Since we had so much milk, and we had decided to sell cream to the Scotsburn Dairy, we needed some help in using up the skim milk. We couldn’t drink it all, even though the boys drank milk like water! How healthy that fresh, raw milk was for them, and how well their young bones must have developed! But as I said, we could not drink it all, so we decided to get some pigs!

We had heard of a farmer who raised very healthy and fine pigs, and so we went to see him. His name was Tony ______. I think he was British; he certainly was not a native Nova Scotian. He did have a large number of pigs, and he did let them run loose on his farm! This was great for his pigs, and I guess it provided great manure for the land, but it was certainly not good for the growing things. His farm was a mess. Pigs had uprooted everything with their snouts. He had pretty much ruined that farm, and was getting ready to move to Vermont and start over doing the same thing there. So he was selling some of his pigs.

His pigs were black with a white band around their middles. Appropriately enough, they were called Saddleback pigs. They were very healthy, and were supposed to be excellent pigs. We bought a bred sow, which Dave named Matilda, after the waltzing Matilda song in the movie, “On the Beach”. She was a very nice animal. She was more than that; she was a sweetie! Of course, she was big, and she was fat. But she was so sweet. If we had had the time, she would have made a lovely companion for us. She was intelligent (as are all pigs) and she was very clean. She always made sure she had her poops in one corner of her pen. this made it easy to keep her pen clean. She had straw for a bed. Which reminds me, that straw makes a very comfortable bedding for animals, and it makes lovely food for the land when mixed with manure.

Matilda didn’t always stay in her pen in the barn; sometimes we let her out to graze for short periods while we watched her. Later on, maybe a year or so later, I had planted some comfrey, and the pigs loved to eat it. It was very nourishing food for all the large animals. The pigs, the cows and the goats all loved it. We were very glad that we had bought Matilda. She was a nice animal, and we could hardly wait for her to have her babies.

When she did have them we were disappointed that there were only four. We had hoped there would be about 10! They were the cutest things you ever saw! We just loved to watch them. We had decided to eat one of them ourselves and we sold the other three. Or maybe we kept two to eat and sold the other two. I can’t remember for sure. I do remember that we sold one to Anna and Egon. Egon was a butcher and he helped us when we butchered our first pig. I still remember Anna holding a big basin to catch the blood when his neck was slit. She would use it later to make blood pudding or bloodwort or some such thing.

Anna was a remarkable woman! She was a good person, and very generous. She and Egon both worked like work horses on their farm and doing their butchering. Anna was strong and sensible and worked herself to death, probably. Egon was I think an alcoholic, or at least he was a problem drinker. And he definitely was not sensible. He was full of ego, and Anna was always careful not to bruise his ego, which was pretty much a full-time job.

Anna and Egon were very hospitable. I think they were lonely for friends. They only had one daughter on whom they doted constantly. Because they were German, they were not well accepted by the locals. ( why this was I never found out. Surely, it had nothing to do with the second world war!) Even though people around them were glad to use Egon’s butchering skills, I think Egon and Anna were pretty much ostracized. So they were lonely.

By nature, I think they loved to invite folks over to prepare a German feast for them. Egon made his own beer. I don’t remember whether it was good or not. But I do remember the food! We all loved it. We loved to go over and be fed! We liked Anna a lot, and Egon tried to make himself agreeable. I remember though, Anna was often saying “Oh Egon!” and scolding him a lot. She was always trying to make up for some crude or disagreeable remark he made.

However, Egon was also very generous, and loved to see us enjoying his sausages or some other German dish. They made all kinds of sausages, including bloodwort. (?) They also made headcheese from the head of a pig. I can’t remember if I got help or advice from Anna or not, but once I made headcheese myself! I remember it was a lot of work. I think I had to boil the whole head of the pig until the skin and the flesh fell away from the bones. But then there were the brains – mercifully, I can’t remember much of the details.

But the fact that I made it once shows me that I was a true pioneer at heart. I was willing to learn to use all of the animal! I guess I got that from my Mom who used to really love pickled pigs’ feet. Actually, I remember from my childhood that once you got over thinking about what the delicacy reallly was, they did taste pretty good! I never tried this, however. The headcheese was all I could do to use the whole animal. I remember also that my mother used to cook the tongue of a cow. She used to flavor it with some spice – cloves, maybe. I was bullied into trying it, but I never liked it. In fact, I thought it was awful.

Tongue is something else I never tried to cook on the farm. I never tried cooking heart, either, or brains, both of which my Mom loved. I think that is why my Mom was such a strong person, physically, aside from the fact that she naturally had a strong constitution. When she was young, and when I was a little girl, she ate good, old-fashioned “whole foods”. I, on the other hand, was a “problem eater”. I didn’t like much other than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. This makes what I did on the farm all the more remarkable for me. Yes, I actually made headcheese! Did I actually eat it? I don’t remember that part!

Anna inspired me in a lot of ways. She was a hard-working German, but she was also a good person. She was a good friend. I can still hear her saying, as we pulled away in the car, after stuffing ourselves at her table: “Get home safe!” Sometimes I still say that to people as they are driving away from a visit with me. I say it in memory of Anna.

I am sorry to say that I was not a very good friend to Anna. After we had known them quite a few years, Anna had to have a hysterectomy. I think her bladder was being adversely affected by her uterus. Egon never elaborated much. I am ashamed to remember that I did not go over and help her out when she got home from the hospital . I did nothing for her. This is one of my big weaknesses, that I do not like to put myself out for others. If it is hard or inconvenient for me, I usually forget it. Dave pointed out this failing to me once. I remember being hurt but most of all, I remember that I knew he was right. Okay, so this is one of my bigger faults. I am glad to know it, but it hurts me to remember that I didn’t help Anna when she really needed a friend. I only hope that now I am aware of this tendency in me, I can learn to overcome it. I am sure God (or the Universe) will give me opportunities to learn. Whether or not I use these opportunities is up to me.

Back to Matilda. She was really a beautiful specimen of a pig. Is it true that pigs have curly tails when they are healthy and happy? I think so. I think our pigs had curly tails.

I don’t think we took away all of Matilda’s babies at once. I think we took them one at a time when they were about four or six months old. I am not sure exactly when.

We were so successful with our first batch of piglets that we decided to get a male pig to breed Matilda so she could have more babies. That was a mistake.

Much of our farming struggles occured because we did not have proper housing for the animals we chose to be our barnyard pets. I have already mentioned the trouble we had with the banties, even though in hard times, we were glad to have their eggs. Later I will tell how this lack of proper housing turned disastrous with the sheep. Actually, with both the pigs and the sheep the problems arose because we bought male animals for breeding and then did not have a proper place to keep them apart when it was not a fortuitous time for them to breed. Randy points out that our farm was completely haphazard, with no real plan. We just sort of stumbled from one thing to another. I think for the most part he is right.

I think Dave feels really bad about taking his family away to an isolated farm in a strange land. How do I know this? Well, years later, when we were either living in Fredericton or Ottawa, Dave refused to see a very popular movie about a man who took his family to an isolated island and the adventure was disastrous. The man in the movie was kind of deranged, I think, and his family suffered quite a bit. I cannot remember the name of the movie, or much about it. But I do remember that Dave would not go to see it with us. That tells me a lot about how he felt about our farm experience.

Well, we did buy a male pig. Dave and the boys went off somewhere to pick him up. I can’t remember where we got him. He was a really nice animal, and very smart. He was not a Saddleback, but an ordinary pink kind of pig. The kids named him Snoopy. (Probably it was TJ who named him.)

Poor guy, since we didn’t have a proper place to keep him apart from Matilda, we asked some Americans who lived on a farm near Rick and Cherry to keep him for us for the winter, with the advantage to them that they could use him for breeding their own sows before they returned him to us. Big mistake.

When we got Snoopy back, he was sick with Erisypalis (sp?) This is a serious, mostly fatal illness of pigs. In spite of calling the vet and giving him lots of penicillan injections, Snoopy didn’t get better. Because of all the antibiotics in his system we couldn’t even use him for food. At one point, Dave decided to shoot him. I guess it was to put him out of his misery; I don’t really know. This too was a disastrous decision. I think Dave tried shooting him himself. I don’t think Jody tried. I hope not, because the result was awful. Snoopy refused to die. Instead he squealed horribly and ran around, making it even more difficult to get a good shot. Dave tried again and again before blessed silence fell all around us. We were all devastaated. The guys took Snoopy away to bury him – where? I don’t remember, but it was probably in the woods just behind the gravel pit.

We were all very much sadder but wiser after that. It seems that the American couple had not fed Snoopy well all through the winter. And we had never gone over to check him out. When we got him, not only was he very sick, but he was so thin as to be almost emaciated. We blamed the people for being so cruel, and we cursed them energetically. But really, we ourselves had to take a lot of the blame. We should not have tried to have Snoopy without a proper place to keep him; and having made that mistake, we should have gone over to see him to make sure that he was properly taken care of.

While I am remembering our pigs, I remember another near disaster. Somehow, I can’t remember how it happened, but somehow we were the owners of several – three maybe – just-grown pigs. It was in the winter; I do remember that for sure! We had them in a pen in the barn and in a corral we had made next to the barn. This corral must have been where the barn garden was, or maybe it was just the other side of the barn garden.

Well, it was past Fall, and so past time for butchering. This time we were not going to try to do the butchering ourselves. We had found some local family who would do it for us for pay. I can’t remember their names.

