In the mid-1940s and early 1950s when I was in public school, we were into mixed farming. We milked cows and shipped the milk to the Bluevale Creamery. We had a couple of sows and a few pens of pigs. We had about 50 cattle, calves, yearlings and fat cattle. Every year we marketed about 15 fat cattle. We grew hay and oats. Corn growing had not yet made its way to Huron County. We bought a truckload or two of cob corn from the London area to feed the cattle.
Dad owned 250 acres and his brother Charlie owned 300 acres. Dad and Charlie worked together so there was always plenty of work from early spring until late fall.
I did my share of the farm work. I learned to drive our Allis-Chalmers WD when I was about 10 years old. Dad put me to work harrowing the grain field. A couple of years later he taught me to plow. I plowed in the Huron County plowing match when I was 14. My harvest job was driving the tractor while Grandad rode the binder to cut the grain and bind it into sheaves. I learned to stook the sheaves so they would be dry enough for threshing. I was quite good at it. After we finished our place and uncle Charlies’ place, I worked for a couple of the neighbours to help them finish their stooking.
In the early 1950s, the threshing gang along our line still used horses. The Cathers’ threshing gang on the ninth of Turnberry used tractors and so, along with my two first cousins, I got a job as a tractor driver for three or four years with the Turnberry gang.
By the time I was 15, I had outgrown the tractor driving role. Then I worked on the Second line threshing gang pitching sheaves for a dollar an hour. George Jordan from Belgrave owned the tractor and threshing machine that did custom work around the neighborhood. His equipment was operated by the Deacon brothers from East Wawanosh.
On the second day of my second season of working with our threshing gang, (I was now 16) one of the Deacon brothers had a heart attack and was hospitalized. George Jordan came to our house to ask me if I would be the threshing machine tractor operator for the rest of the season. No raise in pay and longer hours but easier than pitching sheaves in the hot sun all day. I was picked up every threshing day morning at 5:30. My job was to fuel the tractor, shut down the machine between loads, move the threshing machine from farm to farm and position the separator and tractor at each farm. We usually worked until dark as long as the weather was good. We worked six days a week, with Sundays off.
The next summer, I went to summer school in Toronto and became a teacher. Thus ended my farm career. After teaching in a one room rural school for two years, attending Stratford Teacher’s College for a year, teaching in Toronto for five years, becoming a principal in Usborne Township for two years and then becoming a principal in Brucefield, I had distanced myself from farming.
In the late 1970s, Dad turned 65 and decided he wanted to retire from farming and pursue other careers. He asked me if I wanted to inherit a barn full of hay and 50 calves. I lived 40 miles from the barn and had a full-time job as a principal of a large school, so it was an unlikely proposition. I was 39 and had been out of farming for 21 years.
At the end of September, a friend and fellow principal who lived in Belgrave invited my wife and I to go to Octoberfest with them. They had been given VIP seats at one of the better venues in Waterloo. Of course we accepted. During the course of the evening, I mentioned the farming proposition. My friend jumped at the opportunity. He had always wanted to be a farmer. We arranged a meeting with my dad to iron out the details. My friend and his two boys would do the daily feeding. The barn was only two and a half miles from their house. I would do the weekend feeding and clean the pens. We would work together for the spring planting, haying and harvest. We agreed to buy the equipment from dad and pay him rent of the farm and barn. We floated a loan to buy the calves.
It all sounded good on paper. I quickly learned that all my past farming experience was not worth a plug nickel. Farming had changed. Stooking and threshing gangs were a thing of the past. My friend and now business partner knew even less than me.
The calves arrived by truck from the western cattle sale at Pincher Creek, Alberta. Dad was a cattle buyer and bought us a load of quality calves. The load arrived early evening on the first of October and we had read up on how to get them off to a good start. Reading up and doing are two very different things.
Within a day or two, it was quite apparent that a few of the calves were suffering from shipping fever or something like that. We got the vet out and he needled half a dozen of the calves and gave us medicine to put in the water.
In a few days, we had to call him again for another round of antibiotics. The bill was running up. The vet suggested that we buy a needle and antibiotics from him and learn how to give a calf a needle. This could save his trips to the barn and save us a lot of money. My partner (the non-farm fellow) did not think that was in his job description so I was up to bat. I had a quick tutorial with the vet. He discussed the merits of needling in the hip or in the neck. Apparently, it depended on how sick the beast appeared to be. If the calf was really dopey, a shot in the neck might act faster. Under his supervision, I needled a couple of the calves and thought that I was fast on my way to becoming an amateur veterinarian.
The next weekend, I took our two teenaged boys to the farm with me to feed the cattle and check out the herd. It was time to teach them something about farming. Most of the calves looked pretty healthy. They were up to the manger eating and looked pretty frisky except for one calf. He was not up eating when we put hay in the manger and he hung his head looking fairly droopy. I gave the boys a rope and told them to cinch him up while I loaded the needle for a shot. They diddled around and could not get the noose over his head, he just shrugged it off. So, in a bit of a huff, I told the boys to sit up on the manger and I would show them how it is done. I threw one arm around the calf’s neck to hold his head down and attempted to give him a shot in the neck.
Evidently, he was afraid of needles (or maybe me) because he reared up and took off. I ended up being dragged around the pen hanging backward between his front legs. I didn’t want to let go in case I got trampled by his back legs as he ran over me. After a bit of dragging, I finally rolled off to one side and let go. The pen had not yet been bedded with straw so I was covered in manure from head to heels. I had lost my glasses to boot.
Meanwhile the boys were falling off the manger laughing. I made the decision right there on the spot that I didn’t care if the calf died or not. The calf turned around and stared at me as if to say, “Well urban cowboy, I taught you a lesson about farming.”
We decided that the veterinarian wasn’t all that expensive after all. My farming improved with experience over the next 25 years, until I sold the farm when I was 75 years old. ◊