A birthday card discovered

I was entertained by a recent discovery of a birthday greeting my mom sent me some years ago and thought you might enjoy it also. I don't know the exact year she sent it, but it was after Kyle and Katrina and family visited my mom and dad in Cowley, Wyoming. She was clearly in her right mind, but I must warn that you may have to take parts of this with a grain of salt. You will see what I mean.

Here is her message:

On your and Jim's Day it brings back fond memories of your first year especially. Calvin-looking from one end of the crib (his) to the other "Two of em-and in MY bed!" Pictures of the two of you on your first birthday--out on the lawn where you are teaching Jim to walk-alone. You had been walking about 4 months earlier. Dee going from the house to the outdoor privvy with a gallon can in each hand. Bill and Beulah Jacques [neighbors] had just driven up to the house. Beulah asked Dee what he was doing. He was quite embarrassed--ducked his head & said "I'm emptying the pots into the toilet." Beulah thought it was quite funny. I want to tell you it wasn't funny in the middle of winter at night when you had to make a midnight "quick trip" to the little house. Dad had taken a wooden orange crate & removed one end--cut a Colleen & Jim size hole in the center board & the gallon can was placed on the bottom board so you & Jim didn't have to trek outside at night. Jim was still in diapers but you had trained yourself by the time you were 8 months old. You could also talk so we knew what & when you needed to go! You were & still are cute. We had a good visit with Katrina & Kyle & both remarked how much she looks like you. The visit was all too short but we appreciated them going this far out of their way to come and see us. Now it's your turn? Love you lots, Mom & Dad

Can you imagine that!? I could walk, talk AND was potty trained by the time I was 8 months old!!

Maybe she meant to say 18 months, or maybe Mom just kept me in diapers after I was potty trained just so Jim wouldn't feel bad that he was so much slower than me. He even admitted to a grade school teacher once that he was slower than me because I was ten minutes older than he was.

Easter Hail Storm

Spring seemed to come late to our Montana ranch. We were lucky if the ground was clear of snow by Easter. I remember how amazing it was to me the first year I attended General Conference in Salt Lake City and the lawns were already green. So it was no surprise that we would take advantage of one special Easter Sunday when the weather was mild and unseasonably warm to have a celebration. After church, we children made some sandwiches and went to a stand of trees about a quarter to half mile east of the house and had a little picnic.
In the background of this picture you can see the trees where we had our picnic.
As we ate and played we noticed that the weather was turning cooler and the sun was hidden behind advancing clouds. We decided it was time to return to the house. A little before milking time, Warren and Gary were sent on their errand of bringing in the milk cows so the older brothers could milk them. They hadn't been gone long when we noticed the suddenly menacing green color of the western sky.
We had learned that meant hail and I will never forget that color. Our thoughts turned to Warren and Gary out in the pasture west of the house without any protection. As we looked westward we saw something white bouncing as it were across the fields. At first it made us think of the "cotton" from the cottonwood trees blowing along. Then we realized it was hail, only much, much larger. Mom sent Calvin in a hurry out to the truck to drive into the field and get Warren and Gary. . There were two windows on the west side of the house; Mom's and Dad's room had one and the boys' room had one. There were similar windows just opposite on the east side of the house. (This is me at a younger age, looking out the boy's window watching our Primary have a party in our backyard while I sat inside with the mumps.)
In the living room we had a large mirror maybe 3 feet by 5 feet hanging on the west wall. As we heard the first hailstones hit the house with a large thud, we stood frozen in the middle of the living room. We watched and listened as the hailstones pelted the house and the mirror in the living room bounced out with every strike. We didn't dare go to the windows to see if Warren and Gary were safe. We could only hope that Calvin was able to get to them in time. As we waited, we heard a hailstone hurl through the boy's west bedroom window, hit the floor and exit through the east window.
I'm pretty sure Mom's and Dad's window was also broken. After what seemed like a very, very long time (actually probably just a few minutes because there was such a wind behind the hail), the hail stopped beating down and we heaved a sigh of relief as the storm pushed on. Thankfully, Calvin was able to reach Warren and Gary before they were injured and they all climbed under the truck to wait out the storm. That was a wise move. Every vehicle that we owned had the westward facing window broken out. The eaves of the house and the garage had holes in the eaves where hailstones hit the aged wood. Several of our sheep were killed by hail. The hail was bigger than a large grapefruit. Calvin, who was in high school at the time, couldn't pick up a hailstone without using both hands, not so much because of weight but because of gripping such a large slippery stone when his fingertips couldn't reach beyond the radius of the stone to grasp it. From later reports we learned that the intensity of the storm was at its peak as it hit our farm. Neighbors on either side reported much smaller stones than we encountered. We found a stone that fit nicely in a Tupperware cereal bowl and saved it in the freezer for quite a while to show people because we thought they wouldn't believe it when we told them how big the stones were. Fortunately, though we had other hailstorms golf ball size or smaller, we never encountered another "grapefruit" storm.