Dave was away. Jody and I were responsible for rounding up the pigs and getting them in the back of the pickup truck. It seems there must have been only two, but maybe there were three. Well, Jody and I chased those pigs around that corral for a long, long time. It was hopeless. We absolutely could not get them into the back of the truck. We were exhausted and our nerves were frayed to an uncomfortable degree. I probably felt a lot like crying, and probably, so did Jody. We just gave up and waited for the men to come with their truck. I seem to remember that they were coming to show us the way to their farm, because we were to put our pigs into our truck.

When they arrived we explained to them that we could not get them into the truck.There were two of them, and they proceeded to get the pigs loaded with what seemed to us like supernatural ease. I don’t think they actually gloated, but as I remember it, they were pretty smug. Then they jumped into their truck and took off down the hill to the road below us without a backward glance at us. We didn’t have time to think. All I knew was that I had to follow them. Foolishly, I started down the hill at the same breakneck speed they had gone down. The road was almost pure ice, or as I used to say in my youth, it was “glare ice”! We fishtailed down that road, and it was only by the grace of God that we didn’t end up in the ditch with our necks broken. The back of the truck swung from one side to the other. On the last part of the hill, we went down sideways. This is the truth. It is not an exaggeration. Ask Jody. I am sure he was as terrified as I was.

When we got to the bottom of the hill, we turned onto the paved road and we saw their truck way, way ahead of us. Like a dope, I tore after them. I managed to stay close enough to them to keep them in sight, and we finally arrived at their farm. We stopped then, and let them get the pigs out of our truck by themselves. Of course, they had been playing a joke on us. They had done it on purpose. If I had had my wits about me I would have just taken the hill at a slow enough speed to get down safely and then just let them wait for us, or come back for us, or just said, the hell with them. But now I am thinking, well, if we had gone down that icy hill with 3 pigs in the back of our pickup at a normal speed, we probably WOULD have gone into the ditch!

As it was, it all ended safely. However, I was very angry at these people. What they had thought was a joke could have been a fatal accident for us. So, except for the dearness of Matilda and Snoopy, my memories of our pigs is not a happy one. And I have never been able to laugh about our slide down the hill. I was just too terrified, and too exhausted. And too, I never forgot the terrible death Snoopy endured. He died hard, and it was all for nothing -
except of course, that we learned another farm lesson that had not been in any of our books.

On this hot August day, I must have been weeding, and as I worked I listened to music. Then the news came on, and what a shock it was. Elvis Presley was dead at 42. I couldn’t believe it. He was younger than I was by two years!

Just as I and many others always remembered where we were and what we were doing when John Kennedy was shot, so I had the same experience when I heard about Elvis’ death. I remember that I even shed a few tears. Probably not so much for Elvis as for myself. It was the end of an era, and the end of my youth. I was never much a fan of his. I knew his movies were bad, and he was no actor! But just the same, he was that young man from Memphis, and I remember how much everyone was talking about him when Dave and I moved to Memphis in 1956.

There was a lot of controversy about whether he was a good boy, or whether he was very, very bad, leading the young people down a path of immoral sexual behavior. After all, those gyrations on the Ed Sullivan Show were suggestive and vulgar. And then too, his facial expressions were deliberately put on to be sexy and drive the girls wild. Which of course he did.

I remember one day at my aunt Vera’s house, there were quite a few people there, and they were talking about Elvis. I was just 23 at the time, which meant that he was 21. The general consensus was that he was not bad because he really and truly loved his Mama. And no matter what the truth is or was, I think that they were right. I think he was very young and was beginning to be famous, and he was aware that to keep his popularity he must be a sex symbol. And so he was. And who knows what his personal life was like? Who are we to judge him because he was addicted to drugs? Or because he made vulgar moves and gyrations with his hips? One thing I know for sure; he did love his Mama.

So I was sad at the news of his death, saddened and shocked. It came as a blow because I was so far away from all that was happening in the United States. I was still a part of my country in my heart, and I was still homesick. I had wanted to go back home very badly the year before. This just seemed to break another bond with my homeland and with the family members that I had left alive.

It has been 30 years today that I heard that report of his death, yet I can remember it very well. I can remember the sun beating down on me and the tears running down my face. I had never been an Elvis fan, but I felt our common humanity very strongly right then. I don’t know why. I just remember thinking that he was so young to die, and I guess I felt that my youth and my innocence had died too. And I felt so far from home.

I also loved the brook, down at the bottom of the hill that was the back yard. To me it was an enchanting brook. It was always flowing by, singing its little song; and there were little minnows swimming in the clear water. The water was beautiful, reflecting the sky. There was a board across it, and I remember sitting on the board with my feet in the water, watching the minnows play around my toes. I loved that brook, and I wonder now why I didn’t spend more time there.

As the brook reached the corner of the yard where the old chicken house stood, there was a big old tree and a patch of soft, wild grass on the little hill there. It was a particularly beautiful spot. I loved it so much, I often sat there in the grass under the tree. It had such a beauty to it. It was just a corner of the yard, but the configuration of the tree and the brook and the soft shaded grass, made it a tiny Eden for me.

I want the story of our farm to be more than just descriptions of what happened to us, and what it looked like. I want to capture the essence of our time there. But I realize that I can’t really do that now. It has been too long since we left it. For years I held it in my heart and hoped and prayed that someday we could go back again. But it was not to be. It is a good lesson for all of us: drink in the beauty and the essence of the place we are now in. Live deeply in the present day. There are beautiful places everywhere. Here in Truro there is Victoria Park. And in Vancouver there is incredible beauty everywhere you look.

The first year we were on our own farm I began to be homesick for Andover. I don’t know why. Partly I think it was that things were so hard for us, and nothing turned out quite as we had planned. Also, it was very lonely. Our farm was isolated and we knew few people. In Andover i had had many friends and was involved in things in the town. Here on this lonely farm, there was only the brook, the trees, the rocks in the gravel pit, and of course the animals.

The gravel pit. It was strange about the gravel pit. It was ugly, because it was a place where the soil was stripped away leaving only gravel and rocks. Some of the rocks were quite large, however, and the place was just starting to heal itself. The beginning of the healing was the appearance of the moss, the little red mosses called British Soldiers. It also had a small clump of poplars on the edge of the place closest to the house. Near the poplars was a very large rock and several others scattered nearby. This place, this rock, and the poplars became one of my favorite places to sit and dream. It was so warm and cozy in the sun. The leaves on the poplars danced and shone in the sun like the silver discs of a tambourine. I used to sit for hours, being warmed by the sun as I watched the leaves turn and dance.

It was strange, but for me the gravel pit was a pleasant and lovely place. Later on, when we had the goats, I used to take Amanda with me to the gravel pit, and we would go further back, behind some big trees into a hidden part of the rocky place. Here there was a space with a lot of big rocks scattered around. I would sit on one, and Amanda would play, jumping here and there, from one rock to another. She always had a wonderful time. And I would sit and sun myself and enjoy the beauty all around me.

Before we left, we had joined the Woodlot Owners Association, and they had planted little red pine trees all through that old gravel pit. We drove by years later, and all those trees were big grown trees. The gravel pit had changed from the British Soldiers to the tall pine trees. We never got out of the car and walked among the trees to see what the soil was like, but I like to think that it had started to grow into new soil because of the trees. I hoped it had healed itself.

There was another place that I especially remember, and that was where a huge rock sat at the edge of the meadow in the field on the other side of the road from the house. I loved to sit on that rock and look out over the meadow. And in the back of the house there was another meadow full of wildflowers. One year, on my birthday, I walked into the kitchen, and there on the kitchen table was a glass jar full of beautiful wildfowers. It was Randy’s birthday present to me. That was a long time ago, but I still remember my surprise and joy when I saw the many colors there on the kitchen table.

The kitchen was a place I loved as well. We had our cast iron, potbellied wood stove, and we also had a small, white enamel gas stove over in the corner of the kitchen, near the side door and next to the window. We had our mahogany round table in the middle of the kitchen with the stained glass light hanging over it, just as we had had in Andover. I remember the wallpaper on the kitchen walls. It was a blue and white check up over the white painted wainscoating. There were two windows in the kitchen. One looked out over the back yard hill and the other out to the side yard with the trees. That window opened out to the east. I know it was in the east because that window was one of my most beautiful memories.

For a long time I used to wake up very early in the morning, about 5:00. Everyone else was fast asleep, and I used to creep downstairs quietly and go to the kitchen. First I would light the kitchen stove and then I would make a cup of coffee. While the kitchen slowly warmed up I would sit at the table and drink my coffee and write a bit in a journal I had started. But mostly I would sit and watch the window in the east. It was winter, and it was cold. The window was covered with ice on the outside, and as the sun rose, the ice would turn a glowing rose color. It would make silver and rose designs as the sun warmed it and cast its light of rosy red. It was such a beautiful way to start the day.

It’s funny, but I don’t remember being cold. I must have been pretty chilled until the stove began to heat the room, but I don’t remember being uncomfortable at all. I just remember that I loved the quiet and watching the sun rise. I used to look out and see the trees dark and the world still in the grey of night. Then the sun would start to come over that hill and everything would come to life and take on the colors of morning. Those mornings were the only time in my life that I actually watched the sunrise. I am thankful for those memories. I suppose I must have gotten tired during the day, but I can’t remember that. I didn’t mind at all then, waking up so early. It was a way to see that I had a new beginning every single day of my life.

