THE SWING SET

One of our favorite things to do as a child was to swing on the swing set.  My mom and dad got the set when my oldest brother was a toddler.  It was set up close to the front door, (on the south side of the house) then eventually moved away from the house on the south side of the cellar.  Then it was moved to under the big maple tree on the north side of the house.  That is where it is now located. Yes, the very same one.  The swings have been changed, and the teeter totter is now a plastic one, but the frame is the very same one.

There were only two metal swings and a metal teeter totter.  If there was ever a slide connected to it, I do not remember it.  The swings were a lime green color.  I don't know what color the teeter totter was originally because all I can remember is the faded gray color and the paint being worn off.

I spent hours on the swing set.  This was before we had to work in the fields.  I would sing and swing for hours.  I am sure I made up many a song.

I remember one accident with the teeter totter.  I was standing on the ground and pushing the teeter totter as high as I could get it to go.  It came back and somehow I missed catching it.  It hit me square in the eyebrow.  I did not have to have stitches, but I still have a little scar. Another thing you had to be careful about was where you put your hands on the teeter totter.  You could not put them on the horizontal bars. If you did, and you were to swing really high, those two bars would come together and smash your fingers.  We all did that on occasion.

Often my brothers and I would swing together.  We made up a game of swinging and jumping.  We would swing as high as we could and then see who could jump farther.  We would take a stick and mark where our heels hit the dirt.  Then we would attempt to jump farther than that mark.

Another thing we did was to swing and look at the clouds and try to find different formations somewhat similar to the ones pictured here. We would watch the cloud formations change from one thing to another.  We would watch the thunderstorms come in and watch the lightning storms in the distance.


The metal bar on the A-frame was a great place to sit and to swing from like monkey bars.  We could only do that for a short time because we got too tall, and our feet would touch the ground, preventing us from hanging from the bar.

My children used the swing set when they were young.  The swing set at that time was by the big maple tree on the north side of the house.  I am sure they had their own games they played while swinging. Seems they tried to swing high enough to touch a tree branch of the maple with their feet.

The swing set is still in that location, but the big maple tree is gone.  It got so old and the branches began to die.  Now, my grandchildren play on that same old swing set.  For three generations, that swing set has been loved and has provided many hours of enjoyment.

MEMORIES OF EASTER

             Holidays were fun times, and I eagerly anticipated them.  Easter was among the ones I liked best.  One of the reasons was because it was a spring holiday.  By the time Easter rolled around, I was ready for warm weather, not to say that Easter was always that warm, picture-perfect day.  Many Easter Sunday's were cold, windy, and might be one with rain or even snow.  I cannot remember an Easter that had snow, but there could have been one. 
            Being out of school was another reason to like any holiday.  At Easter, we would get out early on Wednesday and be off Thursday and Friday.  
             Another reason for liking Easter was that it was a holiday that most got new Easter outfits.  Mostly girls got new attire, but boys often would get new shoes or a tie.  I don't remember if my brothers got new clothes or shoes, but I know that my mom and I did.  We would get a new dress, shoes, gloves, and hats.  This tradition ended as I got older, but it was fun as a little girl. 
              Each Easter Sunday, we would go to my grandparents house.  I don't remember going to the Embry grandparents, but always to the Engelking side.  We would have a big dinner that was usually turkey, dressing, ham, homemade rolls, many side dishes, and desserts.  My cousins Debbie and Davey usually were there as well.  My grandmother would set up a kid's table.  She would decorate the table.  One year I remember her making a centerpiece that we could eat.  The grass was green dyed flaked coconut.  On this "grass" was a big chocolate bunny in the middle and then various little type of candies spread around on the grass.  There were chocolate eggs, chocolate covered marshmallow bunnies, and jelly beans.  
               After we ate, we would hide Easter eggs.  I think my grandmother provided all the hard boiled dyed eggs.  We brought out Easter baskets and one of the adults would go hide the eggs in the yard or in the rye field close to the house.  The ones in the rye field were very difficult to find and some would not be found until the rye was cut or several months later.  PEE_U!  Those eggs had to be rotten.
               Another thing we would do is go to an Easter egg hunt that was close to the gin where my dad worked, at Clays Corner.  There were people from all over the area who would come.  They had the hunt divided up into age groups.  The eggs they had there were these yucky candy eggs of all colors wrapped in cellophane wrappers.  We rarely to never ate those things, but would take them home and hide them over and over for our own egg hunts. 

