Pictures

Over Thanksgiving Brad scanned a ton of farm pictures into the computer at Mom and Dad's house. Now the question is what to do with them . . . We could post them all like this, which would be nice because you would be able to right click and save them to your own computers to use in future posts or just to save for yourselves. It would take a lot of room however. Or as stories come in we could post just the pictures that kind of go around that event, like the collage of motorcycle pictures I put into Kay's post. Does anyone have a preference? Edit this post, leave a comment, or send an email if you do!

Motorcycle Fun!

Since the age of 5, for me motorcycles had been a huge part of the entertainment around the farm. Dad came home one day with a honda 50 dirt bike for me just my size. That was so cool. I could now go riding with the rest of the boys without having to just ride on the back. (Though a few times riding on the road with Dad wasn't bad) But I didnt appreciate wiping out on the 250 with Bobby driving out in the back field trying to go down the hill. Anyway, We had the Rupp, the 90 the big 250 street legal one of dads and finally a little one for me. That thing could go anywhere. I would go all over the farm, doing many laps around the fields. Sometimes we would go into Merle's field trails and go past Aunt Delores and Uncle Les' house careful not to get caught by the deer gun at night that just was there to scare the deer or Merle and his real gun both of which scared me. I just followed my brothers and listened to my elders no matter who it was--Jim, Blaine, Shawn, Bobby, cousin Chad. At age 6,7,8 you can be very impressionable. And swarn to secrecy very easily. (parents keep that in mind) There were many times when we would also go to the gravel pit. That was lots of fun. We would try and go up the piles of gravel or make jumps. I am suprised we never ended up in the hospital for some of the things we did to have fun out there. But mom would not let us go without our helmets. Safety first. Always. After the 50 I never really graduated to the larger motorcycles as much as I did that one. I don't know why maybe it was because of the 3 wheeler but during those years I sure had lots of fun.

One more mystery!

During the winter I came home from grocery shopping, put the grocery away and had a brown paper bag with four loaves of bread in it. The freezer was full so I left them on the floor in the office. The office was a remodeled porch with no heat. It stayed very cold during the winter so the bread would be just fine. The next day went to get a loaf of bread and to my surprise two loaves of bread were eaten straight down so that half the loaves standing straight up was gone. We never did solve this mystery.

Christmas Candy Mystery

Every Christmas Eve before I went to bed I would set up a table of goodies. The chocolate candy box would be open, fruit in a nice bowl, and goodies arranged on a serving plate, all awaiting the eager eyes of the kids. This was a tradition every year. This particular year morning came with the same excitement and delight. Presents opened and all was going well until I looked over at the goody table. To my surprise the opened box of chocolate candy was gone. 3 lbs on three layers of plastic slotted for each piece of candy trays was empty. I asked in an insensitive way, “Who took the candy?” Everyone played innocent. I was not happy. I was sure someone had taken all that candy to play a joke or something. No one had seen any chocolate candy. So all we had was an empty box with the plastic trays still undisturbed. That day we never did find the candy. That night I put mouse poisoning on the table. The next day it was gone. For three or four months went by and one day while cleaning the couch, I opened it up (fold open couch for bed), in the crease of the sofa were the chocolate candy and the mouse poisoning pellets. What a waste. Each piece of chocolate was in good shape except for a slight indention where teeth had been and worst part was I had to throw out every piece. Our mystery was solved sort-of, we never found out what it was that worked so hard thatChristmas Eve night.

Halloween Blizzard of 1992

The snow storm start about “trick or treat” time. Brad would crawl under the pick-nick table each day of the three days of snow measuring the depth of the snow. The snow covered the pick-nick table. We had hayed the week before and did not have the all the equipment put away. Grandpa Reed’s truck was parked in the yard and we had to dig it out and work to get it into the machine shed. The snow stayed until late spring. We finally found all the tools sometime in April. This was a long winter.

One month of misery.

Blaine, Jim and Dad were opening up the silo to be able to start feeding the cows from the silo. Dad and Blaine were up inside the silo with pitch forks pushing dry moldy silage into the silo unloader, Jim was on the ground slowly cranking down the silo unloader when the crank slipped out of his hands tore open his upper arm. Ran toward house, I heard him screaming ran to meet him and put him on the ground because I wasn’t sure what was wrong I just saw blood. Before he could tell me what happened he said, “Can I still be an astronaut?” When the silo unloader fell Blaine and Dad were not under it and no one else got hurt. Jim spent the night in the hospital. Didn’t brake anything.When Jim got home from the hospital the next day Dad had Jim out on tractor cultivating corn. To teach him how Dad was standing on the cultivator as Jim drove the tractor. At the end of a row Dad told Jim to lift the cultivator which he did and Dad’s foot was riding right where the cultivator and PTO shaft barely missed each other. Dad’s toe was in the way and thus that is how Dad has 9 toes instead of 10. He was lucky it was a middle toe as this did not effect his balance.We took Dad to the emergency room at Moose Lake and the doctor who was not our regular doctor treated Dad and sew the skin on around the toe bandaged him up and sent him home with a gallon of Iodine solution to soak his foot in. Grandma Ober was down in Milltown and came up to help. She looked at his toe and said it looked ok, we had concerns about how it would heal. The next day the toe looked like it was rotting. Another trip to Moose Lake and saw Dr. Christensen (family doctor). He looked at it and called Duluth and talked to a speacialist who told Dr. Christensen to cut off the toe right below the joint, this way it could heal properly and their would be no stub, all worked out great. Dad was laid up for a while and the kids and I farmed while Dad gave directions from the couch.Grandma Silvestri then came out to help with everything. She stayed for about a month and then Grandpa came and visited and took her home. I am so grateful for the help and support of the family. Those days of Dad’s recovery would have been almost unbearable.

