Grandma’s Farm
My Grandma passed away recently. Now as sad as it is for everyone to experience such a loss, it may or may not mean much to you personally. But as I fill out the details of her life, I hope it may mean a little more. Of particular interest is the fact that she died when she was 100 years old (my Dad is 82 today and I am 50). She lived a long life and as my Dad said, "I got a lot of mothering out of her. More than most."
Imagine being a mother for 82 years -- having witnessed the advent of the automobile, the airplane, the atomic bomb, computers, television, space travel and the internet -- all the while, for the most part, watching history unfold from the venue of a farm. Imagine being the citizen of a nation that survived two World Wars and witnessed the results of countless others. Imagine sending your boys away to war, as she did with all five of hers, and then welcoming them all home again.
While a lot has changed since she was born, some things never change. For instance, Grandma's garden didn't change much through the decades. Plants still need sun, soil, and water to grow -- and all of these elements must be available in the right amounts and at the right time. That hasn't changed. I can just imagine her hoeing away in her garden looking up to watch a plane pass overhead for the very first time. Decades later, when the plane became 'planes' and the planes became bigger, hoeing and growing was still the same. Then, when planes became jets -- silver dots leaving stark white tails against the blue sky -- the growing of a garden still hadn't changed all that much. The tools might have improved, the seeds might have been more reliable, but the work remained basically unchanged and the weather was as unpredictable as ever.
Other things that have remained essentially unchanged are the way animals give birth, produce milk, and lay eggs and hatch. How fish swim hasn't changed over the centuries either -- nor has mankind's relentless need for farms.
My earliest memory of the Hennen farm was watching Grandpa milk cows. As he went into the milk stall, a line of kittens and a couple cats followed. Before long, I understood why. As Grandpa milked, every once in a while he would intentionally miss the pail and hit one of the kittens square in the mouth with a stream of fresh hot milk. Of course, to a city-boy, the whole process was thoroughly fascinating. I remember the first walk back from the milking stall to the house on a crisp cool morning, as the dew still clung to the grass. "Can I help?" I asked. Grandpa paused with a smile and set a bucket down to let me try. I could not even lift the pail off the ground. From that moment, my esteem for Grandpa and awe of his great strength grew.
Later on in life, I remember, I would hear stories of how Grandpa would grab a bail of hay in each hand and throw them one at a time into the loft from the wagon below. No one could keep up. Not even his younger sons. He swore it was all technique, though I had my doubts. I knew Uncle Ken (the blacksmith), who would grab us by the hair and lift until we latched firmly on to his hand so that he could dangle us above the floor, could probably best him in an arm wrestling contest. But I was convinced, if it ever happened, that it would be a contest that would go on for hours.
I remember waking to the early morning sounds in the kitchen. Before I ever got out of bed and put my feet on the cold wooden floor, I could smell the fresh pot of morning coffee brewing and that wonderful warm smell of homemade yeast bread. Stan and Peg, my Aunt and Uncle and the youngest of Grandma's nine children, would have been long awake and already doing the chores. If I woke up late, I could hear laughing and talking in the kitchen below and might also smell bacon frying and sometimes buttered pancakes and hot maple syrup.
Dressing quickly and going downstairs into the kitchen, I would see a large table set with breakfast, surrounded by empty chairs. In a few more moments I knew that Grandpa and the others would come in from their chores to fill those chairs. Grandpa would always take his traditional seat by the back wall, near the window and next to the radio and his pipe stand.
Breakfast was usually a grand affair with a seemingly inconsumable mountain of food being served as Grandma flew back and forth between the table and the stove. So many eggs (most of them sunny-side-up), so much bacon, fresh cold whole milk, and freshly baked bread spread with real butter and homemade preserves. I always felt as if I was sitting at the breakfast table of a king. But it seems to me now, no matter how much food was served, that every plate was licked clean shortly after everyone came in from chores.
Then we would all sit around the table for a few minutes and listen to Grandpa rail about politics or complain about the weather. It seemed to me that farmers knew more about everything than anybody else. I guess that's because old time farmers used to have to know a little about everything just in order to survive. Builders, biologists, plumbers, weathermen, chemists, vets, nurses, chefs, mechanics, heavy-equipment operators, horse-trainers, businessmen, all these and more were required just to run a farm -- and they could all usually be found in one family and sometimes in just one couple like Grandma and Grandpa. It just seemed right, whether or not anyone was listening, for Grandpa to be telling the politicians on the radio what they should be doing.
Farmers, often having little more than an eighth-grade education, ran microcosms of whole communities. "Whatever happened," one could feel justified in asking, "to the wisdom of the ages?" Could it be that we've run so hard after knowledge that we've left wisdom behind? Have we specialized ourselves into stupidity?