The other kitchen window had a pretty view too. It looked over the back yard, and there was a tree in the yard and also two damson plum trees. Under the trees grew a whole stream of violets, spreading out among the grasses. They were beautiful, as was all of the farm. I remember that TJ and I used to pick them and bring some of them into the house. I made bouquets of them for the kitchen, but also, I remember one summer TJ and I tried making candied violets. I had read about it in one of our books. We dipped the violets in sugar water and laid them on a cookie sheet and popped them in the gas oven, which is what we used in the summer. We ate them, but it was kind of disappointing because they shrank up to practically nothing. It was fun, but it didn’t pay to take the time and trouble. Still, it was nice to think that we could have candied violets from our own yard.

Another place I loved was the barn. Oh how I loved the smell of the barn! The good animal smell of the cows and the cats and the goats. The smell of the hay and the sheep. The smell of manure! It all smelled good to me. The barn was such a comforting place! I loved being there with the animals, especially when I was doing the milking. I loved putting my head against Bossy or Patches and feeling their warmth and smelling their good smell. Cows are such dear animals. They are so gentle and peaceful. It was comforting to watch them stand quietly and chew their cuds, as their tails switched the flies away. The barn was the home of the animals. It was their place. They made it their own, the way we made the house our own. Of course, we helped them make it their home by bringing in the hay for them and cleaning the manure, shoveling it so that it fell under the barn. The manure mixed with the straw of their bedding made the soil of our garden rich and bountiful.

These were the places on our farm that I loved the most. These are the places that I carry in my heart. I loved that old farm, and I am very glad that I was able to be there for a few years of my life.

A good farmer has to have a lot of the qualities of an intelligent person. He has to be able to make connections, to foresee the results of his actions in the future, to be open to new ideas and ways of doing things, and to be a keen observer. He has to be skilled in many different areas.

The first thing Randy learned was how to plant vegetables. He was just barely thirteen when we moved to the Ross farm, the abandoned and decrepit farmhouse we rented in Eastbranch for the summer after our long winter on the Berry Farm. Even though we had no running water in Eastbranch, and had carried our own outhouse there and set it up, I have more pleasant memories of that place; no doubt because we only lived there in warm weather. Even in its decrepit condition it was more cheerful than the Berry Farm had been.

That spring, the spring when Randy turned 13, we were hard put to get the place in living condition. It had to be cleaned, and I think we painted and maybe wallpapered one bedroom upstairs. We also had to build cupboards in the kitchen, and we found a big old white porcelai sink and drainboard that had been in a railroad station. This we set into our homemade cupboards and we installed a brand new shiny red handpump next to the sink. Then we had to run black plastic pipe from the spring down the bottom of the hill in back of the house to the kitchen.

So as Dave and the older boys were busy doing these things, we needed Randy to start the garden. Somehow we had gotten it tilled; I can’t remember how. And now it was ready to plant and the summer was coming fast. So Dave asked Randy to start planting the vegetable seeds. Randy was reluctant. He was reading a good book! He didn’t want to go out into the buggy garden and do something he had not the first notion how to do. But Dave insisted, and so like the good child he was, Randy set to work.

He read all the instructions on all the packets of seeds. Some of the seeds needed soaking for 48 hours, some for less, and some could be planted right away. Randy made neat, arrangements of the different seeds, all soaking in just the right amount of water for just the right length of time. And then he started planting! Well — it was a revelation to him, and he loved it. He became a planting fool. That’s one of the reasons I believe he is a natural born farmer.

He planted all kinds of vegetables, and they all grew well. We all helped, of course. He didn’t do the whole garden by himself, but he certainly started it, and made it a success. And he discovered one of the loves of his life. It was very gratifying to see this development of his skills, and to note this new, strong interest of his. We chuckled to ourselves, thinking how wise we were to bring him to Nova Scotia and get him away from the television. (We had left our tv set behind). Now he was blossoming the way a young boy should.

It was the same with Jody, but Jody didn’t really take to planting seeds. It was fussy work and we were too particular about just how to do it. He preferred large motor activities. Jody loved the tractor we got later, and the animals, and the woods. But more about that later.

When we were still staying at the motel, before we met the people who rented us the Berry Farm, Dave and the three older boys made several trips to Halifax and messed around. One of the things they discovered was a place where the province sold pamphlets for farmers, or would-be farmers. There were booklets about how to do all sorts of things. How to raise goats, and how to raise sheep, and how to get started raising bees. These pamphlets were very helpful and they sold for only 25 or 30 cents apiece. So the guys collected a bunch of them to add to our collection of how-to books.

When Randy read these, he had become interested in raising bees. Actually, he had become interested in bees when reading an old book we had found in a used book store in the States. It was the classic, The ABC’s and XYZ’s of Beekeeping. So the following year, when we were on our own farm in Mt. Thom, Randy got his first hive of bees.

We left the Ross farm and moved to our own place in October of that year, one year after our move to the Berry Farm. It was the following spring when Randy got his first bees, and so he would have been just 14 years old. (his birthday is in April). Or maybe he got his first bees that summer. I can’t remember how he happened to get his first hive, or exactly when. However, it was probably with Cherry’s help that he managed to get them and the equipment he needed. Cherry and Rick were our first friends after we moved to South Mountain, and our own place.

Cherry had wanted to raise bees herself, but had discovered that she was allergic to their stings, and so this bit of husbandry was not to be for her. Instead, she helped Randy keep his interest going, and probably was instrumental in his getting his first hive. Sometime after he had his first hive, Cherry called Randy and told him that there was going to be a free, open house demonstration of beekeeping at the Agricultural College, and would he like to go? Randy said yes, and so they set off in Cherry’s Volvo to spend the Saturday afternoon in Truro.

The beekeeping lecture was complete with exhibitions of hives and hive tools, and smoking equipment, and bee hats and veils, and everything one needed to know about bees. In the midst of the session, a police car pulled up to the college, and some policemen got out and made their way to the rooms where the display and demonstration was taking place. They probably followed the signs. They asked, if there was anyone there who could handle a swarm of bees, which had appeared in a nearby neighborhood – Truro Heights.

All the would-be beekeepers looked at each other. The leader of the group couldn’t leave because he was giving the lecture and was in charge of the exhibit. None of the other people present were intrepid enough to volunteer their help – except Randy. He said he would go.

So, leaving Cherry behind at the college, (remember, she was allergic to bee stings), Randy got into the police car and drove off with the two policemen to the neighborhood where the wild bees were congregating.

Now this was just about the time of the frenzied media reports of “Killer Bees” coming up north from South America or some such place. People had heard a lot about the probability of Killer Bees coming clear up to Canada! Maybe this swarm of bees, in a place where they were not supposed to be, was part of the swarms of these killers, the people may have thought. And even if they were not the Killer Bees, they would be apt to attack, wouldn’t they?

As the police car approached the area, they could see insects flying around in the air. These insects turned out to be the bees. When they got about a block away, the police stopped the car, and Randy got out and walked alone the rest of the way to where the bees were. He had nothing with him. Nothing to cover himself with and nothing to put the bees into. All he had was the knowledge with which he had armed himself with, and that was that when bees were swarming, they were not apt to attack because they had no hive to protect.

Randy was young, and he was also a natural born beekeeper, so he walked right up to the swarm of bees. He saw that they were on the small stump of a dead willow tree. The stump was only about 4 inches across. It had suckers growing around it, and on this place, the bees had settled. Randy stood quietly next to the stump surveying the scene and wondering what to do next.

As he stood there, he noticed people starting to come out of the houses nearby. They were walking over to him, seeing that he was quite unharmed and unafraid. Soon there was a small crowd standing around. Randy said that if he had a saw, he could take part of the stump while the bees were on it, and the bees would come with the stump. but he needed a box or something to put them in.

One of the men, probably the one who owned the property, offered Randy the use of his hand saw. And another man said he had a box Randy could have. So soon Randy began slowly and carefully sawing the stump, and discovered that the vibration was not too strong for the bees. They remained there calmly. In about five minutes, Randy had sawed through the stump, and then he carefully set it in the box, tucking a branch of the sucker inside with the bees, and closing the lid. Then he carried the box back to the police car.

The police decided it would be best to close the area of the back seat off, in case any of the bees decided to fly up to the front seat. So Randy sat quietly in the back with his new bees. When they got back to the college, Randy got out, met Cherry and put the box in the back seat of the Volvo, and off they set for home. It was a great adventure, and Cherry loaned Randy what he needed for a new hive.

Randy set up the new hive next to the one he had, but it was August and the new swarm was small, so they did not make it through the winter. Neither did the other hive. But the following Spring Randy got a couple of hives from somewhere in Hants County, and we had a lot of honey that year. We had even more from one of those hives that had wintered over successfully the next year. So it can be said that with Cherry’s help, Randy had become a successful beekeeper.

This talk of bees reminds me of how Lady loved honey. When we went with her to the hives and there were bees flying around, Lady would snap them up in her mouth and eat them! We figured she was loving the taste of the honey. She never seemed to get stung doing this little trick. So we can say that Lady was a successful beekeeeper too!