Here is a picture taken from our yard after a storm (not the one mentioned here).

Ox in the Mire

In a previous post, I mentioned our septic system at our Montana ranch. Waste water flowed from the house to a small septic tank a short distance from the house and then on to a crude cesspool. The cesspool was just a pit that was lined with timbers and then it was covered with planks. Waste flowed into the cesspool and was leached out into the surrounding soil. We knew what was below those planks and we did not venture to play on them at the risk of falling into a very undesirable place.

As I was sorting through my Dad's pictures yet again, I came across a series of pictures that tell an interesting story. As I looked at them, I was reminded of the scripture in the the New Testament, book of Luke, where the Pharisees watch to see what Christ will do when he comes upon a sick man. Christ asked them if it was right to heal on the Sabbath Day and then he healed the man and answered with another question: "...saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?" Though we are cautioned that we should not deliberately or through negligence allow the ox to get in the mire, I think any diligent farmer would straightway get him out. I can only imagine the urgency with which my Dad went about getting this unfortunate horse out of the pit he had fallen into--yes, our cesspool.

Old Sayings

One saying my mom used to use was "I'll let you get back to your rat killing". I don't know where it came from, but she gave new meaning to the phrase.

Because of a very poor foundation and the dirt cellar under the house, rodents were always a problem for us. We tried to ignore them but it was kind of hard to do. I used to lie awake at night listening to the mice gnawing in the walls and it drove me crazy. I hated mice then and still do. I think that is why after most of the kids had moved away from home Mom and Dad began to allow cats in the house. They helped control the mice.

I think this is one of their cats taking a nap in the wash basin.

Mom had another method of rodent control when we were younger. She put D-Con around the house and it helped with mice, but the pack rats were not affected by it. We started to notice that one tray of D-Con was always covered up with a stray T-shirt or something and then we noticed other little "treasures" that were squirreled away in that area. We determined that we had a pack rat in the house but couldn't catch it and couldn't poison it. The fact was confirmed one afternoon when we were playing in the house and a ball or something that we were playing with went under my bed. Jim went in and crawled under the bed to get it. To his great surprise, something ran across his body and darted out the bedroom door, through the kitchen and out of sight in the porch. Jim didn't really get a chance to see it but it felt big to him. I just saw a fleeting figure that looked like a cat but we didn't have cats in the house at that time (I was wishing we did at that point or maybe even a dog!). It had to be that pack rat and it was big. As Jim and I were discussing this memory a few days ago, we weren't sure if it was on this occasion or some days later when Mom finally decided she had had enough. We discovered that the rat had gone under the water heater and was cowering there while we all tried to get a look at it.

Did I tell you what a good gun handler my mom was? The first time my dad took mom deer hunting with him, she was the one who shot the deer. She was so excited when she saw the deer fall she started pounding her rifle on the ground in front of her as she jumped up and down and dad had to reminder her how dangerous it was not to mention it was very hard on the rifle. Anyway, Mom saw that rat under the water heater and said she was going to take care of him once and for all. She went and got the 22 rifle and got down on the floor and took aim at that rat. We were all warning her that it would be very bad if she shot the water heater, but I guess she had confidence in her rifle skills and fired anyway. To our great relief she got the rat and not the water heater. For quite a while afterwards we talked about the demise of that poor pack rat.

