Haymakers: A Chronicle of Five Farm Families

Epilogue

Epilogue What pattern exists on these open prairies has been imposed on the land by farmers. They planted corn in straight rows, cut and raked their clover in windrows. When they graded gravel roads, they laid them out into a gridwork of one-mile squares. Those who baled their hay stacked it in patterns on the hayracks so that the greatest number of bales could be transported without sliding off Haymakers tried to time the cutting of clover and timothy and alfalfa to dry spells in the weather systems. A schedule of crop rotation assures that alfalfa and soybeans put nitrogen back into the soil so that corn could take it out again. Order implied patterns, and patterns required order. These patterns were followed by farmers but governed by weather and the land. They determined the tilling of the fields and the harvest of the hay, year after year, season to season, month by month. Most events on their farms were everyday and commonplace , so that daily chores were as natural to the farm landscape as are the trills of birds in the sky, the chirping of crickets under piles of straw, and the wind blowing through the elm trees in the grove. Andrew Peterson relied on the clockwork stroking of his scythe to reap a crop of wild grass. Oliver Perry Kysor heard the constant clicking rhythm of the horse-drawn mower as his faithful horses made their way through prairie grass and timothy grass. Gilbert Marthaler watched the recurrent beat of the workhorses’ hooves on the ground as the hay loader pulled the hay from the ground in an unending circle of pulleys and chains and tines. Douglas Rongen 173 174 The H A Y M A K E R S heard a click every time the knotter turned out another bale of alfalfa hay. Larry and my other brothers made the tractors, choppers, and blowers chug and hum. The dairy farm where I grew up followed a daily routine. We awakened early to begin the morning milking. The motions in milking -squeezing milk from the udder-were repetitive, rhythmical, by hand or by machine. Then we carried the milk to the milk room for storagein tanks or milk pails. We gave hay to the cows three times a day-morning, noon, and before nightfall. I was responsible for cleaning the manure out of the gutter every morning in winter, once a week in summer. These patterns provided a comforting stability to farm life. Sometimes they were all we had to rely on. When Larry died he left behind a wife and three children. He had the foresight to carry a considerable amount of life insurance on himself, but it was not enough to pay off the farm debts and all other financial obligations. He knew full well that he might fall to a farm accident, as his father had and as his cousin Kelly had. Larry told Wendy to sell the cows if he died and then live on the farm by renting out the cropland.’ At first Wendy felt that she should not sell the cows or get out of the dairy operation that Larry had worked so hard to build. She felt that she would be betraying Larry and that selling the cows would be almost like selling a part of him. Since she had to make a living, she hoped just to keep the farm going. Wendy advertised for a herdsman and hired a twenty-year-old man from Sleepy Eye who had taken a short course in dairy-farming herdsmanship at a technical school. He lived with the family, taking the spare bedroom in the basement. Sadly,his course of schooling had been too short.The inexperienced herdsman missed the vital breeding signs from the cows, and he failed to get them bred at the right time, losing months of the cows’natural lactation-milking schedule. He worked at the place for only four months, giving up because he found the work to be more than he could handle-for the farm had Epilogue 175 too much work for one person. Wendy tried to find a good long-term herdsman or herdswoman, but could not. She found that trying to keep the farm and the dairy herd intact was too great a struggle. Hired help had proved to be of insufficient value and, at last, she decided to sell the cows...