It’s 5:15 on a cold morning in January, and Dad and I are heading for the barn, working through the foot of new snow that has fallen overnight and drifted in deep banks against the front door of the barn. The snow is something we’ll have to deal with after we do the morning chores. Nothing comes before the morning chores!
“Chores!” The word had a special definition to farm kids like me. The dictionary definitions usually say something like “a small or odd job; a routine task.” For us, “chores” meant all the stuff we had to do with the animals and the barn. “Chores” were what we did from 5:15 to 7:30 every morning and from 5:30 to 7:45 every night. It was the feeding and milking of the cows and handling the milk and the milking machines to be sure we could pass the inspections.
It didn’t matter whether or not you felt like doing them; the chores had to be done. I cannot remember even one day when my dad was feeling too bad to get up and do the chores. The chores were the life of a farm, the spine and the veins, the very structure, the whole story. They were the life-and-death story of the animals on a farm, and they never seemed to be done.
My first job is to climb up into the silo and throw down enough silage to feed the cows their morning ration. It’s cold in the silo, and the sick, sweet smell of the silage is deadened somewhat by the fact that it’s frozen solid! So, using a silage fork that is almost as big as I am, I break away chunks of the silage and throw them down the tin chute onto the concrete floor of the silo house, where they break into smaller chunks.
When I think I have enough thrown down to feed the cows, I climb back down the ladder and shovel it into a big, two-wheeled cart and wheel it out into the aisle in front of the mangers and spread it out in front of the cows, who seem to really like the half-fermented corn. Sometimes, I have to go back up into the silo and throw some more down. This is a very work-intensive job.
Next, I go to the grain bin and scoop out a bunch of “ground feed” (a combination of ground oats, molasses, salt and vitamin supplements) and spread it like a condiment on the silage. The cows love this stuff, too. It’s like cow candy, I guess. Like Hershey’s on ice cream.
Once that’s done, I help Dad with the milking, which he has already started while I was feeding, unless we have some calves. If we have calves, I have to mix the powdered milk replacer with warm water in a calf-feeding bucket (a pail with a big rubber nipple) and get those little buggers to nurse from the pail.
After the milking is done, I wash the milking machine parts to be sure they’re completely clean so no traces of milk are left in the pails, hoses or the “inflations” (the fancy name for the teat cups). Milk left in machine parts will sour and taint the next batch we collect.
By now, it’s going on 7 a.m., and we have to hustle to get the driveway cleared out so Joyce and I can make it out to the road to catch the bus for school. And I still need to shower, eat breakfast and get dressed for school.
And tonight, guess what? There are chores to do!
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