Remembering My Grandfather's Farm Machinery

             I grew up during the 1950’s in rural Southern Indiana.  My grandparent’s farm was just a house away, so I spent a lot of my youth on their farm, which became one of my favorite playgrounds.   Here are some memories from my early days on the farm.

    The farm machinery always held a of lot of fascination for us boys.  My cousin Dan and I were especially mesmerized by the big antiquated Farmall tractor that was only taken out to do the heavy work in the fields.  We watched with big eyes as my grandfather or uncle struggle to turn the iron crank in front of the tractor, in an attempt to start the iron monster’s finicky engine.

            When the old tractor was not being used and just sat in the garage, it still filled our imagination with wonder.  We would climb up onto it and took turns sitting high up on its big metal seat, pretending to turn the steering wheel as we vocalized engine noises.

    Perhaps our favorite piece of farm equipment was the mysterious tomato planter that was pulled by the tractor.  It had two places for the workers to sit, low to the ground, on each side of the thing, with their legs stretched out in front of them, and their backs against a big metal tank of water. 

    As the planter was pulled across the field, small blades located between the sitting men, lowered into the soil and opened a shallow trench in the ground, and the two men, with “flats” of young tomato plants on their laps, would take turns sticking the roots of the young plants into the trench.   As the planter moved, a bit of water was dribbled onto the roots of the plant and then another set blades behind them, closed in the soil around the plant’s roots.  It seemed a wonder of modern technology to us country kids.

    The other piece of equipment that was fun to watch was the manure spreader.  It was basically a long box on wheels with a big metal cylindrical “distributor” on the back.  Manure was piled in the box, and as the spreader was pulled through the field, chains at the bottom of the box, moved the manure toward the back to the distributor, and as the distributer spun, pieces of manure would be flung out into the air before falling onto the field.  Of course the smell of the operation was also intriguing to our young noses.

            The photo shows my cousin Dan in 2011, fulfilling his life-long dream;  becoming the proud owner of the old Farmall tractor that was such a fascination to us as kids.

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Remember Video Cassettes?

     We have always loved movies, and back in the early 1980’s we were starving to see some.  I always liked to read movie reviews and I anxiously awaited the opportunity to watch the ones with good reviews, but alas, at that time, tiny and isolated McBride had no movie theater. 

         In 1983, we were one of the first families in McBride to buy a VCR, but at the time, there was no place in the village to rent a movie video.  In our desperation to watch movies, we would rent them in Prince George when we went up there to shop, and then we had to return them to the store by shipping  them on the Greyhound bus.

        Renting and showing movie videos became an important part of our social life.  We always had friends over to watch movies.  Sometimes they would rent the videos, and come over to watch them on our VCR.   One friend of ours still jokes about all the people watching movies at our house be we just had a small portable color Sony Trinitron to watch them on.   Everyone was so eager to watch films, that the size of the screen didn’t matter.

        Eventually, Steve’s Men’s Wear, a local store started to rent a few movie videos.  At the time, the market for them was low, because very few people had VCR’s, in McBride.   As families bought them, Steve’s Men’s Wear began to developed a good business renting them.   Then what always happens in a tiny community where all the stores struggle to make a living, all the other stores in the village began to rent movie videos.

        In 1992, we were renting and watching movie videos once or twice a week.  One Saturday, my wife figured it was time to clean out the inside of our car, which had become an embarrassment. 

            When she did, she made an interesting discovery.  Under one of the front seats she found the VCR movie video of “Memphis Belle,” which was three months or so overdue. 

            On Monday, during my lunch hour at work, I dropped off the Memphis Belle video at the Bigway Grocery.   When I got home from work I got a call from Bigway, who informed me that the Memphis Belle video had not come from their store and should have been returned to the Country King Store, so I had to drive back into town and correct the mistake.

           Returning a rented video to the wrong store was one problem that was created when so many stores started renting them, the other problem that was created was with such a saturated video rental business, soon none of the stores were making much of a living off of doing it. 

                       The photo below is an early one of our living room shortly after we had bought our house, but it does show our small TV that all of our friends would gather around to watch a movie video 

Encounters While Herding the Goats

         Back in the 1980’s and 90’s, I had a herd of Angora goats.  The fences around my pasture were not in very good shape, so I couldn’t just put the goats in there and walk away, so every day, I would herd the goats down from the barnyard, and into the pasture.  I would hang around with them for 45 minutes or and hour, while they grazed.  It was very relaxing and a good way to unwind after work.  The photo above shows my father, who had come for a visit, herding the goats back to the barnyard.

            One day in the first week of May, after I got home from work, I herded the goats out to the pasture.  As they were grazing, and I was standing around watching, I saw a deer walk out of the neighbor’s woods.  It was very curious about the goats, but then it turned and walked back into the woods.  I was getting bored at standing there watching the goats, so I lay down in the grass to rest.

            As I lay there daydreaming away, after a while I noticed that instead of eating, all of the goats were just standing there, with their eyes on me, at least I thought their eyes were on me.  When I looked in the opposite direction, I saw that the deer had again walked out of the woods, curious about the goats, and was standing there, just 20 feet away from me.

    Exactly a week later after work, I again walked the goats down to the pasture to herd them.  When we got down there, I noticed that there was black bear eating dandelions beside the pasture.  I was initially concerned when I saw it, but when the bear saw me and the goats, it quickly got up ran into the shelter of the woods.

