Athens County farm memories: Summer daze

I spent my high school sum­mer years stay­ing with rel­a­tives on their Athens County farm. This was the ’50s and my Aunt Hazel and Uncle Orville had not quite adapted to indoor plumb­ing, but they did have it. The out­side privy still had some traf­fic. And while Uncle Orville owned an Allis Chalmers trac­tor, he also didn’t sell Dolly, Molly or Rex, three large Bel­gium work horses; when two worked, one rested. It was a nice arrange­ment because I got to loaf with the off horse.

These Bel­giums had big rumps with a cleav­age down the mid­dle, just right to rest a head while Dolly stood mute and still under a huge shade tree, flick­ing flies and from time to time shift­ing her back foot. I read comic books that way or dozed like she did.

It was hot then, too. The heat siz­zled the air slow­ing work down but not end­ing it. Orville piled the raked rows of hay into doo­dles and then forked them onto the wagon his wife drove. Hazel always wore a dress as did her daugh­ter Ardith. I didn’t, but I made up for it years later when I bought my first cow and milked her in my Lib­erty of Lon­don cot­ton dress. Like a hatch­ling, the first per­son I saw milk­ing was wear­ing a dress so I did, too! I wore it out and as well the fine silk A-line I had pur­chased from Lord and Tay­lors while liv­ing in New York City.

My job in those sum­mer months was to yank the trip line releas­ing the clutch of hay pulled up to the mow by Dolly whose rest, along with mine, had been inter­rupted. Uncle Orville would yell down to pull the rope when the hay was just where he wanted it. It had to be dis­trib­uted equally over the mow. Some­times I dropped the hay out­side or worse, on him. That’s when I felt like the city girl I was.

It wasn’t always work. On Wednes­day evenings, regard­less of the heat and the hay mak­ing, Orville drove to Chester Hill to roller skate. Now I could skate just as good as those county kids and I did, float­ing by back­wards, doing zigzags, feel­ing the cool night air lift­ing me beyond the clumsy nature of early teenage years into a kind of eter­nal happiness.

Sylvia Zim­mer­man is the owner of Ful­ton Creek Jer­sey Cheese in Rich­wood. She holds two grad­u­ate degrees and, when not work­ing on her farm or pur­su­ing her inter­est in sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, writes her own blog.

Posted by Sylvia Zimmerman on Jul 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.