THE LAND — JUNE 12/JUNE 19, 2020
www.thelandonline.com — “Where Farm and Family Meet”
PAGE 5
The barn continues to be a source of comfort
pace in the brightly-lit farrowing barn while I sat in a farrowing crate holding the piglets. Their plump, pink bellies were full of milk — continuously being warmed by a heat mat. Sometimes I got to be Dad’s helper. Standing in the crate, I would hand him piglets as he docked tails, clipped teeth, notched ears and casmales. More than once these words have I cannot recall ever being bothered stopped me in my tracks — stretching by the noise or the smell of the pigs. I my mind far into my youth, bringing suppose at that time, I had never me back to the barns where I spent a known life without those things. For significant amount of my childhood. I me, being in the barn meant that I was fortunate had a job and there enough to grow up was a possibility of on a livestock farm learning something My parents and where my father and grandparents sold the new. In our barn, I grandfather raised truly felt as if nothpigs in 1993 when I pigs and later raised ing bad could ever was eight years old. feeder cattle. I also happen in my little The memories and feel- world. lived a stone’s throw away from my aunt ings, however, are as and uncle who were vivid now as they were My parents and grandparents sold dairy farmers until 27 years ago. the pigs in 1993 the early 1990’s. when I was eight From very early on, I was my years old. The memories and feelings, father’s shadow. My father is a fairly however, are as vivid now as they tall man and I recall having to jog were 27 years ago. alongside him to keep up with his As I mentioned earlier, I was fortuswift pace. We had a long, narrow farnate enough to live closely to my dear rowing barn with an attached nursery. aunt and late uncle. It was in their It was red with white trim. On the barn that my love for the dairy indussouth end of the building there was a try began; and in my early 20’s, bloslarge old elm tree with a tire swing somed into full-time work in the dairy hanging from a branch which stuck industry. For a number of years I out like an old, gnarled, boney finger. worked as a relief milker, herdsperson, Upon entering the barn there was a and artificial insemination technician small office which contained a desk. in eastern Wisconsin and central There was a calendar and a harvest Minnesota. gold-colored rotary dial phone on top The sweet and sour smell of a dairy of the desk. A few of the desk drawers farm always fills me with nostalgia. were used to store brown glass bottles My mind’s eye is ushered back to my of different sorts of medicine and vitaaunt and uncle’s barn, where the 30 min injections. There were pasty milking cows stood in their stanchions orange livestock markers; and every tail to tail and the bright lights illumispring, housed a little family of mice nated a white limed center aisle. The whom I would regularly check on. hum of the vacuum pump and the They made their nest in a bed of gentle pulse of the milking units chewed-up papers in the farthest seemed to be keeping time for a symreaches of the desk drawer. phony of intense labor. Occasionally, when the mother mouse was home, I would hold her (which The cows had kind eyes trimmed Grandpa was never pleased with). with long lashes as they patiently My father would work at a brisk See DEEP ROOTS, pg. 6 “The barn was very large. It was very old. It smelled of hay and it smelled of manure. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows. It often had a sort of peaceful smell - as though nothing DEEP ROOTS bad could ever happen in By Whitney Nesse the world.” – E.B. White (Charlotte’s Web) trated the
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