St. Francis of Assissi

The traffic goes by this building in an endless stream. Each day it grows, more rapid and more relentless, streaking by with roars and screeches and foul smells. So I remember with longing our little white farmhouse, sitting at a slant beside the quiet, empty dirt road. The sun warmed the house and the dirt of the road, which was seldom disturbed. It was a long time ago, but now I am allowing myself to return in memory where it was peaceful and we were surrounded with meadows, trees, water, and the good earth. It was all there in that homestead. Everything we needed. Earth, Air, Fire and Water.

Today I will talk about Brother Fire. We hadn’t read anything about woodstoves in our farm books. But we had prepared ourselves by buying an antique, cast-iron, potbellied stove. It was the kind of stove one sees in picture books for children. It was quite simply beautiful.

When we moved to the farm, it had two woodstoves. One was a pretty-shaped, square steel stove in the parlor; but this stove was not airtight. Dave knew this was dangerous, and that we had to replace it as soon as we could.

The stove in the kitchen was a white Enterprise, very common in farmhouses throughout Nova Scotia, and a very fine and practical stove it was. It had a water reservoir on the side, and a warming oven at the top. But still, we replaced it with our cast-iron stove because we loved the old-timey looks of ours, and also, we thought it would hold and radiate more heat than the white enamel stove. We were right about this. We had done well to choose it and to bring it with us to the unknown. We put the white Enterprise stove in the workshop, I believe. I know we kept it, because when we left, we put it back and took our cast-iron stove with us.

I can see our farm so clearly in my mind. I can smell the woodsmoke coming from the chimney. I can still feel the warmth of the heat from those stoves. I remember our gradual learning about wood and about stoves. Before we replaced the woodstove in the parlor, it ran away with us once. Dave was away. It was only the boys and me who were there when it started to get hotter. It got hotter and hotter, and suddenly it was as if it glowed red. Inside was a fiery furnace.

We shut down the damper, but since it was not airtight, that did not stop oxygen from getting to the fire. We were all panicked. We were yelling and running around, not knowing whether to throw water on the fire or not. We were afraid that if we did that, it would break the stove! Finally we realized what we could do. We put out the fire with a pair of wet jeans, or maybe two, thrown onto the logs. That worked! It put out the fire, but not with as much shock to the stove as a pail of water would have been. This was a good solution, because we needed that stove until we got a new one!

I think I remember that we ran outside to look at the chimney, and sparks were flying into the night sky. But our farm angel was watching over us, and nothing caught on fire, not the roof, nor the wall in back of the stove, nor the carpet in the little front room.

I will never forget that carpet. Some might have said it was ugly; but to me, it was beautiful. It had a rich brown background, covered with bright crimson, rust and orange leaves. It was an autumn rug, and it seemed so perfect for that little room.We had a metal pad under the stove which protected the rug from most of the sparks.

After the runaway stove, we bought a new stove as soon as we could. We bought a jurtle! We loved it. It was cast iron too, and it had a freize carved on the side – a scene of a farmer with his animals and his forest, and a hawk flying overhead. It was beautiful, and it was airtight. However, it did have one drawback; it had been designed to use with long, narrow logs, like those from small trees. We had to chop up great big logs, and it was difficult to split enough small logs to keep it filled. However, we managed. This was a case of learning the hard way. If we had stayed on the farm, we would have eventually sold our jurtle and probably bought a stove made by Rocky Irons!

However, we used the jurtle and it was okay. It kept our living room (parlor), warm and toasty. I can still see us in the evening, all sitting around the stove, reading. I remember Randy especially, reading in the white, naugahyde wing backed chair we had bought from Andover. We also had a small couch and a matching chair, upholstered in good sturdy corduroy. The chair was dull gold, and the couch was olive green, both of which seemed to have been bought with our bright, crimson-leaved carpet in mind.

We had bought a farm of 147 acres. About 35 of those acres were cleared, and the rest was wooded. That is, except for the 10 or so acres that had been dug up to be a gravel pit. We joined the Woodlot Owners Asssociation and after a while, they planted our former gravel pit in red spruce trees.

So we had a large woodlot. And that was a wonderful thing, because we would always have our own wood for heat. The heat from the stoves was a warm, radiating heat unlike anything we had known before. In Andover, our house had been heated by a hot air furnace, and everyone knows how uneven and chilly that can be. I remember standing on the register to get warm.

Now, though, we stood in front of the wood stove. I don’t think there is anything so cozy as a good wood stove. We could hang our wet hats and mitts around it, and our socks as well. The smell of the burning wood is part of the memory of our life in that little frame house. We had no other problem with fire out of control. It was, instead, for us a cheery and bright presence, bringing warmth into our home and our lives.

Except for Jeff, I believe the boys were happy on the farm. They had real projects to work on and real work that meant something to our family. They had the companionship of the animals – all of them. And they loved working in the woods. They would all trudge off, with Lady so happy beside them, heading for a few hours in the autumn sunshine, cutting wood and loading it into the pickup truck. It was a good life.

A lot of the time I would stay home while they went outdoors. There was work to do in the house and the fire to keep going. I got so that it became automatic for me to put another log on every so often. It was such a constant thing that I can still feel myself throwing the log in so that it would go to the back of the firebox, and then another, and another, knowing just when to stop and how to lay it so the fire wouldn’t go out.

It was like milking; a chore that had to be done on a regular basis, so that it became part of the automatic routine of life, and comforting to do, yet restricting, too. Someone always had to be there to milk the cow and to keep the fire going. Well, we were able to go away for about five or six hours at a time before the fire went out. But the house would have become cold by then and we would hurry to get the fires going again as soon as we came in the door.

There was a very small lean to at the back of the house, just at the kitchen door. We kept a pile of wood there all the time in the winter. It was handy to go out and pick up an armload to put in the woodbox next to the stove. Going out to the lean to for wood was another example of the automatic routine of the farm. I have gone out the door and brought in an armload of wood so often that I can still remember it in my body – how it felt.

One day I almost lost a finger, bringing in that wood. I had my thin, gold wedding band on, and I had a habit of swinging myself out the door with my left hand. On this occasion my ring caught in the lock on the door jam and while the rest of my body went swinging on out into the lean to, my finger stayed right there on the door.

It was very painful. Dave had to cut my ring to get it off. It had cut into the skin of my finger quite deeply, and I still have an indentation there where it cut. But ice made it feel better, and it healed well. I learned another lesson – don’t wear rings on the farm! I guess I was lucky that I didn’t lose my finger.

Our woodlot was an enchanted place for me. Our very own woods. After our experience with trying to heat a house with wet wood on the Berry Farm, we were faithful in our yearly excursions to the woods to cut wood. We always made sure we got the wood in in time for it to dry before winter. I guess we started cutting it in August. That was the best time. We would cut the trees down, and then cut them in long pieces and bring them in to the yard by trudk. Then we would unload the truck. From then on, the boys and Dave would take time whenever they could to saw up the pieces and then to split them.

Once the wood was split, it had to be stacked. That was what I loved the most, stacking the wood and making a neat woodpile by the side of the house. We became connossieurs of woodstacks. We would admire the large and neat woodstacks that we saw at the farmers’ homes when we drove by. However, I can remember too, times when our woodpile remained just that, a pile, heaped up high in the middle. The wood dried that way, too, but it wasn’t very efficient, digging out sticks of wood when they were frozen and we were in a hurry. The woodpile was the sign that we were having trouble keeping up with all the chores.

There was always a lot to be done, and some things just had to be done on time – like getting in the hay before the rain, but that is another story.

We had found new books about raising goats and rabbits, and about living on one acre with a cow. We had books and magazines about organic gardening, and we had lots of copies of “Mother Earth News”. We had a copy of the Whole Earth Catalogue. And when we got to Canada, we started reading Harrowsmith.

And so we began our farm life. We learned as we went along. The first animal we acquired in our new life was Katie. Then we bought Patches. Learning to take care of Patches was a huge undertaking. We had to know what to feed her in the winter and to supply her with minerals, and we had to learn to milk her.

We got Patches when we were still looking for our own farm and living on the Berry Farm that first hard winter.How did we discover Patches? Well, it was this way: We were out driving around. I think we may have still been looking for our own farm, even though we had rented the Berry Farm for the winter. However it happened, we had driven our old green Chev pickup to the top of a hill. Why we had done that, I can’t remember. In doing so we discovered a n unusual geographical aspect of Nova Scotia, that is, that unlike most places, where the soil is wet and boggy down in the low places, in Nova Scotia the wet boggy places are on the heights of hills. So — of course we got our pickup truck stuck in the mud on the side of a hill.

We needed help. Dave figured maybe we could find a kind farmer who would pull us out with his tractor. And that is how we met Floyd. He did pull our truck out and in return asked that Dave help him repair the roof of his barn. Which Dave gladly did, and in doing so, we got to know Floyd and Cherie, the dairy farmers. They became our friends, and they sold us Patches. Patches was a high producing cow, but she had a recurring ulcer on one of her knees. Floyd had to push all his cows to produce as much as possible, and Patches could not stand to be pushed any more. Floyd knew that she was a gentle cow who would adapt to being milked by hand – and he was right. Patches was a wonderful cow for us, and gave us a huge amount of milk.

Besides learning how to take care of a cow, we had to learn how to heat our home with wood. All we had for heat was a wood stove in the kitchen and an old stove in the parlor that was not air tight. We had a place to cut wood, but we soon learned to our sorrow that green wood would not keep us warm. We put on a green, wet log and watched it sizzle. It gave little heat and kept going out. And the weather was getting colder by the day.