 One year I was way in the back of the pack.  By the time I got to the area where the eggs were hidden, there were none left.  I did not get one single egg that year.  My cousins and brothers thought that hilarious. I on the other hand was very disappointed and cried.  Why I should cry over not getting candy eggs that I did not like, I do not know. It was just the fact I did not get any eggs.  

              Our Easter egg baskets were made of straw.  They had green plastic type grass and we had a few Easter animals like bunnies, chickens, or ducks in the basket.  I remember ours being more like the basket on the right, more oval shaped.  
                We had this bunny that was somewhat like cardboard, but I think it was made of paper mache.  Mine was pink.  
              My Grandma Ike usually gave us our own candy, a big hollow chocolate bunny, jelly beans,  chocolate eggs, and chocolate covered marshmallows. 










          Another favorite Easter activity was dying eggs.  My mom would boil at least 6 eggs for each of us 3 kids. Most of the time we had to take 6 eggs to school for our school Easter egg hunt. She would take the hot water used for boiling the eggs and put in a coffee cup along with vinegar and a dye tablet.  There were 6 main colors in the kit.  Then we would dye the eggs and put on an old rag to dry.  The only other decoration in the kit was a paraffin stick (wax) that you could write or make designs on the egg before placing in the dye.  Where the wax was, no color or dye would show and you would  see what was written or drawn.
        There was not a lot of emphasis on the resurrection of Jesus, which I now find very odd since that is the reason to really celebrate Easter.  I am not sure why.  It was somewhat like Christmas, and was not really considered a religious holiday.  I do not really know why this was.  I am glad that I now celebrate Easter as the day of the resurrection of Jesus, which means I will be resurrected and live with Him forever in heaven.    

GIRL SCOUTS

     Recently Maddy was signed up or Girl Scouts.  This brought back memories of when I was in scouts.  
     
     I started out as a Brownie. They did not have younger scout groups then.  Brownies were the youngest group.  I believe they have Daisy Scouts now.  I found the different age groups and their designations in Wikipedia.

"In 1965 the age structure was rearranged to Brownies (ages 7 and 8, or 2nd and 3rd grades), Juniors (ages 9 through 11, or 4th through 6th grades), Cadettes (ages 11 through 14, or 7th through 9th grades), and Seniors (ages 14 through 18, or 10th through 12th grades). 
     




         I might have been in Brownies one year.  Then I moved up to Juniors.  Each group had their own uniform.  They seem quite dorky to me now.  I had first 2 uniforms on the left.  Yes, go ahead and laugh.  I am.  haha 

    Unfortunately, I did not have a great scout leader.  That is probably the reason I did not stay in Girl Scouts. I never did earn very many badges.  I cannot even tell you which badges I earned. I am going to assume I got one for cooking.  Other than that?  Who knows.
    
      There are not a lot of things that I remember doing in scouts. I do remember trying to learn to knit.  That was a frustration for sure.  The other activity I remember doing was going on a camp out.  
    
       We went to some ranch close to Friona, TX.  There was an old place that seemed to be a bunk house.  There was a kitchen of sorts.  I know there was a windmill that was pumping water into a stock tank. If there were bathrooms, I can't remember.  We may have had to go to an outhouse.  There was an older group of scouts there as well.  Seems they fixed shish-ka-bobs for their dinner.  I've no idea what we ate. Smores were made at the campfire later in the evening.  
   
       Another thing we did in Girl Scouts was to sell Girl Scout Cookies.  I hated selling, so this was not a fun thing for me.  The cookies they had then and that I remember were: Mint Cookies, Butter Flavored Cookies, Fudge Cream Sandwiches,  and Coconut Macaroons. I always loved the Mint Cookies best. 
   
       I think if I had had a better scout leader, I might have stayed in scouts and enjoyed it more.  

HOEING CROPS

  Hoeing crops was a huge part of my growing up years.  I started when I was about 10 years old and ended about age 20.  Every summer we hoed various crops--cotton, maize (milo), corn, peanuts, and castor beans, We mostly hoed weeds in cotton, corn, and maize fields.
    Early in the morning, around 7:00, while it was still cool, we would go to the field and start our day.  The rows were usually 1/2 mile long.  Each "round" was all the way up and back down the row, which would be 1 mile.  How many rounds a day we made depended on how many weeds there were. It was always nice to be able to take 2 - 4 rows at a time and get across the field quickly.  That rarely happened.
    We hoed all kind of weeds.  The main ones I remember are what we called careless weeds, white weeds, iron weeds, devil claws, tumbleweed, grass burrs, goatheads, and crab grass.
Below are pictures of each weed.

