Life on the Farm

In May 1945 Mom and Dad bought the farm and moved up the road to the big house where the Brewers had lived for so long I remember saying "Oh boy, I can take a bath now." Mom was horrified because we were always clean.
We had a phone too. It was on a ten party line. Our phone number was 97F21. The F designated a long ring first so our ring was 2 long and a short. Of course the neighbors listened in. One lady with a large family had a habit of leaving her phone off the hook or maybe her children took it off. If you couldn't make a call you could listen to the neighbor's call.
The picture is of Bruce, Dolores (Dody) and myself taken August 11, 1948. I was 10, Dody was 4 and Bruce was 2.
We had a woodshed out behind the house with a second floor that had been a cobbler's shop. Mrs. Brewer's father Eugene Potter was the cobbler. There were cobbler's benches, tools and shoe pegs up there.
In the back of the woodshed was an outhouse. This was handy with five of us in the house.
Although there was running water in the house, there was a pump on the front lawn. The water was cold and the highway employees would stop for a cup of water when they were working on Sap Bush Road.
Do you know what a sap bush is? It's a grove of maples that are tapped for sap to make maple syrup. Dad made a fire pit and shelter and boiled maple syrup out there. Later Bruce made maple syrup out there.
There were many maple groves on this road.
We lived one mile from the Four Corners which was Cloverdale Road going east and west between Rt. 12 and Rt. 79 and Bear Swamp Road going south with Sap Bush Road going north.
On September 1, 1948 while we were away at a fair our dairy barn burned. Several calves and heifers got out. A bull died in the blaze. We lost the dairy barn, horsebar and sheds and the milk house. The Chenango Forks Fire Company sprayed water on the house to keep it cool. Several young maples in the front lawn had scars from the fire.
Dad sold the dairy and started cutting timber to rebuild. He worked in the woods for Art Bowman and also worked at the auction barn in Greene. In the spring he started rebuilding, moving the new barn south the length of the old barn and back from the road the width of the old barn.
Eventually Dad started working as a carpenter to support his family. He got the barn rebuilt and gradually built up a new dairy. In 1977 at age 69 he sold the dairy.
More about life on the farm in future posts.
Chris