Chores

Chores:  If it was winter, the day started with Grandpa stoking up the fire from embers banked from the night before.   Ashes had to be shaken  down and put in a coal bucket to be hauled out to the ash pit.  Although grandpa did the fire, the boys hauled ashes out and coal back from the coal pile.

We lit the kerosene lantern and went out to milk the cows while Mom prepared breakfast on the kerosene cook stove.  She had an ice box for a refrigerator.  When oil was discovered on our property and six well were  brought into production, we installed a propane gas tank, got a gas cooking stove and a gas refrigerator, and a gas heating stove.  We thought we were very well off.  Aunt Inda was still cooking on a wood-burning stove and using the well as a cooler.  Eventually, they got propane, too.

It was while we were out at the  barn that she emptied the chamber pot, since she was the only one who used it.  Us guys just went out back and peed on the limestone wall.  For some reason, there were rust stripes spreading down the wall from about waist high and the grass did not grow along that wall.

After milking the cows, we brought the milk to the wash house where we kept the  separator, and separated the cream from the milk. It got tiresome turning the crank, but in the winter time at least we were in the wash house where it wasn't too cold.

 We fed most of the milk to the calves and pigs.  We put the cream in 5-gallon crocks in the cellar where we kept it cool until we could take it to town and sell it at the local creamery.Selling the cream and the eggs she gathered gave Mom her household money.  It was the only cash flow we had between harvests or  stock sales.

After doing the milking and taking care of the milk, we went in for breakfast; then it was back out to feed the rest of the stock. The older calves had to be fed hay, and the cow herd had to be fed bundles of kafir cane whhich had been harvested and stacked in the Fall harvest season.

 

We fed the chickens by scattering wheat or milo in the out for them to scratch.  Even though they were free-ranging chickens, they almost always went to the hen house to lay their  eggs, so gathering them was no big chore and could be left until later if things got too busy.  After chores were done, we went to school.  When we got to high school, we liked to go to social activities.  Grandpa didn't care how late we got home the night before  if we were attending a school activity, and he would   do the night chores for us, but he always expected us to get up for morning chores.