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1992 Diary Entries: A Busy Week of Forest Fires

         Usually when our Forestry District had forest fires, I was called in to work in the warehouse (photo above), issuing fire fighting equipment.  

    Here are my diary entries from the first week of August, 1992, when we had a fire at Cushing Creek (up the Morkill River drainage), and another up the Raush that “blew up”.  In my diary I wrote: 

August 4:

    They are spending an unbelievable amount of money fighting them.  I worked with John (in the warehouse) until midnight, then came dragging home.

August 5:

          I had to be back in the office by 6:00, I again spent the whole day working in the warehouse.  They flew 30 lunches out to the fire up the Raush by helicopter (Pretty expensive sandwiches, probably the most expensive meal these firefighters will ever eat).  Two Native crews arrived at the office to fight the fires, but we didn’t have any means to get them to the fires, so they just had to sit around all day.  I got home at 10:30. 

August 6:

    Today went to work at 7:00 and spent the day in the warehouse.  At noon I was sent out to deliver the lunches to the “helicopter on the pad up the Raush”, and ended up going to three different helipads before I found the right one.  In our warehouse compound we now have 238 barrels of Turbo B (jet fuel used by helicopters).  Tonight it finally rained.

August 7:

    Rained off and on for most of the day, which helped cooled down the fires.  I went to the office at 8:00 (my regular time) but had to work until 5:00 in the warehouse.

August 8 (Saturday):

    Into work at 7:00, shipped out items to the Rock Fire, out the Raush.  I also sent out 24 bales of hay out to the Cush Fire (they must be using packhorses to carry equipment to the difficult to access fire).  

August 11:

    I have earned 24 days off with all of the fire overtime I have earned this year.  That is, if I take it all in “time” instead of “money”.

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Autumn Drive: McBride to Prince George

     Yesterday, after a couple of weeks of putting it off, I made the two and a half hour drive to Prince George to restock our supplies.    The drive can be fairly monotonous because there isn’t a whole lot to see except trees along the hilly, curvy highway.  Spotting wildlife is always a possibility, but yesterday morning, I saw nothing but a small herd of deer, just outside of McBride.

    It was foggy for the first half of the trip, and that added mood to the beautiful yellow colored leaves of the cottonwood trees that were in their prime.   I find making the drive this time of year is always frustrating, because I saw so many really beautiful potential photos, but it was usually too dangerous to park along the side of Highway 16.  I did manage find pullouts and was able to take these two shots.

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What's This Hole in the Compost Pile?

    Sorry for the rather confusing photo, but see the large dark area in the lower half of the picture?  I noticed it when I was emptying our vegetable scraps onto the compost pile.  That dark area is a hole about a foot (30cm) deep.  Obviously something had been digging in our compost pile.  I knew immediately who the culprit was:  a bear.

    This time of year the bears are on a feeding frenzy.  They have to really load up on food to get them through their months of hibernation during the winter.  I guess the bear found some appetizing things deep in the compost that helped satisfy its needs.

    Compost piles should be periodically turned over, so that all the bits get composted.  It is something I never do, but should.   Pete, our local gardening guru once told me that he always buries his fresh garbage under the surface of the compost pile.  Then when the bears come around, they do the turning-over of the compost for him.  

    It seems all of the animals like our compost pile.  I had to put a wire fence around it to keep Ginger, our neighbor’s dog, out of the pile.  (Obviously, the fence didn’t slow down the bear at all.)  Every day in the winter when I throw our vegetable scraps on the pile, they are always gone by the following morning; eaten by the deer.  

    The compost pile does build up during the summer, when the deer find better things to eat.  Only the odd raven and a lot of insects visit it, but as you can see, the pile does start to become an attraction, once autumn arrives.  

    I don’t mind the wildlife dining on the compost, even though authorities tell you not to feed them.  I don’t feed them, they feed themselves overnight.   

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Seasonal Changeover

     After a longer, drier, and hotter than usual summer, we suddenly find ourselves in fall.  Things have certainly changed, with the advent of cooler and wetter weather.  This change has me removing all of the summer things in preparation for winter.

    Since forest fires are no longer a threat, the photo shows me unscrewing the hose of one of the outside building sprayers, that gave me a small bit of hope during fire season.  This year I put up five of the sprayers; four on our house and one on my shop.

    Yesterday, I moved all of the lawn furniture off of our “lanai”, which changed it back to a carport, since I don’t think we will be spending much time sitting outside until next spring.

    Today is the day BC drivers have to have changed over from summer tires on their vehicles, to winter tires.  I had mine done two weeks ago.  Winter tires are not just for traveling on ice and snow; they also give better grip on the pavement when temperatures get colder than 7°C   (45°F) because they are made with softer rubber.

    Other things that I need to do before winter hits is dig all of the potatoes, clean out the greenhouse and garden, and plant the garlic.   I can then put the rototiller and all of the garden tools away and get out the snowblower and snow shovels.

    Luckily, last winter was so mild, that I didn’t really have to cut more firewood, because I had so much left over from last winter.  

    At present, the leaves of the deciduous trees are beginning to yellow, and so we can enjoy the color before the grays and whites of winter take over.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca