The Farm Years

I think Dad got the farm in June of 1947.

I have two papers that show something from the VA in 1947 and something in 1950. Someone, I think Mom wrote on the photo of Anna and Millie and Bobby 1949. According to this I would have been 2 when he bought it and 4 when the photos were taken. There is no way possible I could have recalled the Keech house.

These are the two papers.

The man's name at the top is David Beecher according to one of

The whole farm cost $5300. In those days it would have been a fortune. The land was not worth that even back then.

I think my earliest memory is on the farm. I am one of six girls born to Catherine Louise Russell Baker and Clifford Ray Baker. First was Anna Jane, then Mildred Clara and then me, Edith Hannah and following me was Ursula Sharon, Enid Arlene and Nancy Ilene. On the farm I only remember me and Sue and Anna and Millie. I don't recall any births except Nancy's. I think I just wasn't old enough for that to matter much.

On the farm I remember the pigs. I loved them! They were my favorite animals at that time. I used to go out and climb on the back of one of them and ride it around the barn yard until my mother would yell for my dad to make that "Hellion" get off the pig.

I remember making Campbell's baked bean sandwiches. The bread was white. I don�t remember eating brown bread until I was much older.

We each took our sandwiches out in the pasture where there was an old car. It was blue-black and shiny. We climbed on top of the hood and lay there in the sunlight dropping beans out of our sandwiches down on the baby bull for him to eat. I remember me and Sue and Millie doing this. I don't remember Anna doing it. She may have been there. Mom yelled at us for that too. She was always afraid we would get hurt on something and we often did.

We had a very old and rusty toy tractor with pedals. One afternoon Millie climbed on it and started down the hill. She started out slow but the tractor picked up speed and she couldn't stop it and forgot to turn the wheel or maybe couldn't do that either. She hit the barbed wire fence and it cut her neck in a few places. I'm sure it scared the heck out of Mom. There was blood all over Millie.

Anna got in trouble too. She was no angel. We all loved the cows. They were ours. Dad only milked and fed them. I think it was Anna�s idea to give the calves baths and dress them up. We had 4 of them. We bathed them with water and some "caustic" chemical. I forget what it was but Dad's face turned several colors of the rainbow when we showed him what we did. Of course he was laughing so hard it was hard to tell what he was going to do to us. Each calf sported a sweater, a hat and fake pearls.

A few days later the local minister came to call. Anna was out in the barn with the cows and Dad. He kept telling her not to stand behind the cows but she never did listen to anything she was told. The minister was in the house with Mom when suddenly Anna ran in with cow manure all over her face. I don't recall her exact words but I think Mom tried to say something but the minister spoke up and said the cow must have passed gas on her. Anna sputtered and yelled back, "Did not, it shit all over me!" Mom would have crawled into a hole if she could have found one.

We went to farm auctions sometimes. I was possibly 3 when we went to one where somehow I got loose from Mom and wandered into the barn. When they found me I was sitting in hay wearing my little white dress with egg yolk down the front of it. I was eating a raw duck egg.

I can remember an old man there in the barn that had a mug of beer that he put a raw egg into. It makes me sick just thinking about that.

One fall day a big old mean sow barged into the kitchen and started running through the house. We were all scared. This was one nasty old momma pig that was so mean she would eat her own babies as soon as they were born. I remember jumping on the bed with Sue and screaming while the sow ran around the bed trying to climb up. Mom had to chase her out with a broom.

That same year we had a tornado come through. Mom put out the fire because Dad had warned her that a bad wind could suck the fire up the chimney and onto the roof to set fire to the house. I watched the ashes for a while till there was a whoosh and up the chimney they went. Mom was yelling at us to get together where we could try to protect each other but we were too busy staring out the window. We watched the wind pick up a huge rabbit cage and hurl it down the road. Luckily there were no rabbits in it then. The hutch was found about a mile away when the storm had passed.

I was always fascinated by the weather. Mom said if she didn't know better, she'd think I was a Weather Witch. I would get excited and hold up my arms to the sky.

Life was hard on the farm. We never had enough to eat. One year was so bad that for a time all we had to eat were beets mom had grown. We ate so many beets that when we tinkled, it was bright red.

Millie told me that at one time all we had to eat were carrots and she got so tired of eating just carrots.

Spring rains hit the clay in the fields and turned it all to muck. Dad bought a tractor even though we had two lovely work horses. He took the tractor out in the field to plow but the ground was still sticky and the tractor got stuck so bad he had to get the horses to get it out.

The horses were Bob and Nell. They were huge horses. I have memories of Dad and them in the fields. I think he loved those horses. I have photos of them somewhere.

A lot of us kids got sick on the farm. We had days of feast and famine as Dad called them. Of course in those days we didn't have vaccines for everything. We caught all those child hood diseases.