Tumbleweed

Tumbleweeds dry up and then blow away scattering their seeds.


white weed


Goathead


Crab grass


Grass burr


Devil's Claw  These weeds were very sticky and STUNK!!


Devil's Claw made a nasty seed.


Careless Weed


Iron Weed
I do not know the real name of this weed.  I
never found a picture of it on the internet.

















    The cotton is where we would usually get terrible white weed patches.  The weeds were very tough and dulled a hoe quickly. Hoeing them did not kill them, but actually multiplied them as they came back from the roots.  Repeated hoeing and plowing would eventually get rid of them.
     Iron weeds and careless weeds could get extremely tall.  One year we hoed some maize.  The weeds were as tall as the maize which was about waist high.  My brothers used shovels most of the time.  I had to use a hoe, but they would get the really big ones for me. If we could we would pull the weeds up by the roots.  That was easier than hoeing the tough stems.  **
      One year some of the ground in the field got missed being sprayed with weed killer.  This was before GPS.  So all kinds of grass came up in the maize.  It was so thick you could barely see the crop.  Eldon and I hoed all morning and maybe got half way through the field, 1/4 mile.  I am not sure, but we may have quit and hired some hoe hands to finish that job.
     Weldon was the only smart one.  He would file his hoe every few rounds. I didn't know how and guess Eldon didn't care.  He was strong enough it didn't matter.  My dad would file our hoes every morning and and lunch time.
      After every round, we would stop and get some water and rest for a few minutes.  Eldon never was very tired and urged us to get going quicker than I liked.  If it was really hot, we tried to sit in the shade of the pickup.  There were no trees.  Sometimes my mom would bring us a coke that we had put in the freezer.  That icy cold slushy drink tasted so good on a hot afternoon.
      Our day usually ended around 4:30 or 5:00.  Sometimes we would go back after supper if it was especially nice or if we were trying to finish a field.
       Sometimes I look back and wonder how we hoed all day long and in the heat.  It was not easy.  I think it made us stronger, healthier, and more appreciative of the money we got paid.  Hard earned money was not spent on just anything.  My dad never tolerated being lazy and not working hard.  He did not want us to stand around in the field leaning on our hoe handles.  We were urged to take breaks, but the lesson to be learned was "An honest day’s pay for a hard day’s work".


**  ( I think Holly, Cindy, Tammy, and Ethan will remember using a weed whip on these kinds of weeds in the church parking lot at Bloomfield.  The weeds were at least waist high or taller.  It took several days, maybe weeks to knock out those weeds.)

FARM CHORES

     When we were growing up,.my brothers and I each had our own farm chores.  We had various animals on the farm.  We mostly had pigs and chickens.  Sometimes we had some sheep and calves, and I had the rabbits for a short time..
     My brothers took care of the pigs and chickens and other animals.  My job was to gather the eggs, clean them, and put them in egg cartons. My mom often sold the eggs to the store or to individuals.  I can barely remember my mom selling eggs by the gross.  That is 12 doz.  We had a big box that held the eggs.  To clean the eggs we had an old pan and put water and soap in and washed and dried them. I don't know if that was such a good idea now that I know that egg shells are permeable.
      Feeding and watering the pigs and chickens was done twice a day, and gathering the eggs was done in the evenings.  My brothers got up early in the mornings before breakfast to do their chores and then again when we got home from school or in the evenings.
     I really did not mind gathering the eggs except when there was a setting hen. The hens would not get off the next and you had to pull them out.  I had seen my mom do this in the past and every once in a while would get pecked.  I did NOT want to get pecked.  Sometimes I would take a stick and try to poke them enough to make them get out of the nest.  We used old paint cans to put the eggs in. Sometimes we would get 2 full buckets of eggs.  Other times we would get only a hand full.  One very cold winter day, I remember Weldon went to gather the eggs.  The hens did not lay well in the winter time. He got 2 eggs that day and accidentally dropped one.
The nests looked somewhat like the cages pictured, but they had straw in them.. Once in a while I would help my dad pull out all the old dirty wheat straw and put in fresh straw.


