Growing Up on Pop's Farm

This was a hard time for mom, having three young children after the loss of my dad. But we had a large family, and they all looked out for all of us. We started to help my mom when we got old enough to do so. We all had our chores to do, so this helped Mom a lot.

I spent most of my free time up at the farm. Whenever Mom was looking for me, she would call Pop on the phone. She didn’t call too often, but when she did, I would go right home to help her. Otherwise, I would do everything with Pop; we had a great time together.

Dad’s parents owned about twenty acres surrounding his farm at this time, and they had a farm on the east side of the property, and on the farm were cows and chickens. It was a working farm, and my pop delivered milk and eggs to most of the island. He was an amazing man. Pop and I were very close, and he was like a dad to me.

My sister and brother did more than me at first, for they were a few years older. But I would follow them up to the farm whenever they went, for I loved seeing Gamma and Pop. Not to leave out the animals—when I would get up the lane to the farm, I would play with the cats, for we had a lot of them. On a farm, they are needed to help keep the mice and rat population down. When there is feed for the chickens and the cows, there would be rodents that wanted it, so the cats would keep that under control.

Before I started helping on the farm, Pop was down to only three cows. He no longer had the milk business; he turned it over to one of my uncles. Pop had gotten rid of the auto rig to milk the cows; he didn’t need it anymore since he was down to just a few cows. One day when I went into the barn, my brother was milking one of the cows. I asked him to teach me how to milk a cow. “Sure,” he said, smiling. It was not as easy as I thought it would be, but I finally got some milk. I never asked to help with that job again. After the pail was full, my brother and I would bring it to Gramma, and she put it into the jars for her and my mom to have.