While writing my story about robotic milking, I realized that most of the things associated with milking cows when I grew up have disappeared. That’s life. Time keeps moving forward and things that were once vital in our lives are now gone.
There are still dairy farmers who use milking machines, just as we did, except the milk now goes through a pipeline into a bulk tank. Most other things have changed. Those cans we filled with milk every morning and evening are gone.
They are relegated to antique stores or used as painted, decorative items in homes. The day is coming when most people won’t know what those cans were used for. Along with the cans, the milk strainers are gone. Even the stainless steel milk pails are no longer needed. The water-filled cooling tank in the milkhouse where we kept the milk in the cans cold, until the milk hauler picked them up, are gone. The milk haulers who hauled two hundred or more cans to the creamery each day are gone, replaced by bulk tank haulers.
As I sit on our back deck writing this, I can see lights in the neighbor’s barn to our west. As I look around the countryside that I can see from our house, there are 17 farms that once milked cows. Now there is only one active dairy farm where the lights shine in the barn in the evening as they still milk cows. The majority of the old red barns on the other farms are gone. Those are just the rural icons in my little corner of the world that have disappeared.
Red, timber-frame barns that once stood as the centerpiece of every farm are quickly disappearing. Most of those that remain standing are no longer used and stand empty, rotting, and falling apart. The day is coming when finding an old timber-frame barn still standing and in good shape, will become a Kodak moment. I guess that’s the wrong term to use. Kodak film has also gone the way of the dinosaur, replaced by digital cameras.
Barns aren’t the only old icons that are disappearing. When was the last time you saw a working windmill, other than on an Amish farm? They were once the lifeblood of every farm. I’ve mentioned that soothing sound of the windmill pumping water, in many stories. I get thirsty for a drink of cold water just thinking about it. I could use the old tin cup to drink from that Sid gave me from the windmill on his farm near Middleton. At the time we had never met, but he read my story about windmills and thought I should have his cup. He’s a friend I’d never have known if I wasn’t writing this column. After we moved to Westby from Madison he coined the word “Sherpeland” to describe where we live. Unfortunately, he died before he was able to visit us in Sherpeland. We often talked about how the rural countryside was changing and how most of the fences that surrounded every farm were disappearing. In reference to the name of my column, he said that it wouldn’t be long before most people wouldn’t know what it meant to talk “across the fence.”
Another rural icon that’s as scarce as hen’s teeth to find, is an outhouse, or two-holer, as I like to call them. They are pretty much gone except in Amish country. You’d have to search the countryside trying to find one to tip over on Halloween. Also gone are corn shocks and bundles of oats piled up in a field. They were still being used when I was young. Farming has progressed and found new and better ways to do all these things. Now I watch huge cornfields around us disappear in a matter of hours as huge, self-propelled combines harvest the corn and blow it into a truck driving alongside. I’m always amazed to see how fast and efficiently the harvest is completed.
One thing missing is the camaraderie of neighbors as they worked together to help each other with the harvest. It was a special time in rural communities. A big part of the harvest was the meal that everyone enjoyed at noon. I’m not so sure the women enjoyed all the slaving over hot wood stoves in the heat of a summer day. Wood stoves, used for cooking in most homes, not that many years ago, are now gone. I still remember when they sold my mother’s wood stove during her parent’s farm auction after they died. She had spent hours cleaning and polishing it up for the auction. A junk dealer bought it for a few dollars and proceeded to smash it into pieces and throw them in his truck. Ma sat down on the porch steps and cried. That old stove had been an important part of her and our lives for many years. Things change and time marches on.
Those are just a handful of the many things that were once so much a part of our lives and are now disappearing. What other rural icons will be joining that list? I think of rural mailboxes. What will become of them? They were at one time our main source of news from beyond the borders of our farm. But that’s a story for another day.
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