Grandma and Uncle Jim’s Farm

By Phil Keillor, grandson

When I visited Grandma’s and Uncle Jim’s farm, I loved helping with the horses. Farmers were converting to tractors, but Uncle Jim still used horses. He had five Percherons. They were very big, especially to a boy like me who could walk right under those horses without bumping my head on their bellies.

Uncle Jim used two horses every day, giving the others a chance to rest. He’d go out in the morning, hitch the team up and do whatever work he needed to do. On hot days when he came back to the house at noon for his lunch, the horses would be sweaty and he’d towel them down, dry them off with gunny sacks and park them in the shade, still keeping their harnesses on. The horses would get their lunch and a bucket of water and a chance to rest in the shade for an hour while Uncle Jim went inside and had his lunch. In the afternoon, it was back to work for all of them. Five horses seemed to me to be pretty good and Uncle Jim worked with those horses all of their lives. When they got too old to pull any more, he let them retire and they lived the rest of their lives as old horses do just wandering around in the pasture and eating food.

Taking Care of the Horses

When I was on the farm, sometimes for as long as the summer, I was given the job of taking care of the horses. It was my favorite job. I’d go out in the morning when Uncle Jim was milking cows, open the big barn door and I would be greeted by them. They seemed always happy to see me, whinnying, stamping their feet, anxious for something to eat. I’d get a bucket of water for each horse, and then go get the hay fork and would throw down piles of hay into open boxes in front of the horses. The horses would start eating the hay right away. Next to the manger was a smaller box that was called the feedbox. I’d take a big pail and go out to the grainery, across the barnyard and get a bucket of oats and about five or six cobs of corn. I’d pour oats in their feedbox and put the corn cobs in and then I go back and get another pail until every horse had its food and was happily chewing away.

When I finished feeding the horses, Uncle Jim would be done milking and we would go to the house for breakfast. Breakfast took quite a while. Grandma would have some cream of wheat or oatmeal, and Uncle Jim never took his cream of wheat or oatmeal straight. He always poured Corn Flakes or Grape-Nuts on it, then milk and a little bit of sugar. I would copy him. And that’s still the way I eat my cream of wheat or oatmeal when I get a chance.

Morning Bible Reading & Prayer

After breakfast, we’d go into the living room and sit around on the sofas and pull out our Bibles and either Uncle Jim or Grandma would open up the Bible and read a chapter or two and we would talk about it for a few minutes. And then we would pray. We would talk to God about our families and about those who were sick or those who were traveling or about people who had special needs. We would pray that we would have a safe working day. We would ask God’s blessing on our day and then we would be done.

Now I imagine to grown-ups this was just a matter of a few minutes, but to a boy who was anxious to get outside, it seemed like we were taking the whole morning. But I’ve always remembered and appreciated that because in my family, we didn’t have time to do that. It was a very different life because people in the cities had jobs and schools to go to. But these times at Grandma’s and Uncle Jim’s were times where God came first, before the fieldwork or before the adventures of the day.

After this time together, we would get the horses out of the barn, and Uncle Jim would lift the harnesses down from their pegs and throw the harness up over each horse. He would harness the horses in their stalls and then would back them out one-by-one and hook them up to the wagon, and away we’d go.

Gathering the Hay

Uncle Jim never let me ride on the mower; it was too dangerous. It was a job he did by himself. He’d also go out and rake the hay after it had laid on the field on a hot sunny day and dried out. A couple of days of warm, sunny weather and the hay would be ready to bring into the barn to provide feed for the horses and cows. When the hay was ready, Jim would hitch up two horses to the big wagon with the flatboard on it, then he would lift me up on that, take two pitchforks and we would go off to the fields. We would be standing against the front board of the flatbed, much like the headboard on a bed. Uncle Jim would lean over that, holding the reins in his hands. And when he was ready to go, he would flick the reins and shout, “Prince, giddy up. Giddy up, Sally.” The horses would lean into the harnesses and pull. And with a creaking and rumbling of wheels, we would go off with the big wagon, heading down the lane to the fields where the hay lay dry, waiting to be picked up. When we got to the field, we would run along between the two rows of dried hay. I’d go on one side and he would go on the other, and the horses would pull the wagon by themselves. He would leave the reins tied on to the wagon and would control the horses with his voice. When he wanted them to stop, he would say, “Whoa, Prince. Whoa, Sally,” and they would stop. We would then scoop the hay on the wagon.