This was close to a disaster right at the beginning, but Patches saved us. We had lots of extra milk that we didn’t know what to do with, so we offered some to a Nova Scotian neighbor, whose last name was Langille, I believe. I don’t know how we met him, but he did like our fresh milk for his family. We would not take any money for our milk, but Mr. Langille would not take it for nothing, so he offered us some of his dry firewood. What a blessing! We traded milk for dry, cut wood, and at last we were able to heat our house – at least in the kitchen!

Mr. Langille took to stopping by to pick up gallon jars of milk from us, and he often stopped a while and stood in the kitchen, passing the time of day – in the Nova Scotia way. He never agreed to stay for tea, but he did visit a while, while standing near the doorway.

Soon we heard a story from somewhere – I don’t remember where we heard it, but it was a story that was going around the neighborhood. The story made us roar with laughter – it was that our little 3 year old boy was shaking pepper into his palm and licking it off with relish. Not only was he doing that, over and over, but he didn’t raise an eyebrow over it. Never grimaced or choked at all. We realized pretty soon what had happened. Mr. Langille, while visiting in our kitchen, had seen TJ shaking a shaker filled with kelp powder into his palm. TJ had taken to licking up the kelp powder whenever we were all sitting around the kitchen table. So he became famous as the little American boy who licked up pepper and loved it! Oh how the rumors about us must have flown. Luckily that is the only one that ever got back to us.

At the Berry Farm, with the wood from Mr. Langille’s woodlot, Dave and the boys began to learn how to cut wood and how to stack it, and how to burn it. I learned how to light a fire in the kitchen range, and little by little, I learned how to cook on a woodstove. After a while I learned how to add sticks to the firebox at just the right rate of speed to keep the temperature of the oven the same. It was an art, and I loved it. It took a long time for me to learn it, but by the time we had our own stove set up at our own farm, I was pretty good at it. I was especially proud of my homemade whole wheat bread. Baked in the woodstove, it was food fit for the gods.

Here on the Berry Farm we also survived our first chimney fire. One day I was upstairs in a room over the kitchen. I looked on the wall and saw a shadow dancing there. It was a shadow of flames! It suddenly dawned on me that the flames should not be outside of the kitchen stove. That meant that there was a fire somewhere.

The fire was in the chimney! At that time, Dave was home, and he and the boys went up on the roof and dumped baking soda down the chimney. I don’t think that was enough to put out the fire, but I can’t remember what else they used. Someone had told them that we mustn’t put out a chimney fire with water, or it would break the chimney apart. I think we had some powdery substance on hand that was especially for putting out chimney fires. It worked, but that was a close call. None of our books had prepared us for the danger of flu fires and how easily they could happen.

We also learned how to use an outhouse in the winter! The Berry Farm had no indoor toilet. It was not an easy winter. We discovered that the water we were using to drink had a high coliform count due to the fact that the outhouse was in the barn, which was up above the well. So we bought some large blue plastic jugs and drove to a public spring not too far away. There we loaded up with water to use for drinking and cooking.

Well at least we didn’t have to walk for miles with water on our backs; all we had to do was drive our van to the spring and fill our very large plastic jugs. But for us, it was another chore on top of the things we were learning to do. It was another strain. Later on, Dave bought some pressboard and built a little outhouse. Cleverly, he made it so that it could easily be collapsed and rebuilt in a new location. So we took it with us when we moved to the Ross farm to spend the next summer.

The other strain that first, long winter was that we could never get warm. The house was truly like a barn, and the only part of it we could heat was the kitchen, where we spent most of our time. The living room stove was not safe, but we did use it some. The bedrooms were completely unheated and freezing cold. Mostly when I think about the Berry Farm I remember being cold.

Jeff was not happy either. Of all the boys, he was having the hardest time to adjust. It was because he was too old, and because he was a very sociable person and always had been. He needed to be with other people; after all, he was a teenager! He finally solved his problem by going to the local card parties. There he met all kinds of people, and it gave him time in a social setting. He wanted to go so badly that he used to ride his bicycle there in the winter, over the snowy ruts. It was an amazing feat. Now that I look back on it, I wonder – why didn’t we drive him there? I guess it was because we didn’t want to stay to drive him home again,. It was probably better that we didn’t go, since he desperatelly needed time away from his family.

Finally, spring did come, slowly and tentatively. At last it was warm enough for us to let Patches out of the barn. We fixed up a corral for her in the barnyard so she could come out and enjoy the warm, Spring sunshine. It was a happy day. We felt that the worst was over.

The next day, however, we had a new worry. Dave reported that something was wrong with Patches. It was Sunday and we weren’t able to reach the vet. It seems that when Dave went out to milk her, he leaned on her or patted her, and her knees buckled as if she would fall. Dave was alarmed and we were all worried. We had no idea what could be the matter.

Finally Dave decided to call one of our neighbors, Lloyd. He explained how her knees buckled and she seemed sick. Then Dave mentioned that she had been fine the day before, and we had let her out of the barn to enjoy the sunshine, and she had been quite frisky.

Then Lloyd asked Dave what color she was. When Dave said she was mostly white with some black patches here and there, Lloyd laughed. Well, he said. She will be all right. She just has a bad sunburn! Dave remembered how he had patted her, maybe rather hard, maybe had slapped her affectionately on the back. And her knees had buckled then. Of course, she had been in pain, and Dave had slapped her sunburn!

We were so embarrassed. But relieved too. Our first crisis with our first animal was over, and the animal had survived. So had we!

We had an awful lot to learn, and most of it would come through experience with our books as distant guides. The books did help, but this was the real world, with real animals, and in a new country where we really didn’t know anyone. The first winter on the Berry farm was terribly hard. I remember always being cold, and I remember how hard it was in the beginning to milk Patches dry each morning and evening. We knew we had to be careful to empty her udder or she might develop the dreaded mastitis.

Things were very hard, and I was finding it desperately so. I was lonely, scared, cold, and homesick. I knew no one, and I was all alone. With Dave away most of the time, I realized with despair creeping up on me that my kids depended on me for survival. I was in a new situation. I had come from the small, rather wealthy little town of Andover, Massachuseets, with all the amenities right at hand, including my childrens’ school and the Phillips Academy prep school. Here, there were no next door neighbors or stores or doctors to turn to for help.

I am a strong person, but sometimes I forget that. When I do, all I have to do is remind myself that I was strong enough to survive a winter at the Berry Farm. And I did become a competent milker. I also learned how to take care of chickens.

It was on the Berry farm that we got our first red hens, and it was there too, that TJ got his baby ducks. We bought a bunch of baby ducks, and they came under TJ’s special care. I am sure we had read about how to care for poultry in one of our books. We gave TJ the special job of taking the little yellow downy babies down to the water and bringing them back to their pen every day. He was so cute, herding his babies down for their time in the water, and then solicitously bringing them back to their pen.

All the time we were on our own farm, TJ had the care and feeding of ducks every spring. On our farm Dave made a special duck pen next to the little cottage, and I can still see TJ stretched out on his stomach on the roof of his own pen watching his ducks. He took good care of them too!

TJ was amazing for such a little boy, because he never got sentimental about his ducks, or any of the animals. He knew, young as he was, that we were raising the ducks for food, and that when fall came, they would be slaughtered along with the meat chickens. And that was the way things were. He seemed to be completely okay with that.

Killing and dressing the chickens was not a pleasant job, but we all got involved. We made it an assembly line, someone (maybe Dave) chopped off their heads, and then they were dipped in scalding hot water, or maybe wax, and tied up by the feet from the rafters in the barn. Then we all had a chicken to pluck. We hurried to get the feathers out while the skin was still hot. I guess then, we must have cut off their feet, washed them carefully, and put them in one of our large chest freezers.

Each spring, at the same time TJ got his ducks and we also bought white leghorns to raise for meat. We were dismayed that even though we kept them in an outdoor pen, their legs were deformed and often too weak for them to walk properly. It was the way they had been bred, to be heavy of body, and not to walk around too much so they would put on meat and not be too stringy. We were not very happy about that, but we did the best we could with the situation.

One of the biggest challenges was to make butter. We read in one of our books how to make butter by putting the cream in a gallon jar and rolling it back and forth on a table. So we all sat around the table taking turns rolling a big jar of cream until, finally … finally, it started to turn into butter. Since we all did it together, it wasn’t too bad a job.

Our kitchen table was a large round mahogany pedestal table, an antique that we had bought when we were back in Andover. It would easily seat eight people, and since we were only six, there was plenty of room for a lot of food to feed four growing, hardworking boys.

Actually, soon there were only three boys, because Jeff was not happy on the farm. We were even more isolated than when we were in West Branch, and it was boring and lonesome for him. He didn’t have interest in cutting down trees, splitting wood, raising vegetables, or caring for animals. When we were in the motel that first fall, he had found an agricultural bulletin that told how to raise goats, and he might have enjoyed that. That could have been his thing. But Dave flatly declared: “No goats!” It took us a few years on our own farm to actually find a goat that could be made a part of our menagerie. A goat would have been hard to keep, and would have had to be tethered. We just had too many other things to learn and to cope with to try to cope with a goat.

