The Barn

I really hate riding down the country roads and seeing those wonderful old Barn's falling down or gone. Our red Barn was one of the great enjoyments in my growing up with no toys in the late 30's (Depression & Drought) & early 40's (War years). On the first floor of the Barn was the "stanchions" that were like a V the cows head went in while she ate the feed you put in a trough below. While they ate you sat on your little wooden T shaped stool & milked them with your 3 gallon metal bucket you set on the floor under their udder. To get the milk out of the 4 teats on the udder you would squeeze one with each hand with a slight pulling action and about 1/2 cup milk would come out. Obviously you did that over & over till they didn't have any left to give. Remember you still have two more teats yet to milk on that cow. Some didn't like having that done and they were called "kickers". If they kicked that bucket, there went your milk & all the hard work you had put into getting it. Many a cow would get a hard wack from the farmer for this. Most farmers knew their kickers so they put a metal cuff on their ankles hooked together with a chain which held their hind legs together while they milked. My dad had an old Roan (various colors) cow that was so gentle she never needed chains and would stand still while he milked. His favorite of the 8 to 10 he milked each night after a hard day of work. Sometimes he would let me milk her but when I did she would let me get the bucket about half full of milk and she would gently pick up one of her hind legs with manure on her feet & set it right down in the middle of the bucket. I WOULD BE SO MAD!!!! Evidently she didn't like the way I milked so Dad learned to treat her like a kicker whenever I milked. On the inside of the outside wall behind the cows was an area you could set on the foundation of the barn. That's where I would sit and watch dad milk & talk to him. I had to share this with the cats that lived in the barn and caught mice for their food. Dad could squeeze a teat in one of the cats direction (4 or 5 feet) and right into the cats mouth. Each one would sit there waiting their turn. Part of the barn was where the baby calves were kept. The front part of the barn were the grain bins. The Hayloft, the second story of the barn with a board floor was where the hay from the field was kept. Getting that hay there was another experience. 1st it had to get to the right height in the field and some kinds before it bloomed. You would pull a mowing machine behind the horses (later tractor) on a week that you hope it won't rain. Then you go over the field again pulling a hay rake to make the hay into rows after it dries. The rows had to be picked up with another machine and tossed on a wagon. Or a machine that would make the hay into bales tied with twine and later picked up and tossed on the wagon by hand. When you got a wagon load to the barn you opened the big upper door & a rope pully would haul the hay up to the loft being pulled by horses or a tractor when you could afford one. It is so hard to describe this to you if you weren't there. When I was a little kid & bored I would climb up the wooden ladder next to the grain bins & and play in the hay. I would also look for tiny little 1" gray & pink naked baby mice their momma had made in a nest of hay. They were so cute. Dad would harvest the corn from the field, the cows would eat the corn, the mice in the barn would eat the left overs, & the cats that lived in the barn would eat the mice. Just like the preditors on Nature channel on TV.