A Few Memories of the Old Homestead

I have often made the claim that I stand with one foot in this generation and one in the past. On the Montana prairie we lived a simple life without many of the so-called modern conveniences of the mid 20th century. But do you know something? At the time, I didn't know our lives were lacking. It was life and we loved it--mostly.

In 1951 Mom and Dad moved their little family of five kids to the ranch between Melstone and Musselshell, Montana. (We went to school in Musselshell and went to church in Melstone.) Five more kids were born here. The house was built about 1900 and I think it started as just a little two or three room shack. This part of the house had just a small crawl space under it. There was a low ceilinged porch with warped floor boards that were covered with lineolum that kept wearing out because of the warped boards. From the porch you could step down into a small area that served as a store room. I think the floor was just hard packed dirt that they put lineolum over. The other direction led into a kitchen area and off of the kitchen was a small bedroom that became the girls' bedroom.

Here is the only childhood home I remember. On the left side of the picture(between the two bedroom windows) you can see the trap door that led to the cellar, and to the right of the entrance to the porch was the pump house. When I was at home, we did not have that shelter over the pump, just another trap door.

Sometime before we moved there an addition was made. A cellar was added and three more rooms built over it, making the house L-shaped. The front room connected to the kitchen and then two bedrooms beyond that. Mom and Dad had their bedroom at the end and had to go through the boys' room to get to their bedroom. There were no interior doors on any of the rooms. Mom just hung curtains to provide privacy for the bedrooms. It helped prevent temper tantrums because it was kind of hard to stomp off to our bedroom and slam the curtain.

The plumbing in the house was pretty simple. The water pump from the well was right outside the house by the porch. It was almost a straight shot to run the water line the 10-12 feet from the pump to a small wash basin in the porch and then under the kitchen to the kitchen sink, maybe another 15 feet. In the kitchen on the same wall as the wash basin was where our first electric washing machine was installed. This was the extent of our indoor plumbing for many years. For our bathroom needs we used an "outhouse". I have a vague remembrance of the chamberpots (aka thundermugs)that sat under our beds to save a trip to the outhouse during the night.

I think it was sometime during my gradeschool years when Dad dug a hole in the store room floor and installed a flushing toilet. We still used the outhouse as much as possible during the daytime to avoid overloading our indadequate septic system.

Here is a picture of Sonia and Heidi posing by the outhouse--a two-seater. We were really uptown!

When I was growing up, on Saturday nights we pulled out the old tin tub, which looked much like these, and everyone bathed whether we needed it nor not. Ours was probably between three and four feet long. (I could carry it by myself when I was a teenager if I didn't fill it too full.) We slipped the end of a rubber hose onto the hot water faucet of the wash basin (and then a little cold water) and filled the tub and then carried it into the store room and bathed. Or we filled the tub with a bucket. The first time I took Verlin home for a visit, he inquired about the availability of a real bathtub. Dad took him out to the Savage Ranch and they got a tub out of one of the abandoned houses there and took it home and Verlin helped install it in the store room. To quote from the musical "Oklahoma"--"Everything's up to date...they've gone about as far as they can go".

Happy Valentine's Day

As I was walking past the seasonal aisle at Albertson's the other day, I began feeling sorry for myself because I won't ever again have someone shopping for a special valentine for me. Then I remembered the half eaten very special Valentine cake sitting on top of my refrigerator that Kylie made and delivered with a hug. And a few days later, Hyrum delivered a valentine with a picture of Nemo and Dory.

Verlin was never a great romantic but he did sometimes remember to get me a card or some candies for Valentine's Day. I found out it was always better to remind him if a special day was coming instead of waiting to see if he would remember and then be upset when he didn't. "Valentine" was one of those words like aluminum (he pronounced it "alunimun") that Verlin just couldn't get right. I miss his very sincere "Happy Valentime's" wish. He liked to sort through the little candy hearts to give me ones that said "Be Mine". I will be his Valentime FOREVER!