Perhaps more amazing than all the food we ate at meals was that we never saw Grandma go to bed. As far as we knew, she didn't sleep. She was up and busy both long after we went to bed and well before we ever woke up in the morning. I remember my brother, Jack (named after my Grandpa), telling me that he thought that 'Grandmas never slept.'
I remember a white enamel pail, with a ladle in it, always filled with fresh cold well water sitting to the right of the kitchen sink. And at Christmas time, on those rare occasions that we spent our winter break on the farm, I remember freshly baked and frosted sugar cookies for us kids and peppernuts, by the bucket, for the adults to dunk in their coffee. I also remember eating a few peppernuts myself on occasion and feeling very grown up to have my own cup of very white and heavily sugared coffee to dunk them in.
I remember a party-line phone where you had to know your ring, to know whether or not to answer the phone. But it didn't matter much because if you got more than two or three calls in a day it was rare. I remember, in that same corner of the kitchen, Nicky (the mouse catching dog) used to lie and tolerate us kids for a while. I remember a box of toys in the room next to the kitchen that always seemed filled with toys far more fascinating than those we ever had at home. I remember a baby raccoon crawling up and down on Peggy's lap and, on one unforgettable occasion, leaving a corn colored deposit running down her leg. I remember Grandpa snoring as he lay in his recliner in the living room taking an afternoon nap.
At night, I remember snuggling deep into bed under warm and heavy covers on a cold winter night. That night, I slept in the boy's room and remember the smell of cologne that filled the room. The boys were not really boys then, they were men -- men who had already taken a great interest in girls. The cologne would go on after the evening chores and showers and, long after they left, would linger faintly in the room till morning.
I remember a laundry chute that you could stick your head in and look all the way down from the second floor into the basement. There, on the basement floor, there was always a mountain of clothes needing to be washed. Next to this great pile of clothes was a seemingly insignificant ringer/washer, which, we were told, was 'very dangerous.' Beyond the basement laundry was a cold dark room filled with heating fuel (corncobs and coal) to heat the house in winter.
Beyond the house, the farm-world was thoroughly fascinating to a city boy. Of most interest, of course, was the barn -- a big red structure filled with life and wonderful smells. As you opened the door, the bright sunlight would spill in dusty shafts into that dark world and onto a wooden box especially made for the birthing, nursing, and raising of kittens. There, to the left, one could hear the gentle mews of newborn kittens hidden in the dark.
One of my favorite memories was watching kittens and cats gather around pans of plate scrapings dowsed in old milk. As Grandma or Peggy would set them down, the cats would run for a place, like too many pigs at a trough, mewing, smacking, and licking until every drop and every crumb had disappeared. I also remember a seemingly very old one-eyed cat named Tom with one foot missing and a tail cut short by a lawnmower. He would sit on the rail of one of the stalls near the front door surveying everything with a keen and wizened gaze.
To the right, in the barn, was the horse stall where Danny lived. Danny was an old Quarter horse that loved the oats Peggy would give him after a ride. For the most part, he would sit still to let her groom him. But I do remember a story told with a limp of how Danny had once stood on Aunt Peggy's foot and how she'd had to shoulder him with all her might to get him off. It was while sitting on Danny with Peggy that I was taught the meaning of trot, gallop, and canter. We never quite made it to run though I remember watching with great excitement as Peggy demonstrated this for us.
Further into the dark, musty barn, to the right and left, were the stalls for the cows. Except to see the baby calves suckling their mothers, these stalls held little fascination for me. Nor was I all that interested in the silo at the back of the barn, which, in my early years, was as tall as a skyscraper. Only once do I remember crawling up the ladder to look inside through a little door to see the silage at the bottom of a nearly empty silo, its hollow canopy hanging high overhead. It loomed like a deep dark secret in my memory but did not capture my imagination.
The worn wooden loft ladder in the middle of the barn was far more fascinating. Situated in the middle of the aisle that split the length of the barn in two, it was a ladder to another hidden world -- the hayloft. I remember the quiet, warm comfort of the loft. At first, when I was little, it seemed like a vast hall filled with bails of hay stacked in oversized steps as in some grand outdoor amphitheater -- one mountain inside another. As I grew, and the loft began to look smaller, it became a place of wonderful summer adventures with little hidden rooms secretly tucked into the stacks of hay bails.
I also remember some very intense summer games of basketball played by Peggy and the older boys on the floor that had been cleared of bails as cows were fed from one harvest to the next. I remember Peggy's elbows flying as she was not to be out shot, out run or out done by any of the boys. And boy could she run! Barefoot and fast as the wind, as she played late night ball tag in the large green area encircled by drive. There in the front yard, under the single yard light, she would fly across the open space in pursuit of one of her cousins or brothers. In her hand was the fearsome, T-shirt-wrapped ball whose tail she held until she whipped it at her next moving target with blinding speed and accuracy.
