My 91-year-old father recently reminisced about his horse barn, including how shoveling manure brought him challenges and joys.
In the late 1940s, my father, Jerry, was a junior high student living on a hobby farm within the city limits of Des Moines. The winter temperatures fell into the low teens or colder, so the horses could not stay overnight in the pasture like they did the rest of the year.
Jerry started his evening chores when returning home around 6 pm. Their six horses were usually waiting outside the barn, eager for food and warmth. He rounded up the animals in the dark and brought them inside. He appreciated that they were nearby because the cold winter winds stung his eyes. As a champion swimmer in the 100-yard freestyle, Jerry often had tearing and bloodshot eyes from the abundant chlorine in the pool.
He led each horse into its stall, tied its halter rope to a wooden hole, and then filled its feeding trough, known as a manger, with oats and Timothy hay. Their farm covered just a tad over 13 acres, so it could not grow much animal feed. Instead, Jerry’s father bought the feed from nearby farmers.
The pasture had an artesian well that created a small creek, providing the horses with water on even the coldest days. This saved Jerry’s tired muscles from hauling five-gallon buckets of water around the barn. However, during especially cold periods, the horses stayed in the barn all day. This meant Jerry had to carry two buckets of water to each horse.
Another of his favorites horses was Princess May Dawn, named for her birth at dawn on the first day of May. On that morning, her mother Lady did not come up from the pasture for the morning feeding at the barn. Jerry and his father went searching for her. They discovered that she had delivered her foal on her own in the field and was now licking the baby clean in the sunlight of dawn. The foal stumbled and wobbled on her legs. Lady softly guided her to walk with gentle nudges from her nose and loving neighs. After about an hour, Jerry’s father led Lady to the barn, with Princess hesitantly but steadily walking behind her. Though exhausted and hungry from the birth, Lady nursed Princess before taking any food or water for herself.
In the wintertime, the morning chores were the most demanding. Jerry woke before sunrise at 6am. He crawled out into his cold bedroom, reluctantly leaving the warmth of his patchwork quilt which his grandmother had hand sewn. He quickly pulled on his heavy coveralls and headed to the barn.
He fed each horse fresh oats and Timothy hay and then led them out into the pasture. Now the hardest work began. When horses spent the night in the pasture, their manure became natural fertilizer wherever it fell. In the barn, the manure fell onto a wooden floor. Jerry unhooked the half-door that opened from the barn to the outdoor manure pile. He then tossed shovelful after shovelful of manure onto the pile, until he had cleaned up 12-hours of activity from all six horses.
While Jerry dealt with the horses, his father had the easier job of managing the two light-brown Jersey dairy cows. The two cows generated significantly less manure than the six horses. More importantly, the cows’ legs and hooves could easily stand on a concrete floor, a surface too harsh for the horses, which needed a wooden floor. Because of the concrete floor, Jerry’s father could spray away their manure with a hose in a few minutes.
When the cows ate their alfalfa and oats, Jerry’s father would milk whichever cow was producing. Since cows produce milk for only 10 months after giving birth, a farmer needs to have two cows if he wants a steady supply of milk. He will put the two cows in rotation, breeding one to become pregnant for 9.5 months while the other produces milk.
After his barn chores, Jerry returned to the house. When he opened the back door, his mother could hear and smell his arrival. She would say, “I’ll have a good, warm breakfast ready for you, after you shower off that horse smell and put on your school clothes.”
When breakfast was finished, Jerry’s father got the family into his 1939 white, two-door Hudson sedan. After about five miles, Jerry jumped out to catch the streetcar to Roosevelt Junior High. About a mile farther, his mother reached the Polk County Courthouse where she worked in the assessor’s office. Eight blocks later, Jerry’s father arrived at his office in one of the city’s tallest buildings, the 14-story skyscraper where Bankers Life Insurance had its headquarters. He worked there as the manager of their Policy Loan and Surrender Departments.
As my father finished his story, he said, “My chores were much harder than the chores of my friends. However, I really appreciated the opportunity to raise, know, and enjoy such extraordinary creatures.” Listening to him, I realized how those chores shaped his character, instilling a work ethic and love for animals that he passed down to me.
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Photo Caption:
Jerry riding Beauty in his “Flying Hoofs” uniform, which was handmade by his mother
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