First Year on the Farm

Wall furnace

Blaine walking to the barn barefooted about 3 yrs: On Dec. 19, 1971, temp -19° We were doing evening chores as usual. We were pleased that we had finished building a new milk house door that would shut tight and latch. Jim and Blaine were in the barn with us as usual as we were milking and feeding cows. Blaine got tired and wanted to go to the house, which he had done in the past. I was busy milking, so Dad left his feeding chores and took Blaine to the house. Dad took Blaine’s clothes off except for his underpants (Blaine was used of running around in only shorts when we lived in Arizona) so that Blaine would not try and come down to the barn by himself later, the barn was about 100 yards from the house. Dad came back down to the barn and we were both busy milking cows when our puppy got stepped on by a cow and ran into the milk house yelping in pain. I went into the milk house to check on the puppy and heard a noise outside the milk house door. I opened the door and to my horror, found Blaine standing there in the snow crying with just underpants on, no coat, shoes, socks, gloves or anything to keep him warm. I picked him up, cried out to Dad and he came running. I had no idea how long Blaine had been standing outside the milk house door. Having no idea what to do Dad took Blaine from me and ran to the house while I stayed to finish milking. Dad put cool water into the tub and placed Blaine in it. If he had used warm or hot water Blaine would not have been able to stand the pain as his little feet and hands were froze and had to be thawed out slowly. Blaine was in such pain. After chores were done I went to the house to find Blaine still in the tub. As soon as I could I held Blaine to try and comfort him. The only way I could comfort him was to lay on the floor with my knees up and Blaine laying on my stomach put his feet on my knees. This kept the blood from settling in the feet and the pain was eased. We were awake most of the night. The next day I took Blaine to the Doctors in Moose Lake (20 miles away). The Doctor treated the bottom of Blaine’s feet and finger tips the same as a bad burn. We were instructed to watch carefully for infection and put clean bandages on regularly. We were told that Blaine would be very sensitive to cold from now on. Blaine’s feet and fingertips blistered but slowly healed. Blaine proved the doctors wrong and never complained about his feet hurting because of cold. After this experience I was ready to go back to Arizona or California, any where away from the extreme cold and the harsh farming life. How could we expose our boys to such a cruel life? It took a long time for me to adjust to farming life.Power lines to barn broke/repairing – garden hose repaired it in blizzard. I was so tired and so cold I could just lay down and go to sleep1st year making silage- piled on ground with silage blower and drove tractor over it. Had a spot attached on top of a tall pole. Had to change direction of spot and climbed up and while adjusting leg got caught and hung there until Blaine showed up (about 6?). Blaine went and got dad from field to rescue me.Looking for cows and calves in the 20 acre woods – 7 people and 2 dogs, couldn’t find. About two weeks later calf came out of the woods with mother. Calf very wild and hard to catch.Day bdfore Kayleen was born – out fixing fence with boys – came I to find Elder & Sister Tanner doing my dishes and cleaning up the kitchen. They thought I had gone to the hospital to have Kayleen – I was very embarrassed.When the children were little they would ride tractor with us. We would make a seat for them (no safety belts) and they would spend hours upon hours riding. When they would get tired, if big enough, we would just let them down and they would walk home.

What a nightmare.Jim was to hold a calf with a rope around its neck while we were trying to catch more and Jim tied the rope around his waist – I was so scared!

No TV on Sunday’s!

We had a family home evening lesson on keeping the Sabbath Day Holy. We talked about things we could do as a family to help us keep the Sabbath Day Holy. One of the suggestions was no TV on Sunday. We discussed this at great lengths. We decided that this had to be a unanimous decision. So that no could know if someone voted against this we did a silent vote. Each of us wrote on a piece of paper yes or no and took turns putting our vote in the bowl. To our surprise it was unanimous that we would not watch TV on Sunday. For the next few Sundays as we got home from Church the usual was walking over to the TV and turning it on but no one turned on the TV. We found out latter everyone was hoping someone else would turn on the TV but it was not going to be them. We broke the habit which became one of my greatest joys.

How I loved Sunday’s, No TV on Sunday’s, no field work or extra farm work. We were able to spend Sunday afternoon’s and evenings together as a family. Enjoying quite games, reading together, FHE lessons, and just sharing time together without work. Yes chores still had to be done, like feeding the animals and milking. Only when the ox was in the mire was there extra work

Marie