After about a year on our own farm, which, as I have said, was really quite isolated, we let Jeff move into Truro. He got a job and lived in town. He was so young to be on his own, but he was really very sensible, and we often took jars of fresh, raw milk to him.

Once he got away from home, the strain that had developed between teenager and parents subsided, and we began to be friends again. He just needed to be away from the farm and away from his family for a while. He was the first baby bird to leave the nest, and we missed him. I missed him a lot, and I wrote little notes to him, telling him how much I loved him. It was very hard to lose my firstborn son in this way, and I secretly cried over him and wondered if we had done the right thing to make this huge change in our childrens’ lives.

And so we were only five. And we continued to learn about farming. We bought a real ceramic churn with a wooden top and a wooden paddle, that went up and down in the cream. It worked very well! It was a lot more efficient than rolling the jar around on the table, and I became the maker of butter. I got very good at it. I washed all the skim milk out of it at the kitchen sink, squeezing and squeezing it and washing it with clear, cold water from our spring. Then I salted it, squeezing it some more until the salt was all the way through it. Then I pressed the butter into a white china bowl we had that was just the right size. I put the bowl into the refrigerator until the butter got hard, and then I popped it out of the bowl with a knife and wrapped it in aluminum foil and put it in the freezer. I made all our own butter, and now I realize how good and healthy that was for us. Butter made from raw milk, from our healthy cows, who grazed on green pasture was an excellent health food. I really didn’t realize then, but I was doing the best thing I could do for our family.

I also read how to make bread from a book. Actually, it was from Adelle Davis’ book, Let’s Cook It Right. The recipe for whole wheat bread in that book was the best recipe I have ever found. The boys used to help me stir the dough in a big kettle with a crank in it, made especially for mixing bread dough. Of course it was baked in the wood stove, and it was the most delicious bread I have ever eaten.

In one of our books, I found a way to store eggs through the winter when the hens were not laying. We used a barrel and some stoneware crocks and I carefully laid the eggs in salt, so that not one egg was touching another, and so that each egg was completely surrounded and covered by salt. It was amazing. The eggs really did keep for months! They were perfectly good until spring, and the hens started laying again. That was one of our successful adaptations of old-timey farming that we learned from an old-timey book.

Another successful method of storage we tried was to bury carrots in sand. Dave and the boys found a big sand pile somewhere, and they shoveled it into the pickup truck and brought it home. They made a wooden bin in the dirt-floor cellar, and we buried carrots in the sand the same way I had salted away the eggs. This too worked very well. We had carrots all winter. In the spring, they would start to sprout, so we knew that we were eating live food! It was so much healthier for us than if we had cooked and frozen the carrots.

We tried to keep cabbage over the winter too, but we didn’t have as much luck with the cabbages. They would go black before we could eat them all. And I think we had winter squash too, that Randy grew.

Randy became our expert gardener. When we first went to the farm, Randy was our bookworm. He read a lot! Spring had come, and we had moved to the dilapidated old Ross farm. Since we would have to be there for the summer, we had decided to plant a vegetable garden, and we wanted Randy to help. That meant that we had to pry him away from his books, and so we did; but once he began to read about how to plant seeds, he got very interested. He made little piles of different kinds of seeds; some had to be soaked for a day, some for longer, and some not at all. Each kind of seed was prepared according to its need.

Then Randy started to plant, and he absolutely loved it. He became completely interested and absorbed in his garden. He was a natural gardener with a green thumb and a love of growing things. He continued to read and learn about gardening when we moved to our own farm. I remember one year he planted a part of the garden as the Indians used to do; corn stalks, beans, and sqash, all together. These were the three sisters, he informed us.

One fall, after we had been on our own farm for a few years, Randy had a bumper crop of winter squash. He had almost a whole truckload of them, the green kind, like the buttercup squash we now pay big bucks for in the supermarket. Randy’s squash were beautiful, and there were far more than we could eat. So he decided to take them to the farmer’s market and sell them. (It must have been in Truro, but maybe not – maybe someplace else.) To our ustter amazement and disgust, poor Randy spent the whole morning at the market and sold only one of his beautiful blue-green squashes for a dollar. It was a big disappointment, but I guess we gave them to the pigs and the cows.

Actually, on our own farm, Randy and I used to have little squabbles about what we were going to plant where. We ended up having three great vegetable gardens, one on the side of a hill, which we called Slanty Garden, one next to the barn, which we called, Barn Garden, and one which was just Randy’s and was planted alongside the road. Maybe that one was the first garden we ever had on Mt. Thom. Maybe that one was already ploughed for a garden when we moved there; I can’t remember.

I do remember, though, in our first spring on our own farm, we were planting beans in that road garden. TJ shared Randy’s love of planting, young as he was. He had a case of the flu that spring, and yet he would not allow the planting to go by without him doing his part. So he went out to the garden and planted his beans while lying down alongside the rows. He was that determined not to miss the planting time.

Luckily, he was none the worse for wear, and his beans flourished. Floyd, the farmer we bought Patches from, must have come by that day and seen TJ planting his beans while lying in the sunshine. For a long time after that, Floyd called TJ the “Bean Man”.

Both Randy and TJ became skilled gardeners, not only when they were children, but after they grew up as well. They just naturally love to grow things. I have a picture of Randy, standing in the road garden behind a rototiller that we rented or borrowed one spring. Randy looks so young and vulnerable in his blue cotton work shirt.

Jody, on the other hand, never cared for putting in seeds. It was too much fussy, fine motor skill stuff for him. He preferred to drive the tractor and cut hay for our animals. Jody was our tractor worker, and he became skilled at haying, besides cutting and hauling wood for firewood and to sell for pulp. He also helped Dave with “chainsaw carpentry” building pens when needed, here and there around the farm. He, along with Randy, took over the job of milking our two cows, Patches and Bossy. Jody was also good at helping Dave put up fenceposts to fence in our sheep and cows.

So it was that we learned, little by little, the skills that ordinary farmers had known for generations. With our books to get us started, we graduated to experienced homesteaders. Once we finally got to our own farm on South Mountain Road, we began to accumulate more and more animals, and so to become the mixed family farm that Jody and I had dreamed about when we read Mother Earth News back in our kitchen in Andover.

Jody raised rabbits and we bought him an ox named Spark. Randy raised sheep and bees. TJ raised his ducks and helped with all the things his big brothers did. We all hayed together, and I am still proud of myself that by the time we had to leave the farm in 1980, I had become strong enough to throw a bale of hay onto the truck from the field. Yes, I was and still am proud of the fact that I became strong enough and skillful enough to throw bales!

It was soon after TJ’s birth in 1970 that I discovered Adelle Davis. Little did I know how much that discovery was going to change my life! At first I was completely absorbed in learning about nutrition and in learning to cook dense-nutrient food. I made the three older kids stick out their tongues so I could see if there was a crack which indicated lack of B vitamins. And of course there was, so the poor malnourished kids were cooked liver and onions; and they were filled with yogurt, brewer’s yeast, and cod liver oil! It was a huge change in their diets, but they went along with me. I had probably scared them with my own realization of how poorly we had been eating.

As a family, we stumbled on a way to get TJ to enjoy taking his daily cod liver oil. We had all clapped our hands for him and said “Yaaay!” when he obediently swallowed his first spoonful. From then on, he cheerfully took his “yaays” while we all cheered and clapped for him. And in my mind’s eye, I can still see him sitting in his high chair with his fists full of chicken livers, stuffing them into his mouth with gusto!

My kids were all so dear and sweet and patient with me. And they all really learned how important good nutrition is. They accepted what I learned, and for the most part, they ate what I served up. (Jeff did sneak his liver down to the dog quite a bit.)

That brings me to Lady. Lady became our dog when TJ was about 2 and a half years old. One day he and I were out for a walk and we saw a thin, half-starved, frightened dog, barking at a postman. We called her over, and she came up just close enough to TJ so that he could touch her and then she would back off. But because of him, she followed us home.

She came into the house! Somehow we get her in, probably by offering her food. She was very thin and had an ear infection. The boys loved her right away, but we decided to take her to the man down the street who worked for the Humane Society.

However, as luck would have it, he said the Humane Society was closed for the weekend and we would have to call the police. When I related this to the boys, they produced a great uproar, begging us not to take her to the police, saying that the police would kill her! Even though we knew better, we decided to keep her over the weekend. And of course, that meant that we would never let her go.

We took her to the vets and had her ear treated, and we fed her well. And of course she was showered with love and affection from the four boys. We soon learned that she was a Lady in every sense of the word. She was gentle and loving – a perfect addition to our family.

Soon she came into heat, and we endured a front porch of dogs constantly underfoot, until that phase was over. Then we took her to the vets again to be spayed. She had become our dog, and she was to stay with us the rest of her life.

Lady must have been abused by a man in uniform, because she would go into a frenzy of barking whenever she saw one. This suited Jeff just fine, because at this time in his life he had gotten involved with some friends who smoked pot in the park near our house. Lady served as a great early-warning system if there were any cops coming on the scene.

This involvement of Jeff with friends who were not a good influence was one of many reasons we decided to leave Andover and move to the farm. We were also angry and disillusioned about America’s continued involvement with the Vietnam war. But most of all, we wanted to obtain for our family a steady supply of good food. We wanted to provide uncontaminated meat and vegetables, and we wanted to live near the land.