If a chicken wanted to set, which meant they wanted to sit on their eggs until they hatched, we would take the hen and put it in a homemade box.  The box was square, maybe about 2 feet tall.  There were boards all around the edges.  There was no bottom.  It just sat on the dirt.  The top had chicken wire. There was a wooden hinged lid that we could raise so we could put the chickens in and take them out easily.   I can remember sometimes putting the chickens in the cages we used for the rabbits.  After being in the cage a few days, we would put the hen back with the other hens.
    Sometimes I would have to help clean out the chicken house.  That was one stinky dusty job.  I really hated doing that.  Most of the time my brothers did it, but there were times when they were busy with other farm jobs, so it was up to me to help my dad.  We would take a grain shovel and scrape the cement floor and then scoop the poop into a wheel barrow.  Then we would take that and dump it somewhere.
    In the summer if my brothers were too busy, I would go with my dad to go cut iron weeds to feed the hogs or chickens.  We would take the little Falcon pick up and use a weed whip (an Oklahoma golf club as my dad called it) and cut the weeds.  Then I would take a pitch fork and load them into the back of the pick up truck.  Then my dad would drive the pick up to the hog lot or chicken yard and we would toss them over the fence.  The chickens and hogs really loved those green weeds.
   Once in a while I had to go feed and water the chickens and hogs.  My dad would usually come out to help me. We fed the chickens rolled milo and something called chicken mash that helped them to lay eggs. We gave them oyster shells to make the shells on the eggs harder so they did not crack so easily.   I carried a 5 gallon bucket of water from the watering tank to the chicken yard and poured it into the watering trough.  

The watering trough was made of heavy iron.  The one pictured is a trough that is similar, but the watering trough we had for the chickens had a pipe down the center of the trough. It was not as long as this one either.

When we fed the pigs, we had to put feed into the hog feeder which was in the shed part of the barn.

The feeder looked a little bit like this one.  You put grain in the top and it came out the bottom.  We put in rolled milo and something called pig supplement.  It was a green power type feed.  Then we would take a long stick or hoe handle and mix it all together.  I hated having to put feed in the hog troughs if the pigs were big.  They would rush at you and try to get the feed before you could even pour it out into the trough.  So I would take the bucket with the feed and go outside the barn, climb a fence, and then run to the trough and pour out the feed before the pigs knew what had happened. The pigs were accustomed to my brothers coming directly through the barn door and to the hog lot trough. I was a lot smaller and I did not want to get trampled by the pigs.  
      Some of the other chores we had to do were unloading the feed bags into the barn.  I usually just put the 50 lb bag on the edge of the pickup truck.  Then my older brothers would grab the sacks and line them up in the barn.  We had to hoe the garden, pick vegetables, pick fruit, and help with the canning or freezing. We also butchered chickens, which was discussed in a previous post.
      When we got older we started going to the field and hoeing cotton, maize, or corn.  My brothers irrigated the crops and my job was to carry the tubes and throw them into the rows that were going to be watered. That was when we had ditch irrigation.  I got to help set tubes once in a while.  I could set the 1 inch tubes, but couldn't do the 2 inch tubes very well. Later we used gated irrigation pipe, and I would help carry the pipe and put it together. Sometimes I just drove the pick up and let them load the pipe on the pipe racks.
     I don't remember a lot about feeding the sheep or calves.  I do know we had to be careful of how much milo we fed them or they would bloat.  I loved the smell of cotton seed hulls that we would give the calves.  They smelled kind of sweet.  The calves also got alfalfa hay, which was a nice smell to me.
    Growing up on a farm was an interesting life.  There was always something to do, and it was good to be in the country.  It was often hard work and not fun, but the things we learned from it were good. We learned responsibility, good work ethics, and a general knowledge of farm life.  I really do have fond memories of growing up on the farm.
 

