The hazy and clinging smoke is acrid; everyone is complaining of burning eyes, coughs and headaches, but we are grateful that our homes and properties are not in danger. Many of us have friends and family who are in close proximity to the areas affected by the summer fires.
The smoky air says fall to me. In our era many farmers still burned the stubble in the fields after harvest was complete although now the stubble remains to hold the soil against wind erosion. Some were still clearing brush from their land. That too was burned when the weather permitted. The smell of a brush fire played havoc for someone with allergies.
The thought of fall also brings memories of harvest. In our rural district neighbours relied on each other to complete the task. We were still a part of the “make-do” generations. Dad had a small, older tractor as did most of the locals. One neighbour owned an aged threshing machine.
Dad said that as Bill Rock owned the machine he was the boss of the threshing crew. To my knowledge all of the farmers were involved with the threshing, helping at each farm in rotation until the machine was close enough to work on their own land and the community was completed.
I asked dad about the machinery, why everything seemed so old. He said that during the war everything was rationed so there were no newer machines and no metal for replacement parts. Many farmers repaired equipment with scraps of wood or whatever spare metal they had. Sometimes they used flattened tin cans for patching.
Dad had worked several years for a rancher in the Westcott area. Jack Robertson had many stories to tell, often with theatrics. Jack’s own father-in-law was good at repairing his machinery, using parts of apple boxes. When he was finally able to switch to all metal equipment, Jack apparently told him that he would have to invest in sardines.
Carol and I have a faint memory of our neighbours arriving with a team of horses pulling the hayrack. That was quickly replaced by tractors. We were assigned the heady job of opening and closing the gate for the racks to pass through. “Do not let the cattle out.”
Our property was still quite heavily treed so we didn’t require long-term help. We had a lot of hay and range cattle as well as some dairy cows. Mixed farming was the only way to make a go of things. Dad worked full time as well, doing construction jobs whenever he could get hired on.
I recall getting off the bus to be greeted by Mom’s marching orders. She always tried to help out. We were often assigned a group task. One after-school job involved most of us, re-clad in work clothes of course. Mom drove the half-ton truck into a nearby field so that we could pick up and move the bales that filled the landscape. As a kid everything seemed far more challenging than it really was. We hoisted bales, one after another onto the tailgate. Warren, who was smaller, pushed them to the back and stacked them until we had a full load.
Mom drove the truck to the barn, backed up as close as possible. Carol climbed up into the loft and we placed a long plank in the truck to act as a ramp. With a big hook attached to a thick rope, we managed to get that load into the loft. Warren probably was assigned to stacking again.
I don’t know how many trips it took to clear the field. It seems to me that there may have been bad weather in the forecast. Certainly it was Mom’s intent to lessen Dad’s workload. We accomplished a great deal of work that way, make-do, all together; teamwork.