We were right in the middle of the “back to the land” movement of the 70′s. We got caught up in it wholeheartedly, partly because of my newfound realization of the importance of nourishing, clean food to the health and well being of my family, and partly because Jody and I wanted to be on a farm, in the midst of animals and growing things and close to the cycles of nature.

I remember as clear as a bell the day when Jody and I sat at our kitchen table and looked at some issues of Mother Earth News. We soaked in all the stories of farm life, and we eagerly searched the classifieds in the back, reading about farms for sale and wishing we could buy one. I remember very well how we conspired to “talk Dave into it.” Which we did, but Dave came back with an idea of his own – we should buy a farm in Canada! In fact, we should go to Nova Scotia where his paternal grandmother had come from.

Well, this seemed even more exciting and romantic than our own dream had been. A farm in a New Land! We were all sold on it, except of course, TJ, who was too little to understand and merely went along with the crowd.

Poor little TJ learned more about what this move meant however, when we gave away all our houseplants to the brother and sister who lived next door. That was just before we left, and TJ was sad and cried. I guess he hadn’t realized that we would have to leave them behind. Dave and I were surprised to see how much these plants meant to him. We had no idea at that time of the spiritual connection that these plants had with us. Only TJ, who was so recently arrived from the spirit world, “trailing clouds of glory”, knew and felt the connection. All the rest of us had forgotten our oneness with all life. But being on the farm would help us remember once again.

Lady had settled in with our family beautifully. I don’t remember how we decided to name her Lady, but the name suited her perfectly. She was a gentle and loving companion to all of us. And she was beautiful with her long grey hair and her soft brown eyes. Our love for her grew with every passing day. Every day we began to see how much our family needed her, and what a gift she was for us.

At the time she followed us home, we had accepted another stray animal – a small black and white short haired dog whom we named Gypsy. Gypsy had been kept in a college dorm by a group of kids and brought up on pizza. She was fat and unhealthy, and she had a habit of nipping us with teeny little bites, a perfect way of showing a doggy passive-agressive nature. She was definitely not a likeable dog. We also found out, to our dismay, that she threw up whenever she was driven even a short distance in the car. Taking her to the farm in Nova Scotia was out of the question. Fortunately, we found a home for her with a kind woman who took in problem dogs and promised to keep them until she found a home for them. She accepted Gypsy with some misgivings, and we didn’t have to lie too awfully much to get her to take the little nipper.

And so we started out for the farm with Lady. She was to become a perfect farm dog. She always stayed around the farmyard, never running away or chasing any chickens. And she loved to go for walks in the woods with whoever would take her. On these walks, she never went very far away from us, running only a little way off to investigate enticing smells but then coming right back to be close to us again. Yes, Lady turned out to be our perfect farm dog. She was a precious beginning for our farm adventure.

On top of all this confusion, there was a mother cat with kittens. Jan offered us one of the kittens, a small female, so pretty with her tortoise shell colors. Her fur was luxuriant and soft, and she was small and dainty – and very intelligent. We named her Katie. It was a good name for her – maybe Jan had already named her; I can’t remember. But she grew into a beautiful cat, the first cat on our farm.

She became Dave’s cat. It was obvious that she loved Dave best. But Dave was not really her best friend, because he decided that she should not be spayed. He believed that she should be a mother in order to be a good mouser. Looking back, I see that this was not a good decision. It was really cruel in the end. Katy had many kittens, and some of them we found homes for at first, and one we kept.

The one we kept was Paddlefoot. Well, I had named her Daisy, but the boys insisted on calling her Paddlefoot because she had 6 toes on each of her front feet. But she was as beautiful as Katie in her own way. Paddlefoot had long hair, longer than Katie’s. She too was tri-color, only she had grey fur where Katie had dark brown. Paddlefoot and Katie were allowed in the house, but Katie preferred to be out hunting.

Katie was a wonderful hunter. Once Dave saw her coming home with a rabbit as big or bigger than she was. She had to be a good hunter, because at the end of our time on the farm, the only food we gave her was milk. The tablescraps all went to Lady, our Belgian Shepherd.

I feel a lot of guilt and sadness when I think of Katie. She had to survive on what she could catch in the wild. Towards the end of our stay on the farm, she was eating the banty chicks, and we couldn’t blame her. When we finally gave up and left the farm, we killed Katie and Tiger, and we left Paddlefoot with the tenants who came to live there after we left. We probably should have killed Paddlefoot too, since we could not find a proper home for any of them. We never knew what became of her. I only hope that she was able to stay with the new people who moved there, and that they loved her.

When we first got Katie, we had such hopes for our life on the farm. And at first things were good, and we could provide for her properly. It was only at the end, when we had no income, and when we had to sell my Mom’s antiques to get money for the feed for Bossy, that we stopped being responsible owners. Each time we had to go to the Coop to buy grain for Bossy and the Jersey cow we had bought from a neighbor, I had to make a decision which antique to sell. Some were easy to part with; others were not. I hated to part with my mother’s marble top chest, and the beautiful mahogany dining room table that she loved so much. But in the end, it was always no contest. I could not have stood to sell one of our cows. The cows meant that our children would have milk and butter and homemade ice cream!

Finally, the decision that we put off maybe too long, had to be made. Finally, we had to sell all the animals at an auction sale, and leave the farm. And we had to say goodbye to Katie and Tiger, and the way we had to do it was not good. In fact, it was terrible. Looking back, I think we were very wrong not to keep Katie and Tiger and Paddlefoot. We had made a commitment to them, and if we could not have found good homes for them, then we should have taken them with us. Maybe we didn’t try hard enough to find them homes.

I know that I am to blame as much as Dave. I allowed these things to happen by not speaking up and saying how things could have been different. I could have insisted that the cats be spayed, and that Tiger be neutered. Then, they would not have had such hard lives, and then, maybe we could have found them homes. But knowing that we didn’t do the best thing doesn’t change the way things were. We did what we did, and what is, is.

But I know that I would do differently now. I know that I would do a lot of things differently. But this isn’t a story about what might have been. It’s a story of a family that accepted a new life in a new land. And we weren’t always wise, and we weren’t always faithful to our farm friends. But I will never forget beautiful Katie, and sweet Paddlefoot, and loving Tiger. They, along with all the other animals made our life rich and beautiful, and they were part of our family on South Mountain Farm.

We soon learned that in order for the eggshells to be strong enough so they didn’t break, we had to feed the hens ground up oyster shells in their feed. We had a big aluminum feeder, shaped like a cylinder, with a tray underneath it. As the chickens ate from the tray, more feed would fall from the cylinder into the tray.

We did not succeed in growing our own feed for the hens. Ideally, all the food we gave our animals would have come from our own farm, but we never reached that ideal stage. We bought our chicken feed from the Coop in town. (Truro). We also bought our feed for the cows from the Coop. However, I think in those days the food was pretty healthy and did not have protein added to it. Our chickens got their protein by eating the bugs around the yard. I guess in the winter we gave the chickens fishmeal.

I remember the cold winter days when I had to go out and break the ice in the chickens’ water, which I think was in the same kind of feeder as the grain. That was the hardest part, I think, giving the chickens water in the winter without having it freeze solid. There are a lot of details like this that I can’t quite remember, but I do remember breaking the ice and adding new water.

I didn’t carry the water buckets to the barn for the animals very often. The older boys did that, Randy and Jody. And I guess the banty chickens ate from the same place as the red hens. They all got mixed in together because eventually we had mixed colored hens, not red, but still the same size as the red hens. The banties were smaller than the hens. They were so much fun.

The boys didn’t like having them roost in the barn. They used to get very cross when they reached for a bale of hay from the hayloft and got their hand in some mess left by the banties. I don’t blame them for being cross. Here they were being so good to help out on the farm, and they never complained about their chores. The least we could have done was listen to them and create some sort of new place for the banties to roost.

But I guess the farm work was overwhelming for Dave and me sometimes too. And there was always the problem of not having enough money to do what needed to be done on the farm. We always seemed to collect more animals than we had room to keep them in properly.

So the banties roosted in the barn, and they lay their eggs up in the hayloft. They went deep into the hay, way back where no one was reaching, and they lay their eggs. They had gone “broody” and so they sat on their eggs in the dark of the barn, where no one could find them. Then, one day, we would see a mother banty hen, proudly leading a line of tiny fluffballs behind her. And the boys would groan, knowing there were going to be more banties to poop on the beams of the hayloft. The banties were too small and skinny to eat. There was not enough meat on their bones to bother with. So they just multiplied. And we realized why the MacKenzie family in Lansdowne had offered us some of their banty roosters – for free!

That was the beginning of our banty problem. But they also provided us with a lot of small eggs when the red hens weren’t laying enough to provide us with the eggs we wanted. We used to send TJ up into the hayloft to go on an egg hunt when we needed those banty eggs. I don’t remember that he ever complained about his chore, except I do remember one day when he was climbing around in the hay and fell backwards against a rabbit cage and cut his back. We had to take him to the dr. for a tetanus shot and to have stitches in his back. We felt really bad, knowing that it was our poor farming practices that had caused our youngest to be hurt. Wire rabbit cages were not meant to be stored in the hayloft!

This accident must have happened in the later years of our stay on the farm, when we had practically no income. We were living almost entirely from the bounty of our land and from the animals we had gathered around us. When we told the doctor how the accident had happened, he said:
“Oh, you have bantam chickens! I love them; they are so interesting!”
So we paid him his bill with as many bantam chickens as we could get him to take.

