History of our farm.

My In-laws started this farm when they were first married. They started off with 8 cows. Sixty-five years ago when you had to milk the cows by hand and the milk was kept in milk cans in the cooler. That was enough cows to make the day long, and you appreciated a soft chair at the end of the day.There was no drilled well, so everyday at noon my mother-in-law would walk the cows from the pasture up to the water spring to get a drink of cool water. In the cold winter months that was a difficult task, to trudge in knee deep snow, try to keep the herd together as you braved the long cold winter storms to get to the spring and break the ice so that the cows could drink.With a lot of hard work they purchased more land and added to their herd of cattle. As the herd of cattle grew, so did their own family. Eventually, they had over 100 head of milking cows and 5 children. The children all learned to work hard. There was little time for playing, that could be done between the many loads of hay bales that had to be unloaded in the steaming hot hay mow. If you were older and stronger you could pick which spot you wanted. On the hay wagon, where there was a breeze once in a while, was where you wanted to be. If you were younger you did as you were told and went to the hay mow. It was stifling hot up there stacking hay. Sometimes you didn't know if you were going to survive till the last bale was taken off the wagon and put on the elevator going clank, clank, clank up to you in the hottest place you had ever been. When the last bale was placed in the mow, you took a deep breath of air as you pushed your head out into the sunlight. Then headed for a drink of water. That was the best tasting water. It quenched your thirst and cooled you off at the same time. Then it didn't matter what you were wearing, you poured the water down over your head and arms to rinse off the hay seed.In 1984, my husband and his brother took over the farm from his elderly parents. I met my husband in the fall of 1985. I remember one of our first dates (or maybe it was a job interview) was him setting me down with the stack of bills he had paid over the past year and asked me to enter them in the accounting record book. The accountant was coming and he needed the records caught up to date. Well I guess that I passed the test because I not only became his wife but also the bookkeeper/secretary on the farm. Our family also grew. We have five beautiful daughters. I always get comments like "what - no sons to take over the farm?". I tell them that the girls can work just as hard and if they want they can take over the farm.In 1998, my brother-in-law left the farm. So I stepped in and helped my husband run the farm. It was only eleven years ago, but a lot has changed since then. Back then we milked 120 cows in a stanchion barn. We milked 60 cows turned them out to pasture and milked the next 60 cows. We had to put the corn silage in the silage cart and push it from one end of the barn to the other. Scrapping our knuckles on the cinder block walls. We had heavy milkers that we carried over our shoulders so that the hoses didn't drag on the floor. There was a lot of physical labor and you were tired at the end of the day.On March 23, 2002 was when life changed for ever on our farm. I was getting my daughters ready to go to a birthday party. My husband had been to the barn about an hour before to check on a cow that was in labor and was going to have a calf. Now, he was changing his clothes to get some supplies at the farm store before it closed. As I stood at the kitchen table wrapping the child's birthday gift, I looked out the window as a low gray-white cloud drifted past the window. It was a windy winter day, but that didn't look like snow blowing past the window. It was finer. I had never seen anything like it before. As I looked in the direction from where it was coming, I realized that our cow barn was on fire. My God! What do I do first? I yelled for my husband as I ran for the phone to dial 911. I could hear the fear of the unknown in his voice as he yelled back to me "I know...!?". He yelled this after he happened to look out the bedroom window and realized that his cows and his lively hood were in trouble. Those were long moments waiting on the phone with the 911 operator giving directions to our farm, yet knowing that my husband had run into that burning building to save the cows. As soon as I could hang up the phone I ran to the barn. I tried to open the door to go into the barn, but the vaccume created by the heat would pull the door knob out of my hands as the door slammed shut. I stood outside the barn, yelling for my husband, torn between my duty as his wife to be by his side and the thoughts of my children and not wanting to leave them motherless if something should happen when I ran into that burning building. As I stood outside the barn yelling for my husband, the aluminum siding kept making a swooshing noise as each piece fell off the wooden shell of the barn. As I would reach for the door, the swoosh of the falling siding would cause me to take a step back. Just then a neighbor came to tell be that Paul was safe on the other side of the burning barn. Amazingly, my husband and our employee got all of the cows and calves out of the barn. I have heard other farmers tell of the horror of not being able to get their cows out of a burning barn. But we were fortunate. Our cows were used to leaving the barn and going out to pasture. It was later determined that a light fixture in the hay mow was the cause of the fire. The wind caused the light to swing. As it swung the wires were rubbed bare. So when the light switch was turned on in the barn, the light in the hay mow sparked and caught the hay on fire...............Tune in tomorrow to see what happened on the farm.