Growing Up on a Farm: Keeping Cows, Pumping Water And Incubating Chicken Eggs

Reader Contribution by The Mother Earth News Editors
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This is the second story from Ruth Zwald, written by her father, Robert Zwald, and submitted as part of our Wisdom From Our Elders collection of self-sufficient tales from yesteryear. She compiled her father’s stories in his own words, and they are posted in eight parts. Read the other parts:1900s Farming in Washington County Minnesota; Catching Frogs for Money; One Room School House; Borrowing Against Life Insurance; Changes in Agriculture; Courtship and Marriage and The Wisconsin Farm.    

As a kid, I followed my dad wherever he went! I was with Dad whenever I could be – in the barn, hauling milk, grinding feed, riding the old grain seeder, cultivating. I really should have stayed home when it was bitter cold and storming.

My Dad milked eight cows – not very good cows. The farm in Woodbury was a poor farm. We had no electricity. Our barn was dark and dreary, but warm with the calves, cows, and horses. We pumped water into a cistern gas engine once or twice a week, and then we had to pump it by hand into a tank in the barn. Everything drank out of that tank. It was my job to pump the water after school – I was about 8 or 10 years old. After I finished, I can remember going to sleep on the loose hay, which was pitched down from upstairs. I’d sleep until Dad finished milking. Then we would grab the lantern from a nail in the ceiling, and head into the cold house. We had to be careful with the lantern in the barn, as it burned kerosene with a wick on it. I liked the long shadows cast by the lantern. Our house wasn’t very warm in winter. We would move everything into the dining room to keep warm – dishes, stove, and all. We had two stoves, and we’d usually dress by the stove, as we kept our clothes near the stove to stay warm. We had a outdoor summer kitchen, which we used in the warm weather.

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