Growing Up on the Farm

© 2004 copyright Raymond C. Evans

There were a lot of hardships, growing up on the farm but there were a lot of wonderful times too. Taking care of the animal babies would have to be one of the more pleasurable times for us children.

We didn’t have a large mix of critters on our little forty acre farm. We did have chickens though, lots of them and bunny rabbits and baby calves and baby pigs. We always had kittens and a few times a couple of puppy dogs.

Sometimes, if we were lucky we might spot some wild babies too, a fawn now and then, a skunk baby or the young of some raccoon. There were otters in the river too, that one might spot once in awhile and of course there were always baby birds in abundance. There were always a few baby fish-ducks, (mergansers) on the river in the summer as well. Sometimes we would see a baby turtle sunning itself on a log. And of course there were always the baby frogs, we called them polliwogs, but some called them tadpoles.

These are the pleasant thoughts and sights in the memory of a country boy.

We always had the baby chicks in the springtime, some raised by a setting hen and others from an incubator and brooder. They were cute little things, fuzzy little yellow things, made me wonder sometimes how they could be yellow, coming from a red hen. They were fun to watch as they would scurry about peeping and scrambling for the warmth of the mother. It was amazing to see how far and wide the mother could spread her feathery skirts to protect those little chicks. Oft times she would be walking in a circle all the while trying to feed herself or watching for predators. If perchance she saw something to alarm her, there would ensue much consternation and clucking on her part to call her charges in under her wings for safety.

And there were kittens too, lot and lots of kittens, born from a sweet-talking tomcat that was just passing through. This was a paradise for tomcats in the springtime; we must have had at least ten lady cats on the premises. ----- There’s just nothing happier in the world than a tomcat in the springtime.----- We would find the kitten’s dens all over the place, some in the hay mow, some in empty boxes and some in the woodpile. It was the nature of the mothers to move the kittens to a new site about every two weeks. It was always fun to see the kittens being carried by the napes of their necks by their mother from place to place, one at a time.

Puppies were fun too, most often they would be working breeds given to us by a neighbor. The first night away from their brothers and sisters and mother was always traumatic for the poor little pup. It would be brought into the house and put into a cardboard box where it was warm and cozy. It would cry and yip and whine all night if measures were not taken. The solution was to wrap a wind-up alarm clock in a towel and place it in the box with the puppy. The loud ticking of the clock would no doubt make the pup think he was lying near his mother’s heart, thus soothed he would sleep the night away. Until he got hungry anyway, there just weren’t any spigots for milk on that old towel.

The baby rabbits were cute little things too, we weren’t allowed to look at them in their nest boxes when they were really young, lest the mother would become upset and kill them. Did you know that a female rabbit was called a doe? And that a male was called a buck?

We always had about seven or eight heifer calves that were kept to replenish the herd of milk cows. These calves were always taken from their mothers when they were three or four days old. It only took about two or three feedings from a bucket to teach them to drink. This was accomplished by holding a bucket of warm milk under their noses. We would dip our hand in the milk and the calf would quite naturally suckle the milk off our fingers. Lower and lower we would drop our hand in the bucket until it was almost submerged in the milk. They were awkward at first, sometimes they would shove their little noses clear to the bottom, blow some bubbles and then come up gasping for air. It didn’t take long, it was either learn to drink or go hungry.

Have you ever slept with a pig? We children often did. Pigs have huge litters, you see, the mama may have fifteen little piglets but there’s only fourteen spigots at the dinner table. This certainly is a “fine kettle of fish”, for at least one of those little piglets. Usually the runt of the litter gets left out. Democracy and fair play are just not little piglet’s forte.

The little pigs are the cutest little babies of all, feed them with a bottle, wrap them in a towel, and give them to a begging child to sleep with to keep the little critter warm for the night. So are the fond memories of this country boy.

These little pigs would grow very dependent, most often, to just run loose all over the place until the garden was planted. They then would have to go into a pen to protect the garden. Little pigs make very intelligent pets; they would follow us around just about anywhere we would go, begging for a handout. We would scratch their bellies; they loved that, they would grunt in ecstasy, flop over on their sides and beg for more.

Such were the joys of growing up on a farm.