Outside the barn, I also remember other things. There was the well house, in front of which Grandpa and the boys would always clean their catch of catfish, crappies and the occasional walleye or pike (an event well attended by the entire cat community). Next to that was the large deep round stock watering tank where the cows and Danny, the Quarter horse, drank gallons of water.
Beyond the well house, a road stretched past a stand of trees to the left and spilled onto the edge of immense fields of which I never saw the end -- six hundred forty acres. It seemed to me that Grandpa owned half the county. I remember once riding back with my brother, Jack, and my sister, Mary Jo, in a wagon freshly filled with newly harvested grain. We brought it back to the granary, across from the well house, where the grain was fed up a conveyor and into one of the bins. I remember going inside the granary and plunging my hand deep down into the grain through the narrow bin doorway that could be opened in sections as the grain was used. What a wonderful feeling that was as the grain, like water, wrapped around my arm with every move.
Behind the granary was a little fairytale cottage, which, on first appearance, seemed to belong to one of the seven dwarves. In actuality, it was a brood house for chickens. It seems to me that this is where broody hens sat on their clutches of eggs until their chicks would hatch. At least, I vaguely remember looking in through the screen door of that little house to a floor that was covered with dozens of little dancing, bouncing, and bobbing yellow chicks. I also remember Grandma reaching in with a scoop to fill the little troughs full of grain-meal for these little peepers.
In front of and to the left of the fairytale house was the chicken coop. It was rather dark and filled with the sound of clucking hens wandering the floor, perched on A-frame-like roost stands or tucked warmly into their laying boxes to protect their freshly laid eggs. On the wall just inside the door, these wooden boxes had a two-inch lip to keep the eggs form rolling out and were covered with hay. Most boxes were usually empty, but occasionally, as we accompanied Grandma to gather eggs, there was a crotchety old hen stubbornly hunkered down on her one egg. Grandma would reach into the box and grabbing the hen by the wing would yank her out. With much squawking and flashy protest, the hen would come out. But Grandma always got her eggs, which she laid carefully in a cloth-covered pail.
Adjacent to the chicken coop was a chicken yard fenced off with chicken wire stretched between the coop and the machine shed. My second earliest memory of the farm was of this yard. The movement of the hens fascinated me as they would strut, cock their heads, and scratch for bugs or bits of tossed grain. One time, while walking past with grandpa on the way to the machine shed, I remember reaching down and picking up a little stone. Of course, I knew that I probably should not throw a stone into the chicken yard. But I was so fascinated by watching the hens scramble for anything that moved that (thinking my stone-throwing could go easily undetected) I threw the stone anyway.
What followed was an unforgettable reprimand, which colored my heart from that moment forward with much awe for my great and fearsome Grandpa. After all, he was the man who told radio-politicians what they should do. Of course Grandpa, being rather short of stature, was never really very great and fearsome, but, at that moment, he seemed like a beady-eyed giant. Anyway, having realized that he must have frightened me terribly, when we arrived at the machine shed Grandpa asked me if I would like to sit on his red-trimmed grey Ford tractor (which at the time still appeared rather new). My feet didn't even reach the pedals but, as dad and Grandpa talked, I sat on that old tractor and imagined myself being a farmer and harvesting great fields of grain.
Finally, beyond the machine shed and past the backyard (to the right) and the wooded area to the left (into which the septic tank was occasionally drained), was a cow pasture. I remember this pasture better than the one behind the barn, as it was closer to the house. At evening, as we played 'pioneers of the frontiers' camped out under blankets hung over Grandma's laundry lines in the backyard, we would hear the cows lowing to be let into the other pasture or into the barn. We would listen and watch with wide eyes as Grandpa, half a hoe handle in his hand, would begin to shout, "come boss" and finally open the back gate to direct the solemn and anxious bovine procession through the yard and into the other pasture. Occasionally, when a cow wanted to wander toward the greener grass of the backyard, Grandpa would crack that old hoe handle down on its back and send it trotting off ahead of the others toward the gate next to the barn.
Back at home in the little house, the women would be in the kitchen preparing another feast. I was convinced, and still am, that farmers eat better than city folk. Whether it's because of the availability of fresh food or simply because of the hand-me-down recipes, I'm not quite sure. But I am sure that the food was always abundant and delicious. Who can forget the sweet corn picked fresh from the garden beside the road, or the rhubarb pie made fresh from the massive rhubarb plants growing on the far side of the garden, or the cool sweet watermelon on a hot summer's day? Everything just seemed to taste better on the farm.
The picnics, the reunions, the snow (which in winter sometimes walled in the road to Grandma's house above our heads) all seemed wonderful and warm and welcome. Those are the memories I have of Grandma Helen Hennen and of the farm on which she lived most of her life -- memories for which I am so thankful because they provided me with such a rich and warm and wonderful heritage. By her simple farm life, Grandma Hennen made my life and the lives of future generations so much richer. Thank you, Grandma.
Michael Hennen
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