And Ice Skating

Winters on the river were fun too. These pictures were taken at a family reunion on the farm about winter of 1991-92. It was such an adventure going up the river on the ice especially when there was no snow covering the ice. We could look down and see seams in the ice that showed how thick the ice was, easily a couple feet down in the slower water. One year my mom and dad found a supply of old used hockey skates at a pawn shop or someplace and bought several pairs. We were so excited when they brought them home. We all sorted through the skates until we found a pair that fit us best. I didn't find an exact fit but that didn't matter. I just put on several pairs of socks to take up the extra space and headed off to the river with the others to learn how to skate. Because the skates were rather large, I lacked the ankle strength to stand upright on my skates. My ankles just kind of turned in and I skated more on the insides of my feet rather than on the actual blades. It didn't take very long for my ankles to get tired and sore and I would have to quit and rest. You can imagine our delight a few years later when Santa brought Jim and Calvin shiny new black skates and Denise and I graceful white figure skates for Christmas. I never did become a skilled skater but it was a lot more fun after that. I treasured those skates for many years.

Which way to the river?

We spent many carefree summer hours in the old swimming hole. Sometimes it was just the kids and sometimes Mom and Dad would join us in the evening when the chores were all done. I remember one rather embarrassing experience with my mom and my sister Denise.

Contrary to my belief as a kid, the river was not private property and occasionally a sportsman would ask permission to access the river from our property. Early on, we had trappers who set traps along its banks in hopes of catching the diminishing beavers and muskrats and bobcats. It wasn't long before the river wildlife was all gone and only the fishermen came. I remember one black fellow who came by. On his first visit he introduced himself (I don't remember his name) and asked "which way to the river?" We of course showed him and he went fishing that day and a few times later.

One warm summer day in the middle of the afternoon, Mom, Denise and I were possibly on an outing to find berries that grew along the river banks. As we passed by the old swimming hole, someone suggested a dip in the river to cool off. We all agreed. We were quite confident that we had privacy that particular day, so we slipped off our shoes, shirts and pants and slid into the water. We had not been in the river long when we heard a greeting from the bank above us. You guessed it. We were a bit startled to see our fisherman friend who had chosen that particular day to fish in "our river". He stood there for a spell, passing time in pleasant conversation, hopefully unaware of our discomfort as we treaded water and smiled and nodded in response. Thinking back, I am glad that it was not what you would call a clean river. The water was always a little mirky. By and by, our visitor said good bye and headed up the river to find a place to fish. Giggling with relief, we were soon able to get out of the river, put on our clothes and get home.

All Work and No Play...

Besides meeting our irrigation needs, the Musselshell River provided hours of fun for us, such as---

Floating---
I remember Mom taking us on a float trip down the Musselshell River. We caught a ride to a point several miles upstream from our farm and threw in our innertubes and floated down the river to our place. We had to stand up and carry our tubes through several locations where the irrigation demands had diminished the water flow to a trickle. When we were little we called these the "rapids" but I realize now they were nothing like the rapids that serious river rafting/canoe enthusiasts would encounter. There were also a few spots where "fences" had been stretched across the river (I think we called them a water gap) to prevent the cattle and horses from leaving the pasture via the water route. Our tubes did not even closely resemble the ones pictured here either. Ours were discarded tire innertubes with multiple patches, but they got us from point A to point B with a lot of fun in between! Oh, and we did not have life vests either. I thought that was what the innertube was for!

It looks like the ice is still moving off the river in this picture. This picture might have been taken not too far from our favorite swimming spot.

Swimming---
We had a fun swimming hole on the bend of the river just below the barn and corrals. In the summer we fished and swam there and in the winter we skated there. The river bank on the barn side of the river was quite high, maybe 10 feet higher than the water level. The other side of the river had a gradual shallow bank with willows growing along it. I still love thinking about the sweet smell of the willows along the ditch banks and the river banks. That is where we hung out in the shallow water before we actually learned how to swim. I would compare it to the shallow wading pool at a public pool...only better! We enjoyed sinking our feet deep into the black river mud and covering our bodies with the mud and then diving in to wash off the stinking mud. At one point the boys built a diving board on the high bank that we used for a while until it became too rickety to use and was finally washed away by a flood. We also had a spot that we threw water on and slid on like otters. It made a great mudslide. We wore out more than one swimming suit sliding on that mud. Just off to the right of the diving board was an old truck that somehow found its final resting place at the bottom of the river. When I was very young I couldn't even reach the truck unless I dove down to touch it, which I didn't like to do, but as I got older I could stand on it on my tiptoes and keep my head above water.

