barn was red. I remember at least one painter coming to re-paint it.  A barn that size was an ordeal to paint and maintain - there was a cost to keeping the mammoth structure preserved.  Every couple years or so, the whitewash company would come to blow the thick substance completely over every wall, stanchion, and crevice in the lower part of the barn.  You can cover up a multitude of sins with thick whitewash. 

Then too, a structure that size would need a new set of shingles from time to time.  The barn paint and roofing my dad and uncle left to a professional.  But, every other building we painted and re-roofed ourselves. And too, when we added the pole barn, my dad and uncle helped in the construction to cut a bit of cost off the price. 

A family of Barn Swallows taking up residence in the production facility I currently work in, reminds me of the perennial arrival of barn swallows to our farm.  A co-worker recently asked me why the birds insist on coming in the building when the big doors are open.  To keep them out, you might as well ask them to live on the Moon.  They have been piggybacking on human structures as long as humans have built stuff.  Dad always tolerated the several nests they plucked on the sides of the barn beams in the lower milking area.  The intelligent creatures knew just where to place the nests out of the reach of the wily barn cats. Dad was wise.  Like centuries of preceding humans, he knew cows and their manure as well as the various sources of moister around a working barn, attracted insects. The swallows besieged the "bugs" with relentless vigilance.  And a couple times a year, each ruddy nest produced a family of baby birds chirping over the edge of said nest.  Each year the birds would rebuild their nests with patient endeavor.  It was much like the farm itself.  Fields as well were worked and planted with patient endeavor.  It was a relationship of quiet tolerance and unity.  Dad would always leave a small opening for the Swallows to dart through in the big barn doors at each end of the lower milking area.  

The barn was accompanied by three upright silos.  The original one was brick with a tin roof. It sat at the halfway mark along the big barn on its west side facing the house. The three were equally spaced along the length of the barn like sentinels.  Next to the old brick silo sat the milk house.  There was space between silo and milk house that made a great spot for a kid to build a fort in lieu of a tree house.

The house was also huge.  Those old farm houses reflected eras when farm families had lots of kids.  Rooms were added from time to time.  It seems odd now after living in such small houses over the years, I was an only child in my era at the farm.  There was at least five extra rooms we did not use much in that old house.  One walk-in closet I used back then would be considered a room in the neo-suburb culture of today.

The roof of the house was covered with asbestos shingles.  No mater how old the roof continued to get, black dust always collected in the rain gutters. Back in the old days, water was collected in the cistern pit by the back porch for washing cloths and hair.  That water was caught by the huge roof and directed down eavesthroughs to said cistern. Disturbingly, my dad and his two sisters all of whom grew up on the farm, each eventually died of cancers; and, so did my mom who of course lived there later, but the cistern system was still in use for part of her life there as well.  It makes one pause.  By the time I came along, a modern well pump provided all our water. I was apparently spared..., so far.

The house was big enough for an upstairs apartment with a full bathroom; and, there even was a wooden stairs above the cistern going up to a stained-glass door above the back porch.  There was a neat wood railinged tin porch facing the east. My uncle lived up stairs for a time before he got his little trailer home.  Mom and Dad would board a visiting minister from time to time up there when I was small.  Later I lived up there during high school and then for a brief time after I returned from the Army.  A girlfriend of mine always insisted the house was haunted.  
There were always signs of what used to be on an old farmstead.  There was a large pig shed.  I remember it was built like a fortress.  Perhaps it had extra support because pigs have a reputation for wrecking things.  By the time I came on the scene, the shed only stored some no longer used horse-drawn harvesting machines. You never know though when you might need a part or bolt and be able to adapt something from the old equipment.  New parts were becoming cost prohibitive even in the 1960s. Next to said pig shed was a pile of ashes from one hundred years of wood burning furnaces in the house and shed. The pile had been there so long, full grown Willow trees created a small wooded area marking the end of the homestead area and the beginning of the south fields. 

There was an old wood corn crib slowly falling down by the barnyard. There was also several small chicken houses.  We did not have chickens and pigs by the time I came on the scene.  But the little buildings once used for the chickens found other uses.  One old chicken house I made into a small work shop. Another we stored barn lime in - a product that when spread on the cement floor that ran the length of the barn, kept down the odor of cow manure. This little "lime shed" was tucked at the south end of the barn and because of the mild slope, I could walk off the raised area by the south silo and be right on top of the roof.  There was a mysterious 10-foot cement barrier at that point to hold back the earth from falling into the beginning of the barnyard. It was a great place to play made-up war games with neighbor kids. Yet another chicken shed stored equipment oil - "the oil shed." There was an old house adjacent to our house that Dad and my uncle used for a proper work shop.  We called it..., "the shop."  It had tools and ancient parts tucked in corners that Ol' Thomas Edison would have probably been impressed with. 

As a kid, and being an only child I remember putting two structures to good use practicing football and baseball.  One of the sheds by the garden had a roof angled perfect to throw a football at.  Hitting the roof just right propelled the ball back at me like a down-and-out pass. 
That silo to the south end of the barn was perfect to throw a hardball at and have it bolt back at me like a rocket.  I learned to catch a fastball off that silo.  And the cylindrical nature of a silo meant some of my tosses went errant and awry.  It helped me learn how to shag challenging grounders and line drives. The same patch of ground by the silo sloped down to the low area south of the pig shed. It served as a dandy sledding spot in the winter when Dad piled snow there from our long driveway.  

But maybe most stunning, as you looked out the back porch windows of the house where my mom kept the washer and dryer, you would be facing the east.  There, you would witness the most beautiful sunrises over that low end of the barn, past the barnyard, and down to the tree line of our hickory woods, that I have ever seen, still to this day, in my life.

Note: This blog "Jobs of Bob" - book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Jobs of Bob Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).