One icy February, Millie and Anna were walking home from the bus stop. The weather was frigid and windy. All their Valentines blew away. They tried chasing them but gave up when they got too cold and just struggled to make it up the lane

Dad rescued them but Millie ended up with pneumonia. She got to the point where she was grabbing handfuls of sky. Mom asked her what she was doing and she replied, "I'm picking cotton." She had to be hospitalized.

The doctor made house calls in those days. He came out to check us out when Millie got sick. We were all in bed. I don't know where I got it but the Doctor told me to stick out my tongue so he could see my throat to see how red it was but I had a mouth full of chewed up red lollipop!

Sue got it when she was born, while in the hospital she also got meningitis and "trench" mouth which we know today as "thrush" a yeast infection. Mom told us that Sue was born with "open spine" what they now call spina bifida. I've never been sure if all that Mom said was true. It's not that I think she actually lied. I just know that sometimes she misunderstood what the doctors told her. She had to quit school in her youth in order to work.

Millie told me recently that Sue did not have spina bifida which is a great relief. I think they may have had to put a needle near her spine because I do remember when Mom changed her seeing what looked like a hole there but was really a scar.

Sue and Millie were the sickest children here.

We did have a milk cooler, but Dad had to put the milk from the cows into galvanized milk cans and haul it in the car, he didn't have a truck so he had to drive the milk into the milk station each day.

Each time he went, one of us girls would tag along. I remember him stopping at a small store. It didn't look like a store from the outside. It had a big white front porch that awed me for some reason. The white paint was almost blue like a bird�s egg.

Inside the store there were bins of candy bars and a freezer box of ice cream. I usually came out with a candy bar and if I was real lucky, I got ice cream. I was about 4 at the time. I didn't really understand that stuff costs money. We'd walk in and I'd grab my candy bar and stuff it in my pocket. The man laughed and Dad, course always paid for it.

Sue told me this was Dutcher's store.

I think the store had green trim on it back then and it had a large porch in front, not like you see it here.

This is Dutcher's Store as it was at least ten years ago. I think Sue told me its gone now because of a fire.

Once when Millie went with Dad, she fell asleep on the back seat and Dad didn't know till he got to the milk station that she was there. She almost died from it because the exhaust had backed up into the back seat and she was out cold. She was lucky Dad found her in time. It would be our first but not our last brush with carbon monoxide poisoning.

My older sisters heckled me as older sisters are supposed to do. One winter day they took an old hub cap and filled it with snow. Over this they poured a can of old dirty black car oil. Anna had a big spoon. She tried to get me to eat it, telling me it was chocolate sauce. I wasn't that dumb and Anna got a spanking.

Sometimes we had sweets on the farm. Once we had a package of those fluffy marshmallow things with bits of coconut on them and a thin soft vanilla cookie on the bottom. Mom gave us each one and we went out on the porch to eat them.

This may shock you but we little girls didn't always wear panties under our dresses. We didn't that day. Anna dropped her cookie and it landed between her legs. She just picked it up and ate it. We picked on her for years about that. I think if she knew we still talked about it she'd be mad enough to spit.

Mom made her own cottage cheese. I remember tubs of milk sitting behind the wood stove with the curds floating on top. I don't know how she did it. This is just a fleeting memory. I recall this because I used to sit back there because it was so warm and no one could find me there.

Of course she made butter and I loved this. Sometimes we would help her by shaking and rolling the big jar of cream till it came together. I loved to watch her knead the butter in a big wooden bowl on the kitchen table.

Butter doesn't start white and I don't remember what she did to make it yellow but in my mind I see it yellow in the bowl. I used to stick my finger in when I didn't think she was looking and snag a glob of fresh butter. It tasted so good! She'd give the leftover liquid to us to drink because we liked it. I thought that was buttermilk and it wasn't till years later I learned what real buttermilk tasted like and spit it out, it was that bad.

I have memories of someone making butter in a big glass jar with metal paddles inside that you turned with a crank till it became butter. The memory is fuzzy but I think it was either Grandma Russell or Aunt Lillian or Mom. I may have seen them all do it at one time or another.

One summer day some people that Dad knew came to visit. I think the names were Pearl and Dick but I may have this memory mixed up with another. Pearl and Dick were friends of Dad's who in the early days visited us about once every year or so. I got the feeling over time that they thought they were much better than us and money wise they were. Pearl had a camera and took a photo of us girls in the field. I didn't want to stand still with the other kids so Pearl gave me a big bag of Campfire Marshmallows. You can't see it in the photo but it�s behind my back.

That's Anna, Sue or Ursula as her name is on her birth certificate says, Millie and Me.