Life Giving Water

There are several verses of scripture that refer to living water. After contemplating how important water is in the history of the world, and in my personal life, it is easy to see why Christ and His gospel was compared to life giving water, but His is an everlasting well of water leading to eternal life.

It wasn't until years after leaving the farm that I gave much thought to how important water is to man's survival (except for the occasional times that we had no electricity to run our water pump or the pump would quit working. Then we went into survival mode.) Throughout the history of the world, civilizations began near water and as new settlements were established they were always near a source of water.

Part of the Musselshell River on our farm.

Our 1200 or so acres of land were dependent on the grid of irrigation ditches that traversed them. I recently found a website that discusses the uses of the Musselshell River which ran through our property and provided the irrigation water for us. The water supply for our irrigation system originated in Deadman's Basin about 85 miles upstream from our property. At regular intervals along the river were manmade diversion dams that fed the irrigation systems for the various farmers along the way. In my experience the diversion dam was the only area of our ditches that had concrete. Once the water was diverted to our ditches it flowed down dirt ditches. There were no fancy portals or siphon tubes to send the water into our fields. We had to dam the water with large sheets of treated canvas held in place with 2 X 4s. We would walk along the ditch bank in rubber boots and a shovel in hand to make cuts in the ditch bank for the water to spill over and flow into the field until it reached the other end and spread out across the entire width and breadth of the field. Then we would pull out the dam, move it down further, pack mud back into the cuts and make new cuts for the next section of field. This required frequent trips in the middle of the night and throughout the day until our water turn was over, and if we were diligent all the fields received their life giving water to survive until the next watering turn.


This is the irrigation ditch that ran past our house, probably less than 10 feet from my bedroom window. In these pictures taken at a Lear family reunion, we are playing tug o' war over the ditch. I would say this brother (I think it is Jim) was on the losing team.

Another Lesson Learned on a Tractor

After Verlin and I had been married for five years we decided we wanted to move to the country. I was glad. When I was young, growing up on a farm, I said over and over again that I didn't want to live in the city. When I went way to college I found out that city life wasn't all that bad but it sounded good to get back to country living. We purchased the 10+ acres of cherry orchard near Spanish Fork. It wasn't long before I was sitting on the seat of a tractor again. We used the tractor to work in the orchard as well as to harvest hay at our adjoining neighbor's place so that we could provide hay for our milk cows. In the meantime Verlin had become extremely busy with his concrete business and auto parts machining business, and more of the chores fell to me and the kids.


This is not our equipment but similar to the rake and baler we used in Spanish Fork.

Now, one last lesson I learned on the seat of a tractor. Maybe you have heard of Andrew's story of being run over by the "Big One". I think it was the summer that Andrew was about four when I had to go out and rake the hay. I didn't really have my heart in it that day. I was troubled by our financial situation, the fact that Verlin was working twice as hard and we were getting farther and farther in debt as his businesses were not bringing in the money we needed. He had borrowed against the house to try and make a go of things and we were behind on our payments and facing losing our house. I remember wondering that morning if Heavenly Father really knew how much we needed His help and if He really cared about us---me. In other words, I was feeling sorry for myself. That was my frame of mind as I went out to work. Andrew asked if he could come along and I said sure. I enjoyed riding beside my dad on the tractor while he worked so I was happy to let Andrew have that experience. I had been working my way through the hay field, and we had made several uneventful passes. As we approached the end of the field yet another time, I slowed, lifted the rake and made the turn. Just as I was making the turn, the tractor tire hit uneven ground near a dike and the tractor jerked. Andrew, who was not prepared for the jolt, lost his balance and fell forward off the tractor, kind of somersaulting to the ground right in front of the "Big One"-the rear tire. I immediately stepped on the clutch and tried to back up so that I could get off and help Andrew. I was scared to death! In my haste, I put the tractor in 1st gear instead of reverse and drove forward on him a second time. From my perspective on the tractor seat, I watched as he almost disappeared from my view. When I finally got the tractor stopped, I wasn't even sure Andrew was still alive. To my relief he was alive and conscious. Caution was abandoned as I grabbed him up and ran for the truck, told the kids where I was going and rushed him to the doctor. There was no visible blood, but I feared internal bleeding and broken bones. To my amazement he suffered only a bruised pelvis and the imprint of the tractor tire tread on his back. As he fell to the ground he kind of went into a crouched position down in the low area of the dike and this is what saved his life and protected him from serious injury. Was it a coincidence? The answer--NO. I had asked Heavenly Father that morning if he knew my needs or even cared. I got my answer. I was reassured that day as I have been on many occasions since that Heavenly Father knows each of us, knows our needs, and loves each one of us.