RAISING CHICKENS ON THE FARM - PART II

     The obvious reason to raise chickens is to get the fresh eggs, but also for meat to eat.  We killed our roosters for this purpose.  When it was rooster killing time, it took several days or maybe weeks to complete the job.  We generally would kill about 9 - 12 per day, if there were enough roosters big enough to butcher.  We did not want to get them too small, or there would not be much meat.
     When it came the day to butcher, my mom would send us kids to the chicken yard to catch at least three.  We did not usually kill more than three at a time.  We took the hook, which was pictured in the previous post.  After we had caught the designated three we took them outside the pen, and my mom would wring their necks.  It sounds really gruesome, but I can tell you that my mom was an expert, and those chickens never really knew what had happened.  After the heads were off, the chickens would run around the barn yard for a bit.  This was quite odd looking to see a chicken with no head running around.  When the chickens finally stopped running and fell to the ground, we would go gather them up.
    The next phase was to place the entire chicken into a pail of hot boiling water.  We had an old laundry detergent bucket that we used.  It looked like the one pictured.
After plunging the chicken into the hot water, we would then pluck off all he feathers.  They were put in the barrel or cage where we burned trash.  After all the feathers were off, then the birds were placed over an open flame to singe the remaining feathers and pin feathers. This was a stinky affair.

  The next step was to scrape the chicken all over and wash off the singed feathers.  Now the chicken was ready to be cut into pieces or left whole for baking.  We butchered chickens outside on a picnic table.  It was too messy a job to do indoors, though that is how we started.  Once we got the picnic table, most gardening and butchering jobs were done in the great outdoors.
   After I was a few years older, I got to cut the feet off the chicken before my mom would take out the intestines, craw, liver, heart, and gizzard.
    Once this was done, it was time to cut the chicken into pieces, unless we were leaving it whole for baking.  Eventually I got to cut the wings, legs, (which I would then cut into a drumstick and a thigh), wishbone, breasts pieces, neck, and back.  The back contained the lungs, which I got to pull out.  I also got to cut open the gizzard and clean that. I do not know why I thought that would be fun, but I did. It was interesting, but stinky and gross.  Below is a picture of a cleaned gizzard. I never ate the gizzard, but my brother liked them.

     After we got all the chickens cut up, we would divide the pieces into bags and freeze.  Often we would fry a chicken for our lunch or supper that day.  Nothing tastes better than fresh, fried, grown-on-the-farm chicken.
     All the intestines, and other unusable parts were dropped into the bucket we had used for scalding the chickens.  That was taken to the hog pen, where it was devoured by the pigs.
     Then it was time to start the process all over again.  These days could be very tiring for my mom as she did most of the work.  We kids tried to help, but couldn't do what she could.  My brother, Weldon, decided he would like to try his hand at wringing a chicken's neck.  It was really a disaster, and my mom had to finish the job.  I always felt sorry for that one particular rooster.
 

RAISING CHICKENS ON THE FARM - PART I

  When I was a little girl, it was a given fact that we would get baby chicks each spring.  We would put in our order, usually at a farm store named Guthels.  I think we might have ordered our chicks from the local hardware store a few times.  It was always exciting to go get them.  They came in a box much like the one pictured.  The box had a lid.  Before opening the lid and on the way home, we would stick our fingers in the holes in the sides and let the little chicks peck us.  It never hurt, but felt rather funny.
This is a rather odd statement for me, because at one point I was rather afraid of baby chicks. I did not like the way their beaks looked---sharp!  The beaks were really not sharp.  There were a few years where the beaks were actually cut off at the tips before shipping.  This was to keep the chicks from pecking one another and causing sores or injuries.

     After we got them home, we took them to an old building called the "brooder house".  We had put new fresh straw on the floor, put up a heat lamp, and put out water and some feed for the chicks.  We had to put them under a heat lamp to keep them warm so they wouldn't get cold and die. We gave them feed on the floor on a newspaper at first, and then put the feed in a trough somewhat like the one pictured. 
We had to check on them 2 times a day and give fresh water and feed. It was fun playing with the small, soft, and yellow chickens.  We liked to hold them and let them peck the grain from our hands.
     Once the chickens got older, we would take the pullets, or young hens, and clip their wings with a big pair of scissors and take them and put them with the other hens at the big chicken house. If you did not clip their wings, they would fly out of the pen because they were not used to the other hens yet. The roosters were butchered for eating.  You could tell which ones were the roosters by their large red combs on top of their heads.
We had to catch the pullets and roosters with a long wire that had a hook on the end. You would try to get the hook around the chicken's leg.
 If you happened to hook one that was too small you had to get the hook off the leg and let the chicken go.
   The butchering process was quite an event and a lot of work.  I will tell about butchering chickens another time.