You know what he is. And you have the skunk. You know what he is. And you've got porcupine. And the coon- and raccoon. And then ah the foxes. We haven't many of them.

SSpeaker: And there's the mink. They're destructive animals. There's the skunk. He's a des-- and the coon! Interviewer: Mm-hm.

Speaker: And uh, there was grasshoppers and um, rabbits- Interviewer: Yes, they were a nuisance. Speaker: And- groundhogs and then in the fall you had the coons in- in the corn and I guess that's about all that uh- Interviewer: Mm-hm. What about the insects that bite and are a bit of a nuisance, even now.

Speaker: Well, in town there wasn't any rabbits or raccoons, that'd be in the country mostly, you-know- Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker: Like in the farms and- Interviewer: What- what did farmers do? Do you know how they handled this problem? Speaker: Well, the coons they uh- they shot them if they could, they'd shoot them and the rabbits too and they'd snare the rabbits.

Interviewer: Mm-hm. You spoke then of the stove, w-- what did you burn in the stove? Speaker: Oh, wood. Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker: Usually hardwood. There was, ah, always a woodshed, and they bought quite a few cords of hardwood, and then some light cedar or something for shavings to start the fire. Interviewer: Who provided the wood? Speaker: Ah the trustees always bought the wood, there was three trustees, I think, for ah, each school.

Speaker: At my dad's was all round, and- well we built- the building part was built the cow-byre after my- after my time. I was about eleven year old when they built the building, like built the inside of the building. You-know the cow-byre? Where you put the cows in?

Interviewer: Like, what would you call the building that you kept the cows in, then? Speaker: We, ah- they called it- the Scotch people called it cow-byre. (laughs) Interviewer: Is that what you called it? Speaker: Cow-byre. Interviewer: You called it that, did you? Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah. You said you had another building for the calves though. Speaker: Yes. Interviewer: What did they call that? Speaker: Well, the calf-house. (laughs) Interviewer: The calf-house, not the byre? Speaker: No.

People milked out in the byre- out of the byre and then out at the barnyard we called it. And these- (inc) is still there. Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker: Nice clean place. Interviewer: Mm-hm. So we were going through the buildings weren't we? You've got your- the barn that has the cow byre with it.

Interviewer: I see. And then what do they call the upper part of the- the barn like that? Speaker: That's the barn, up there. Interviewer: The which? Speaker: That's- (laughs) the upper part is the barn, and the upper part is the cow- is the cow-byre. Interviewer: The- the lower part's- Speaker: Yeah. Interviewer: The cow-b-- Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. The cow-byre, yeah. Interviewer: The cow-byre. Was the- was the cow-byre sometimes separate from the barn? Speaker: Oh yes. That's the proper way to have it too.

Speaker: And the cattle the horses was in the bottom and the loft on top. Interviewer: What did you call that shed? Speaker: Stable, cow byre. Interviewer: Okay. Um now where would the ah- where would the cows g-- go out to ah to graze? Speaker: Well, it was around- they had to have ah- it was a field someplace, you-know. Fenced. We could turn them out in the daytime, bring them in.

Interviewer: Um what about the um- the building that you'd keep the cows in then? What would it be called? Speaker: That would be the cow byre. Cow byre, that's what they called it. Now they- they don't call it that now you-know. They call it the- well it's just the barn. But it used to be the cow byre.

And the pigs, they uh, they had a- a- a place of their own w- what's it called, pig-sties I guess- And uh, and the cows, they'd be in the cow-byre and the horses would have the horse-stable-

Interviewer: That had as-- um sharp spiky pieces, what did you call that? Speaker: They had the- they had the- the shed fence, and they had the crab fence, and they had the snake fence.

A rail fence is we used to call them, but then there was the rail fence, they made them into the crab fence or the shed fence, or then there was another one they called the draper fence around here. How it got the name of Draper, because there was a Draper man that started to build it. And it went by the name of Draper-Fence. Yeah.

Speaker: Well, the- the early w-- the early harvest, they used the sickle and the cradle and the reaping-hooks and things. But then, as time progressed they got binders and- mowers and-so-on.

That didn't tie the- that didn't tie the grain, that cut it and I put the grain off in bundles, but then you had to go around and tie that by hand. But that would be the first vehicle, the first outfit that came that was cut with what they call the cradle, or the s-- Interviewer: Oh yeah. Speaker: The side and the cradle. The side didn't, ah, it just put in windrows, the cradle though, they'd put that- they'd throw that out in- in little, like in little bundles. You had to tie that too.

Speaker: That was just about the time that the mowing machines and the grain-binder came into it. Interviewer: Yes. Speaker: The re-- up to that time it had, ah- it had been a cradle. (laughs) Interviewer: You would cut it with a cradle? Speaker: You would cut it with a cradle. Interviewer: And that would just leave it, what, in- in lines? Speaker: Yes, it was (inc) and then they had to bind it up. Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: In sheaves after.

Depends if- some fields were good, some were, ah, not so good. Ah, ground that was in hay for a number of years and with the old grain with the old cradle- after they had the cradle- you ever see a cradle for cutting grain? Interviewer: No I haven't. Speaker: Well they cut a strip twelve-feet-five with it. And it had fingers on it, you-see. A blade down here and, ah- and you'd swing it around like that, big long blade.

And we had the first old reaper. You don't remember the reaper, do-you? It made a beautiful job of handling grain. You-know, they used to have to use the cradle. I had a brother, dead and gone, many day, didn't live 'til he was thirty years of age. But say he could cradle that and lay that there, at the (inc) would be all just leaving, and you could come along, tape it first, Todd said, the grain, in your hands like that.