Stories About Haying Season

I have a vague memory of driving for my dad while he fed the sheep one winter. I was still quite young as drivers go. I think Dad must have got a late start feeding the livestock and the older kids were gone to school so I must have been about 5 1/2. I'm pretty sure I would not have put one of my own kids on a tractor at that age but Dad either trusted me or was desperate--most likely the latter. I don't know where Jim was, probably helping him throw out the hay. Anyway, Dad put the tractor in 1st gear on the lowest idle speed he could get and sat me on the tractor seat and told me to just steer the tractor straight ahead. He must have seen me at play sitting on the seat of the tractor pretending to drive it and thought I had it figured out. I don't remember much about the experience other than I didn't do a very good job. I ended up letting the tractor go down in a shallow ditch and Dad had to come and help me get it straightened out and on course again. He didn't yell at me though. He taught me patience.

This baler is called the Roto-Baler. It was the kind of baler we used. We never made it through haying season without the baler breaking down and Dad had to fix it before he could finish the job.

I am not sure how old I was when I started being the designated driver for hauling hay but I did that also. Since I was too small to handle the hay bales, Dad put me in the truck instead. (Jim also remembers driving when he had to kneel on the seat) I just know I couldn't see over the steering wheel very well and I couldn't reach the clutch, brake or gas pedals. Dad put the truck in gear and told me to keep it going down the field between two rows of hay. He and the older boys, armed with a hay hook in each hand, walked alongside the wagon and threw the bales on as the wagon passed by them. I have seen Dad work both sides of the wagon by himself. That took stamina! He would help me with the truck when we got to the end of the field.

As I got older, I could manage the turns and with the passage of time I was able to use the pedals and shift the truck into gear. My brothers learned that they had better brace themselves when I was taking off because I didn't do a very good job working the clutch at first. I don't think anyone ever actually fell off the wagon though. I just shook them up a bit as the truck jerked into gear. I was pretty excited the first time Dad told me to go ahead and shift into second gear and drive clear to the haystack in a distant field after the wagon was loaded. Dad taught me perseverance and I grew in confidence.

Eventually I graduated from being the driver to being on the hay wagon placing the bales as Dad and my brothers threw the bales on. Denise and I would stand on the wagon with hay hooks in each hand and grab a bale the minute it was thrown on so that it wouldn't roll off again and quickly put it in place to make a good tight stack that would survive the ride to the hay yard. That was kind of hard to do with "round bales". Once in the hay yard, we threw off the bales and Dad would help lay out the bales to get a good base for the haystack. I would sometimes throw the bales from the wagon to the stack and sometimes I had to put the bales in place on the stack. I learned how to give the bale a swing and a shove to get it tight against the previous bales so they would hopefully stay put until winter feeding time. In time, the kids were able to build a stack from start to finish.

We used a single-bar sickle mower similar to this one.

The growing needs of a large family drove Dad to take on a second job working at a gas plant about 30 miles away, and he required more help with the chores. He had to rely more on his children to do the irrigating for him, herding the sheep, helping with lambing, and taking over in mowing, raking, and baling the hay as well as hauling it. Pat, Dee and Calvin did more of the work based on their being older, but Jim, Denise and I got our fair share as time went on and so did the younger brothers and Lori. I remember how nervous I was the first time Dad asked me if I thought I could handle mowing the hay. Since we were taught that you don't tell Dad no, I just said I would do my best. After I got over the initial nervousness, I actually enjoyed driving around and around the field and seeing the entire field cut by the end of the day. He taught me to take pride in a job well done.


