EARLY LIFE MEMORIES ON THE RANCH PART ONE

I recall being very busy and never really lacking for something to keep my mind and body occupied, wether it be constructive or mischievous it was a learning experience. I spent much of my time building things such as roads, digging ditches, or leveling fields with my collection of toys. My friends and I built "forts" in the tall willows and buffalo berry bushes that grew very dense along the river, so that we could have our special secret place. My friend Benny and I would spend hours there, sitting by the river and the ponds that were home to many types of birds and other wildlife. My grandma was a real bird lover and she provided us with little books that had wonderful pictures to help us identify the different birds. Mule deer were also very plentiful in the fields and he riparian area along the river, and other creatures such as raccoons, skunks, rabbits, squirrels, and coyotes thrived in this fascinating ecosystem. We had no idea there would be this fancy word "ecosystem" coined to describe it all.

The river had rainbow and german brown trout, bottom feeders of carp and suckers that we would catch by various methods. In the winter when the water flows were low we made long spears to spear the very big carp, and in spring and summer we fished for the trout. On a few occasions we built a small fire and cooked them, not the best as I recall but we tried. I had learned my first fishing skills from my grandpa Jim, who was a very good fisherman. He made me a pole from a long willow with the line wound around one end of it. To my amazement it actually worked to catch a few small fish using earthworms we dug from the garden. He told me those earthworms were making the soils better and we needed to have lots of them in our fields and gardens. Watching them and looking at the tunnels they left in the soil was a learning experience in itself.

JUNIOR HIGH AS WE CALLED IT "GRADES 7&8"

What years these were. The classroom in the High School and a single teacher assigned to teach us was an opportunity for all. We encountered multiple teachers during these two years, and some were pitifully inept to control the unruliness that prevailed within our group.  I am sure that is the reason some, if not all, of them quit their job was because of the challenges we as students presented.  It was downright craziness at times. 

The desks we had, were I am sure, the same ones many of our parents had used in prior years. The lighting was updated to florescent that hung down from the high ceiling. We had real chalk and real "black boards" that had cork boards on both sides. Low tech to say the least. Actually there was one black and white tv receiving one channel in the library in the basement. The school just happened to be within the small area of our valley that had tv reception.

I remember design and build projects that were conducted with great skill and patience. We boys built little darts with wooden match sticks, straight pins, and tiny paper "feathers". The pins were attached with thread heisted from our Mom's sewing baskets. Paper feathers were attached by very carefully splitting the end of the match stick with a razor blade and then slipping the paper in the groove.  This design, if properly constructed would fit inside a drinking straw by slightly rolling the feathers. Here is where those cork bulletin boards come into play. The one just to the right of our teachers desk presented the most  challenge. While the teacher was helping the class on the other side of the room we would pick the target and shoot.  Not a good ending as I recall. Under the heading of pranks, the removal of air relief valves on old cast iron radiators always brought a steamy result in more ways than one.

These two years were pretty much a lesson in how to teach yourself. Parents helped a lot and we helped each other. These two years really put many of us behind, and then there was high school. 

I raised steers for 4-H projects and I helped my Dad feed cows during winter months after school. In the summer I drove a Ferguson 35 with a three point mounted side delivery rake. The hay was cut with sickle bar mowers mounted on Farmall H tractors. Hay baling was done with Minneapolis Moline balers and wagons were pulled behind them. One man stacked the hay on the wagons and when one was full another one was brought in. The loaded wagon was taken to the stackyard and another crew stacked it in large haystacks. I preferred driving the tractor pulling the wagons to raking hay. The adventure as I remember it.

The Elementary School Years: The Foundation

School was never my favorite place to be but I learned to accept it as a part of my daily routine. We enjoyed a completely new school starting with the second grade school year. The school was within walking distance from my home which made it rather convenient.  My class consisted of seven girls and three boys, and the class ahead of mine was the opposite in that it was mostly boys. It was obvious from the start that what the girls wanted would almost always be "the way" in class decisions until graduation from high school.

The school was the center of the community and was governed by the local school board. The teachers were hired and fired without the complexities and teacher union influences we have today. The discipline in school was accepted and encouraged by the parents and penalties for misconduct were well known and respected. I know without any doubt that if any of us got in trouble in school that our parents would apply even more punishment when we got home. The definition of the word "respect" was ingrained in our minds for the rest of our lives, and we knew that they had good intentions, we just ventured outside the boundaries at times.

Every student in the school came from a family that depended on agriculture for their livelihood, and the success of all students was viewed as a community priority. We all had responsibilities at home to help our mothers and fathers in some way, and those chores, as they were called, were instruments in forming whom we were to become in adult life. We gathered around our dinner tables at night with our families and talked about all the happenings of the day, wether good or bad we were a family team that needed to work things out together. I knew at a very early age that this business called "agriculture" was a daily challenge and that there were many skills needed to produce food, provide for a family, and help your neighbors when they need it. The foundations of my career in agriculture were being built every day.

My Start in Agriculture

Here I am back at my blog after a little more than three years. I will attempt to post on a weekly basis in an effort to tell my agriculture story.

I am a fifth generation native to the State of Nevada which is as much a part of me as any other formative influence. It is an environment that is unforgiving and beautiful all at the same time.                                            

My parents owned a small dairy that marketed cream that was separated from the whole milk. It was put into five and ten gallon milk cans to be picked up and delivered to the Minden Butter Company in Minden, Nevada. The skim milk was mixed with ground grains and alfalfa that was fed to pigs. Dad and Mom raised a few beef cattle on irrigated pasture and were partners in a whiteface range sheep company that my Dad's family owned. Mom and Dad also worked at the Plymouth Ranch which was owned and operated by my mothers side of the family. Dad farmed  80-100 acres of alfalfa hay and small grains and 200 acres of pasture-grass hay land.

We lived on this farm until I was five years old and I have only a few solid memories of these years. One of them is the smell that identified every area of the farm. The smell of clover blooming in the pastures is probably the most pleasant one along with the smell of fresh warm milk in the separator room at the barn. There are others such as the pig pens, rotting cow manure, and scalding chickens at slaughter that have a notably disgusting scent. Fields where Dad farmed had their own pleasant scents to share. Fresh mown hay and freshly plowed soil are what I remember most.

My love for tractors began sometime during these early years. Mom is sure that the first word that I spoke was tractor (pronounced "track tore". The Farmall M was the "big tractor" that was used for grinding hay and grain for the milk cows, pigs, and chickens. It was hooked to a John Deere hammer mill with a long flat fiber belt attached to the pulley on the right side of it, just in front of the operator deck. It fascinated me. The highlight of this tractor fascination was the day that Mr Springmeyer delivered the new 8N Ford. The minute I saw it I thought to myself, that is just my size. I felt so big and important sitting in Dad's lap with my hands on the steering wheel. This shiny grey and red machine with fenders and a throttle handle just under the steering wheel was awesome!

I learned a hard lesson by not doing what Mom and Dad tell you at the woodpile one winter day. I went out to split wood, oh yes with a very sharp ax. I had just gotten a new pair of cowboy boots for my birthday and was feeling all important and a big boy. I am helping Dad out so he doesn't have to chop wood tonight I thought. What happened was I lifted the ax to chop, bounced off log, hit my new boot right at my little toe. I started to cry because I ruined my new boots and then the blood started coming through the cut in the boot and it hurt. Mom came out of the house when she heard me crying and was not happy to say the least, and especially not because it could have been much worse. A few stitches and tetanus shot by our wonderful local doctor, Dr Mary and I was fine. (As a side note: this was the first of many times this wonderful lady would be sewing me back together.)