My Golden Childhood IV

Happy Days Down on the Farm

Until I was about 11 years old my father ran a dairy as well as beef cattle and crops.

My earliest memories are of Dad getting up in the dark every day. We would hear him shaking down the coals in the wood stove and smell his "tea and toast" before he moved off to milk. I well remember his sing song call to the cows, "Hup, hey! Hup, hey!" and the rhythmic pounding of the old engine at the dairy.

(Above) Silver, our kids pony, and the view from the dairy.

We kids would run the cows in for evening milking, darting nimbly in bare feet, avoiding wait-a-whiles, (prickly low growing bushes) in the front paddock. We often had poddy calves to feed, with eager heads butting the teats and buckets of frothy milk spilling as they went. We would also prod the cows into the bales, wipe udders, and generally help in the dairy.

We also had a few privileged pigs, who benefited from the milk which was separated and the cream taken to the nearest butter factory. But the butter factory eventually closed and alas, it was an uphill battle with dairy cows in dry seasons. It was a real change in family life when the dairy stopped because it is very hard for a dairy farmer to ever get away for a day, let alone any sort of break or unexpected emergency. My dad was a true man of land though, and never ventured very far or very long from home. He milked a house cow for many years after the dairy stopped functioning and the relics of a few bales and the concrete floor still remain today.

One of my jobs for many years was to feed the chooks, and collect the eggs. Mum would let them out in the afternoon while we were at school and I'd lock them in at night fall. This job usually fell to the youngest of chores age.

My older brother chopped the wood for the stove and my job would be to collect chips. We had a battered old green tin which needed to be filled with the small chips of wood used to start the fire each morning. It was a wood burning stove, which was started early each morning and usually ran all day. In Winter, Mum would have our clothes hanging on the front of the stove to dive into! but in summer the house was like a sauna in the mid day heat. How Mum cooked there is a marvel! In the absence of electricity the hot water was heated through pipes behind the wood stove, which meant cold baths if we had been out and not lit the fire. This led to the home coming refrain of "Home sweet home and the fire's out."

Ah....now baths were another thing! But the water woes will have to wait for another day........