The interbreeding of the red hens and the bantam roosters produced some very lovely chickens, with unusual colors and hens that were laying larger eggs that the pure bantam hens laid. That way we supplemented our laying hens without having to buy new red hens. The red hens didn’t go broody the way the bantam hens did. Maybe we never gave them the chance.

I remember one hen I especially liked. She was a mixture of red hen and bantam. She was white, with black tips on some of her wings, and for some reason, I named her blossom. Eventually, she did go broody and laid her eggs away from prying eyes and snatching hands, and came out of hiding with a brood of baby chicks. I was always enchanted by the tiny little balls of fluff that moved on invisible little sticks of legs. Watching Blossom with her chicks was a lot of fun.

Meanwhile, our neighbors down the road had a problem with a marauding fox. The fox came and killed quite a few of their ducks, leaving them strewed around in their field. I felt that the fox was more important than our neighbor’s ducks, so I didn’t feel very sorry. I had seen the fox sitting at the edge of one of our fields, watching us. I admired him and liked to think of him watching us.

But then one morning I awoke to a squawking outside my bedroom window, next to the barn. I looked out the window just in time to see the fox running away with Blossom in his mouth! It was too late to do anything. I ran out and saw Blossom’s tiny chicks huddled helplessly in the dirt next to the barn. What could we do? All we knew to do was to hope that another mother would adopt them and show them how to find food.

However, as the days passed, it became obvious that this was not going to happen. The other hens completely ignored the poor, motherless babies. We had just about made up our minds that they were going to die unless we brought them into the house and tried to feed them. And then one day the strangest thing happened! One of the bantam roosters became their mother! We couldn’t believe our eyes, but sure enough it was happening!

One of the roosters stopped spending the nights roosting on a beam in the barn. He stayed down on the ground and protected the baby chicks. He tried to spread his wing feathers over them, and he stayed with them all day long, taking them around and teaching them how to find food. This was a revelation. A rooster turned mother hen. Who would believe it if we told them? It was a farm story that we loved to repeat among ourselves with awe and wonder in our voices. Nature was the marvelous mother, knowing best how to help all her creatures survive.

There is another story about the bantam roosters that we used to tell over and over again. This story was not as happy as the mother rooster story. It was a story of the fight for male dominance. Two of the roosters came of age at the same time. And that meant that one of them had to be the boss of the hens. Only one. And so one day they began to fight. They fought for hours, or so it seemed. They fought each other all the way around the house, as we watched from the windows, going from room to room to follow them. They fought on and on. We were afraid that one of them would be killed, but we didn’t dare to interfere. We just watched in amazement at how ferocious they were and how long their stamina kept them fighting. Finally one of the roosters was defeated.

The winner crowed his victory and strutted proudly, though he must have been exhausted. However it was the loser that made us shake our heads in wonder and concern. We had heard the expression, “crestfallen”, but now we saw what it really meant. The defeated rooster’s bright red crest was drooped over to the side. Fallen way down. And not only his crest was fallen, his feathers were drooping as well. He was the picture of humiliation and abject misery. If he could have crawled, he would have crawled away. But as it was, he slunk away and was not seen for a day or so. When we did see him again, he was still crestfallen and unbearably beaten. We were afraid he would die of shame. But he didn’t die. He became a very quiet and subdued rooster, and carefully stayed out of the way of the Boss.

The bantam rooster that we loved the best was a beauty, with colorful ribboned feathers of red and green. We named him Bo Jangles, and it was a perfect name for him. Actually, if we had thought of it, we would have spelled his name, Beau Jangles. He was a proud addition to our barnyard and crowed every morning, standing on a fencepost near the red hens’ house. Little did we know when we accepted the MacKenzie children’s gift that our chickens would become such an exciting part of our life on the farm.

Our tomcat was named Tiger. He was the most loving creature I have ever known. We could never let him into the house or he would have marked his territory. So he lived in the barn and he was free to roam. He was such a friend. Such a dear, beautiful creature. Needless to say, he was a grey tiger striped tom.

If I was standing in the barn, he would walk across a beam until he could reach me, and get me to pick him up. Then when I picked him up, he would wrap his front legs around my neck and rub his face against mine, and purr and purr. There is no plainer way in all the world to say I love you than that.

I will never forget Tiger. It is so difficult for me to know that I didn’t appreciate him enough at the time. I guess the biggest lesson he taught me is that it is possible to love everyone unconditionally. I also learned that everything is fleeting, and every creature we ever known will someday be gone from our experience. And so, if we want to show our love, the time to do it is NOW. Whatever the creature is, whether it is human or another species, do whatever we can to make that creature happy. That is how we can love – and then, when that creature is gone, we will have no regrets.

Appreciate the creatures in your life. I loved Tiger, and I showed him my love, but I didn’t really appreciate his wonder and the miracle of his being until he was gone, and I was far away from that old barn where he lived. I guess it’s a matter of being aware of what is with us in the present moment. Being aware of his green eyes, his silky grey fur, the warmth of his body in my arms. I was never able to stop and just be aware of him and to be grateful to the Universe for bringing him into my life. But that’s another lesson that I have learned from knowing Tiger and from knowing all the beloved creatures we took care of on the farm.

I learned from them all. They are all with me still in memory, and each one was a special, unique blessed creation. For example – there was Patches, our first cow. She was a Holstein who was almost all white, but she had a few black patches – hence her name. Patches was a gentle, docile creature, with not a mean bone in her body. We all loved Patches, and we were so grateful to her for all the milk she gave us, which was far too much for our family of six to drink. So we traded some of her milk for dry firewood.

Patches was a very large, tall cow. When we first got her, I was a bit afraid of her. I remembered stories of cows being cross and kicking over the milk pail. I was afraid she would kick and I would be in the way. I wouldn’t have blamed her for kicking, because I was just learning to milk and it took me forever to get her udder emptied. By the time I was through milking her in the morning, it was almost time for me to start again. At least it seemed that way. My hands used to feel as if they would drop off before I got the hang of it. But the worst part was my being so fearful. When Patches would move to shift her weight a little bit, I would jump! That would make her jump! The two of us were making each other nervous wrecks!

However, after a while I learned how to do it, and my hands got stronger. I learned how to draw the milk down through my fingers and it became a beautiful, satisfying experience. Patches and I also got to trust each other. I learned that she was not going to kick me, and she learned that I was not going to hurt her. Eventually, on a cold morning, while milking, I would lean my face against her flank, relishing her warmth and the good cow smell of her. I often wrapped my arms around her neck and hugged her and gave her grateful kisses.

It was at that time that I remembered the poem I used to read to the kids when they were little – or maybe I remembered it from my own childhood. The poem was named: The Friendly Cow, by Robert Louis Stevenson. I used to think of it often in those days. It started out:

The friendly cow, all brown and white,
I love with all my heart.
She gives me milk with all her might,
to eat with apple tart.

I used to change the first line to “all black and white”. She did give us milk with all her might, and we loved her dearly. She had been one of a dairy herd, and the farmer had sold her because she had a recurring ulcer on the knee of her front leg. When she produced milk, the strain of it, I guess, would cause the ulcer to appear. However, she was fine for the first 3 years we had her. We didn’t push her to give more milk, but even so, her body had been designed to produce large amounts of milk, and this took its toll.

She had beautiful calves. We always let the calf drink its fill before we milked her the rest of the way. We had plenty to share with the calf. So her calves were big and healthy and sturdy. They were all males, so we had them made into steers, knowing that we would have to use them for meat. But after all, that was why we had come to the farm – to raise our own food. It was part of the plan.

Her first calf we named Bllueberry, because he arrived while I was out blueberry picking, much to my disappointment. He was a beauty. Would we be able to kill him for meat? We did, and it was all right. We all agreed; we would take the lives of our animals in order to eat them, but the bargain was that when it came time for us to die, we would remember them, and know that it was time for us to become food for some other life form. And we would always give the animals the best life we could. We would feed them well and we would love them and be kind to them while they were with us. That was the bargain we made with them and with each other. I never had to kill any of our animals. No one ever asked me to, and I wasn’t about to volunteer.

When Patches got a few years older, her knee became very bad. The time came when we knew that she could never have another calf. Her poor sore knee was very swollen and painful. She could barely walk. It was Spring, and we got her to walk just outside the door of the barn, so she could lie on the grass in the sun. We let her stay there as long as she wanted, and we fed her carrots.

Gradually, this rest and sunlight, and good food began to help. She began to walk a little more. Eventually she was able to go into the pasture next to the barn. And so she passed the summer happily. But we knew. We knew when Fall came, we would have to have her killed. My husband had killed Blueberry but we could not do that to Patches. So when the time came, we let her be taken away, and the butcher did the job for us.

That Fall we had to go to the States because my husband’s mother was ill, and so we arranged for Patches to go while we were away. When we got back, we had her meat all wrapped and frozen for us. All we had to do was put it in our freezer.

And so, Patches gave us herself one last time. She became food for us so we could live. It was the way of nature – the way things are. And we vowed we would remember when our turn came. Of course the boys didn’t think much about that. To them death was something that would come someday but it wasn’t a reality for them then. They were bursting with life, and we were all healthy and strong from all the good food we ate, and from the hard work we did, and from being out so much in the fresh air. It was a good life. We had chosen well when we decided to come to Canada to live on our very own farm.