We learned how to work hard in the hay field, and the neighbors noticed. One summer when we were in high school, Mom contracted with a neighbor to haul their hay for them. They had the bigger, heavier square wire tied bales but we managed to get the job done to the farmer's surprise and satisfaction. We used a large stock truck with high side panels to maximize our time and get as much hay on as we could. Mom did the driving, Jim and Calvin threw the bales and Denise and I stacked them in the truck. It meant that Jim and Calvin had to throw the bales higher than when we used our low riding hay wagon and Denise and I had to stack the bales higher than usual. We left the end of the truck cleared of bales as long as we could so they didn't have to throw too high for very long and we just kept dragging the bales forward and upwards until we had the entire stock truck full of hay--probably six to eight tiers high. With the wire tied bales, we didn't use hay hooks. We just wore gloves to protect our hands and grabbed the two wires to lift the bales. If we missed one of the wires, we risked having the wire pull off and break the bale. (It's actually kind of strange that Denise and I wore protective clothing for our hands but didn't mind scratched arms and legs as we wore cutoffs and short sleeve/sleeveless shirts to help get a tan. How shortsighted we were! If I had it to do over again, I probably would have had my arms and legs covered as well as my face shaded from the harmful sun's rays.) For the last few bales, the boys would just heft the bale as high as they could and we would reach over and grab onto it and pull it up. The best part of that summer was when that job ended!

Winter Feeding Time

Hey, I found another cool picture of my dad's. This is a picture of Darrell on his hay wagon feeding the cattle in Mar 1951 shortly after we moved to the Melstone place (also known as the Musselshell place). I didn't hear about where he got his draft horses, but his dad and grandpa were both in the horse business, among other things, so it came naturally to my Dad.

By my earliest recollection we were using a tractor to pull this same wagon and later a pickup to feed the livestock. We also used it to haul hay in the summer. Since I didn't have to go out and help in the worst weather or very often it was kind of an adventure to go out and help with the feeding. It was usually one of the kids that drove and Dad helped the others with throwing out the hay bales. You know, that first few years it probably wasn't even baled hay but loose stacked hay that was thrown off with a pitch fork. Our first baler made about 40-pound cylindrical bales, tied with baling twine so they couldn't be as heavy as the later bales bound with wire.

As with the picture of "branding day" my senses are engaged as I look at the pictures of the hay wagon and some of the livestock we fed. At one point we had 800 to 1,000 sheep (counting lambs) and several hundred head of cattle. As we drove out into the pasture towards them, Dad would call out to the cattle and we would mimic his call.
m-m-M-M-O-O-o-o, m-m-M-M-O-O-o-o-cow we would call and the cows responded with bellows of their own. I practiced a lot to get the call just like Dad's. I thought they were pretty smart to come when we called. The cows would lift their heads, see (and maybe smell) their dinner and come on the run. As the first bale dropped, dust would fly and the scent of summer gone would escape from the freshly broken bale. The cattle all ran for that first bale but would soon abandon it and follow us further as another bale and another dropped to the ground. Some of the braver (or hungrier) cows dared run alongside the wagon and try to catch a bite off the hay not yet thrown, their steamy breath filled the air around us. The strings were pulled off the hay bales and they were kicked and rolled out to allow more cattle to feed on a bale, and soon there was a trail of cattle all along the route hurrying to get their fill before they were pushed aside or the hay was all gone until the next day.

My dad spent all summer putting away hay for winter and all winter feeding it to the livestock. He never got a rest. I guess I shouldn't say that, because I did find some pictures of him catching a catnap in a chair or on the sofa. It was a well deserved rest.


For about 40 years, my dad and brothers spent their wintry days making sure the hay was distributed to the livestock until they could graze again. I'll bet Dad was so excited when spring brought new grass for grazing and the feeding ended for another season.


Here are some of the animals that we fed.