When I was really small, about 5 or 6 years old, I didn’t last very long. That wagon bed was as high as my head so I couldn’t throw much hay before it was piled so high that I couldn’t throw any more. Then I’d stop and put my pitchfork on the wagon, and Uncle Jim would boost me up on top of the wagon. I then became the packer. My job was just to walk around pack the hay down so that he could get more hay on the rack. And finally, when he could no longer throw hay up that high, he would stop. He would climb up on the headboard and then up on top, grab the reins, and perched on this soft fluffy pile of hay high above the horses, the two of us would sit with our feet on the headboard. He would say, “Giddy up, Prince; Giddy up, Sally.” They would lean into their harnesses. And the wagon would creak and groan as we bumped along the rough road. You could hear the hay rustling under us. It was like being on a soft, bouncy bed, but instead of bouncing on the bed, the bed itself was bouncing underneath us, and he’d slowly lead the horses up the hill, along the lane until we got to the barn.

There, he pulled up alongside the barn, and high above us was a door that went into the haymow, a big room with a ceiling about as high as a basketball gym. For us kids, it was like a gymnasium, because it had room to swing on ropes and to climb ladders and to leap onto the huge mountains of hay and play hide-and-seek.

What Uncle Jim used to do was unbelievably hard work. He used to pitch that hay up into the haymow and then somebody else — it might be me or it might be older people — would pitch the hay back into the barn. Eventually, he built a system using pulleys and ropes that made this a lot easier, and the horses could pull a whole wagonload of hay up in one bundle.

Old Enough to Harness and Mow On My Own

As I got bigger, I was able to do a lot more of the loading of the hay and less of the packing and some of the smaller kids would come out and they would do the packing. Finally there came a day when I was 12 or 13 years old, when after our prayers and Bible reading, Uncle Jim asked me if I wanted to go harness the horses and rake the hay. I felt so grown up and ran out to the barn to do what I had watched Uncle Jim do hundreds of times. I was strong enough to reach up and pull the heavy harnesses one-by-one off the pegs, then throw a harness up over the horse and fasten the buckles under its belly. I took the big collar down and put it over the horse’s neck, fastened it and the halter and put the bit in the horse’s mouth. When I had all the buckles tight, I untied the horse from his stall and backed him out.

When I was done, I got up on the big steel seat, sat on my chariot, flipped the reins and said, “Giddy up Prince; Giddy up, Sally,” and headed those horses out down the lane for that field of newly mown hay that I was going to turn. I don’t know where Uncle Jim was. I know he was not standing there watching me harness the horses. He was off doing something in his shop or doing some other work in the barn. But I wondered how he felt, letting me go off for the first time and do this work on my own. When I visited Grandma’s and Uncle Jim’s farm, I loved helping with the horses. Farmers were converting to tractors, but Uncle Jim still used horses. He had five Percherons. They were very big, especially to a boy like me who could walk right under those horses without bumping my head on their bellies.

Uncle Jim used two horses every day, giving the others a chance to rest. He’d go out in the morning, hitch the team up and do whatever work he needed to do. On hot days when he came back to the house at noon for his lunch, the horses would be sweaty and he’d towel them down, dry them off with gunny sacks and park them in the shade, still keeping their harnesses on. The horses would get their lunch and a bucket of water and a chance to rest in the shade for an hour while Uncle Jim went inside and had his lunch. In the afternoon, it was back to work for all of them. Five horses seemed to me to be pretty good and Uncle Jim worked with those horses all of their lives. When they got too old to pull any more, he let them retire and they lived the rest of their lives as old horses do just wandering around in the pasture and eating food.