Millie Bobby and Anna

Dad took them for a walk in the woods and they found this huge egg shaped mushroom. They took it with them when they left. They were going to cook it somehow and eat it. I've never seen one shaped like that or that big since.

One winter Sue got real sick and had convulsions. An old lady who lived down the road from us told Mom that Sue had them because her temperature was too high. She said the way to bring it down was to put her in a tub of snow. Mom did that and it worked. I vaguely recall that woman being fat and black but I�m not really sure on that.

Sue had constant ear infections that year. Mom had a tiny blue glass bottle of something that she would put a drop of in Sue's ear when she cried. I remember one night when Sue was real sick with this and mom rocked her in the rocking chair in the kitchen while Dad drove to town in the snow to find the doctor and get another bottle of the stuff. When he got back Mom poured a little bit in a teaspoon and Dad heated it up slightly so it wasn't as cold as outside before Mom could put a drop in Sue's ear. It worked and Sue finally fell asleep.

That little blue bottle was a part of our lives for a long time.

In the spring Mom was pregnant again. Mom was getting Sue off the bottle and she tossed her bottle out on the compost pile where Sue could see it. She told Sue that one day the bottle would be gone and that would mean that the angels took it for the new baby when it was born.

So this would be Enid and she must have been born either before we lost the farm or just after when we lived on the Tracy Farm.

I recall Dad going hunting a lot to find us meat to eat. He would bring home squirrels and birds. Sometimes he'd get a deer. I grew up hating venison.

Once he came home empty handed. He�d shot a deer but it fell on the wrong side of the line and was in Vermont. A game warden saw it fall and confiscated it. Mom said he probably took it home for himself.

One night when I was sick with something, I'm not sure what, I got up in the night and found a small water glass sitting on Mom's treadle sewing machine. She had been working on it and the glass contained a tiny bit of kerosene. I drank it. I threw up immediately which looking back must have saved my life. I just went back to sleep and was fine in the morning.

One Christmas came near the end of our time on the farm. We had next to nothing and it was heading for a very bad time all around. We wouldn't have had a tree if not for the fact some grew in the woods and Dad chopped one down and hauled it in. We made paper chains to decorate it along with whatever ornaments Mom had saved from previous times. I don't think there were many. We may have had popcorn on it but I bet cranberries were too dear then.

Millie and Sue and Anna were all sick with something. I don�t think I was then. We always caught whatever the rest did, though.

Christmas Eve came and there was a knock on the door. Outside were a bunch of people, girl scouts I think and some adults. They brought in a lot of bags and boxes. Mom ordered us kids to go to bed. We knew something was up and it was beginning to look like something good. I knew I saw colored wrapping paper.

Sure enough, morning came and after we ate our bowl of oatmeal Dad opened the doors to the living room. It was our wildest dream come true. The tree had more decorations on it and a whole bunch of packages underneath. There were even stockings for each of us with candy and oranges in them.

I remember colorful plastic candles with wide bottoms. They were lights on a cord that you plugged into the outlet. Each candle had a tiny bubble in it that moved when the candle heated up. Years later they were all taken off the market as a safety hazard.

It was an ongoing battle just to stay alive on the farm. We didn't have the farm long because the land was mostly clay and rocks and Dad could not make it prosper enough to meet the payments. It was the only time I saw my Dad cry, when the papers came with the foreclosure notice.

Bob and Nell
Some time passed but not long and we drove by one day just for a look at the place. Lena, the wife of the man who bought the place, the team of horses included, was jabbing one of the horses in the back with a pitch fork. It made us all cry. I think there last name was Mulhall. At least that's what it sounded like.

We never went back there again while Dad was alive. Once years later Sue and I took a drive that way. All that was left was a white house that looked nothing like the one that was there when we were kids.

On the farm, we had an upright piano. I don't know where it came from but it was there. I loved to sit on the stool and spin around and around till I was dizzy, then get up and fall over.

We had an old yellow cat that Mom loved. One day the cat cried a lot and wouldn't let anybody touch her. This went on for a several days. One afternoon, Mom saw something hanging off the side of her. It looked like a thread and at first Mom thought she had some kind of worm so she reached out with a towel, grabbed it and pulled.

The cat howled like crazy and ran. Mom still had the thread and discovered she also had a needle. She said the cat must have swallowed the threaded needle. I just couldn't imagine that happening. Maybe she rolled on it and got it stuck in her?

Some of the cows.

One day in the fall Dad was going to slaughter some pigs. Mom made us all stay in the house so we wouldn't see or hear them. She told me later that Dad shot them unlike most farmers who slit their throats while they were still alive. I would later learn that the animals had to be dipped in scalding water and then have their skin scraped with a flat board like thing to get all the pig hairs off. You don't see hairs on them in story books but they do have some hairs on them.

I think we went to the Tracy Farm next but I'm not sure.

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