(This entry was originally posted on Facebook in 2017)
Life growing up on a farm was a mixture of work and play. Often the two would blur together.
As we got older, my sister and I had to take turns helping Mom clean up in the kitchen or helping Dad work in the barn. We preferred the cold, smelly environment of the barn, hands down! We got to fork hay from the loft into the alley way. Then we forked it again, into the mangers. We hauled oat chop from the little bin below the chopper. (The chopper was in a small upper area of the lean-to).
Cows were milked, although I was never very good at that. Dad sold the cows just after Grandpa retired and moved to Weyburn. The 365 days attention that milk cows require was just not worth what they provided.
Manure was moved; by fork; by shovel … the best way was with the bucket on the back of the Allis-Chalmers D17. (My sister added a great note to yesterday’s post).
Hay was put up into the loft. We used loose hay which was loaded onto a wagon with a hay-loader. There was a rope and slat sling at the bottom of the wagon. When the wagon was loaded it would be pulled to the barn. The sling would be attached to ropes and pulleys. Then the entire bundle of loose hay, about the size of a modern-day big bale, would be hauled up in through the open 1916 doors at the top of the loft. The whole sling/bale unit would then move down a track attached to the peak of the roof. When it got to the right spot the sling was tripped and the load dropped.
The video (click here) was filmed in 1965 by George Davis, who was visiting the farm with his family. The girls in the video include my sister, Sally Boyle, and George’s daughters. My dad was forking the hay on top of the load while I was driving the tractors. Even Rover puts in a cameo. The Allis-Chalmers pulling the hay loading equipment was the one I mentioned earlier in this post. I mentioned the John Deere in an earlier post. (This video ends moments before the trolley released and rolled down the track in the loft. I had to find footage from someone else to commemorate that moment.)
Notice how The Barn keeps showing up in the video. There is no question that The Barn was the dominant feature on the farm that I grew up on!
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From Sally Boyle (facebook comment): One of the reasons I remember the the 32 loads so clearly is that the bucket would only scoop about 1/3 of a load then the trick was to pile it as high as possible with a fork. There was never any need for a gym on the farm! I also remember a mouse running up inside my pant leg during one of those loading sessions. That made for comic interlude for a few moments as I scrambled to grab it and remove it