And then when you're travelling around with your tractor and your wagon and your baler, the wheel drops in there-

And when you've a tractor and a wagon and baler, you've a lot of tires that's apt to go down that hole (laughs).

So you had six tractors, four or five square balers and seven or eight wagons and lots of rakes, yeah.

He was in the lead with the tractor and the rake, I was behind him following with the round baler. All of a sudden, holy shit, tractor's heading off the road.

Mm. I didn't- I didn't mind the other one. It was- it was work but it was kind of fun. The old barrel churn. It had a frame on there and a big barrel that held, I-don't-know, five, six, seven gallons I guess of milk and the- and a handle on it.

My mother baked bread and churned butter. I remember the barrel churn which went round and round and as a small child, I was scared of it.

Speaker: Denise went up and she said "Dad, those mattresses are not fit to sleep on. Now you have to throw them out." So she hauled them all out, eh (inc)? And- "Mom? You see Dad gets new mattresses and new bedclothes. It's disgusting-"

Speaker: It's a wonderful museum for a small place and- and the people that work really, really hard. Interviewer: Yes. Speaker: Well, I used to go in- in the spring to the cleaning bee and help with scrubbing the floors and-stuff-like-that but not for a long time. I'm getting too old for that now.

Then, a little later it was time to put in corn silage and in the winter a bee to cut the circular wood into pieces to be dried and used for firewood after it was piled and left to dry. We all got to know our neighbours as farmers traded work with neighbours. It was a busy time for our mothers as they prepared meals for the hungry men.

Interviewer: But did you have livestock on the farm too? Speaker: Oh yes. I remember I killed a beef one time by myself. Interviewer: What? Speaker: I killed a beef by myself. Interviewer: How did you do that? Speaker: Well I ah got a pile of straw outside the barn and I- of course you had to hit her on the head and then cut her throat- cut the throat and- and ah- I didn't get all finished before my dad came home...

Kill a beef about first week of January and Mother would cut the ham slices and can it. And the pork, she canned the hams for the pork and cooked it up ah, other and put it in cans with the grease on it and put it in the basement.

Not this time of the night. Yeah, your neighbours are your neighbours. Nowadays if you got in touch with your neighbour see if he kill- kill a beef, he'll tell you to take a walk.

He had a shop out there that they used to kill this beef and these cattle and-everything. Like this one. Ah pork and-everything. And they learnt from him, the brothers.

Cause some of the commodities, eh if price of lamb goes down, well the beef will carry you through or-whatever. If you get disaster strikes if you got all pigs and y-- price of pigs goes down you're getting euchred.

So y-- and I- and I- I honestly don't remember how big they were but they must have been fairly large because I-mean, we would- we would kill a beef and we would kill a pig and I think we kept all that meat in the storage locker so each farmer or-whoever could rent a- a storage locker.

Or you would can your- in the wintertime we dress a beef then that would be- it would be maybe canned.

Then she'd can beef in the sum-- like for, oh, kill a beef and they'd can it and that would keep over the- over the summer

No no, no we had a cow bier and we put the cows in and you'd tie them w-- b-- they had chain around their neck.

Interviewer: So they- lacrosse was actually a sport that they played back in those days. Speaker: That's correct! Interviewer: Oh. Speaker: big time.

Interviewer: Okay, train was really important. Speaker: Oh big time.