The Old Spinning Wheel

Across the Fence #232

After our father died in 2000, we went through the old farm house, sorting and cleaning, getting ready for an auction. It's a sad time to sort through all your parent's possessions that had been accumulated over a lifetime.

One item that was half-buried under boxes of junk and falling plaster from the ceiling in the back room, my bedroom at one time, was an old spinning wheel. It had always been in Grandma Inga's room. I wondered about its history. I couldn't remember anyone ever talking about it. If only we had asked questions when people were around who could tell us the story about the spinning wheel. Now those people were all gone.

I removed the junk covering the spinning wheel and gently lifted it from the tangled mess that had been its home for the last thirty years or more. I carried it into the main upstairs bedroom where I could examine it more closely. I call it the main bedroom because that room had a small register in the floor that let heat rise to the upstairs. It was the only bedroom that was relatively warm and the one I shared with my two brothers in the winter.

I examined the spinning wheel, trying to find some date or initials that would indicate its source. There was nothing. It was definitely old. It was put together with wooden pegs, not nails. It was not a good-looking spinning wheel. It was downright ugly because half the dark stain or paint had been stripped off, leaving a two-toned appearance. It's no wonder none of the family had expressed any interest in it.

I couldn't remember my grandmother ever using it, even though she always lived with us. But then, I hadn't paid much attention to those things in my younger days. If she didn't use it, then why had she kept it in her room all those years? The upstairs middle bedroom had been Grandma's room. It must have been in her family, but now there was no way to find out or to prove it was a family heirloom.

That evening my cousin, Sandra, called from Colorado to see how things were going with cleaning out the old house. I mentioned the spinning wheel to her and said it was too bad we didn't know the history of it.

"Oh, but we do," she said. "Grandma Inga's mother, Ane Ostrem, brought it from Norway."

Sandra then proceeded to tell me the story, which I didn't remember. "When we were young, on the Hauge farm, Auntie (my mother Anna) would rock me in her lap and read to me. One of the stories was about Rumpelstiltskin and spinning wheels. Grandma then said that her spinning wheel had belonged to her mother and she brought it with from Norway. Grandma never used it but always kept it in her room. It must have been very important to her."

I told Sandra I couldn't remember the story, but then I was three years younger than her. Thank goodness she remembered. Now we knew the history of the old spinning wheel. It was a family heirloom, and as ugly as it was, it was a real beauty and treasure. It may not have been the most beautiful spinning wheel I'd ever seen, but it had personality. I knew we couldn't sell it in the auction. It had to stay in the family.

It had belonged to my Great Grandmother, Ane Bertine Jensdatter Mageland, born in 1857, who married Jonas Tønnesen Østrem when she was twenty years old.

In 1888, the Østrem family arrived in America. The spinning wheel also made the voyage and traveled with them to Wisconsin where they made their home in the hills of Jefferson Township in Vernon County. It was a long way from the small farm they had left behind in the mountains north of Moi, Norway.

I thought all four of us kids should have a chance to be the next keeper of the spinning wheel, so I said we should draw straws. Actually we drew knives! My sister, Janet, picked out four kitchen knives. Three had decorative handles and one was plain. I told them before we drew knives, that whoever got the spinning wheel must make sure it stayed in the family and their children must also understand the importance of it. I said we should start with the youngest, just to be different, because the oldest usually gets to go first. Since I'm the oldest, I was the last to draw and the only knife left when it got to me was the plain-handled one.

The old, ugly spinning wheel that once stood in the Mageland and Østrem homes in Norway; that had sailed the Atlantic Ocean with the family on its trip to America; that once sat in the old log house on the pioneer Ostrem homestead in Wisconsin; that went from farmhouse to farmhouse in those tough times when my parents and grandmother moved from farm to farm; that stood in my grandmother's bedroom all those years; and spent the last few years relegated to obscurity under piles of junk, would now find a new home in our house. We have restored it. It's now beautiful, and we've given it a good home as the keepers of a family treasure until it passes to the next generation.

A Money Saving Offer for You!

Across the Fence #231

I got your attention with those words, didn't I? Saving money or receiving news of a great way to make some fast bucks, always gets people's attention. How many times have you heard this line? "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." Yet people are sucked in, or is that suckered into, unbelievable deals every day.

The internet has opened up all kinds of new scams to try and sucker us out of our money. I recently read that 96% of all e-mails are spam! I think everyone with an e-mail address has received an offer from a person in a foreign country, usually Nigeria, wanting us to be the recipient of millions of dollars. I received three offers this week. All I needed to do was send them my contact information and bank account number so they could deposit the money directly into my account. I had been selected to distribute millions of dollars to charities and I would keep twenty percent of the money for my help. Sounded like a great deal to me. I could always use an extra million bucks. Maybe some of you received the same generous offer. I'm never surprised when I hear that people are still falling for this scam. I think it was P.T. Barnum who said, "There's a sucker born every minute."

There are also fly-by-night businesses that rip people off. When we lived in Madison it wasn't unusual to hear about somebody being scammed by drive-by contractors who would see a house that needed a new roof or a driveway that needed repairs. They would stop and offer a reduced price to repair it. Oh by the way, they needed money down so they could go and buy the supplies. Once the money exchanged hands they never saw the person again.

In these days of economic problems, people are looking for ways to save some money. But what looks like a great money-saving deal, may end up costing them a lot more in the end.

I run into this a lot in my job, especially as money and competition for it gets tighter. Recently, I received an offer for TV service at an unbelievably low price. I wondered how the company could offer that price without "selling the farm." Most people never read the fine print in an offer. I make it a point to always go over all the fine print. When the fine print in this offer was magnified large enough to read, it filled an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. That offer that sounded too good to be true, was just that. I discovered that if I signed a contract with the company I'd end up being bumped up to the Cadillac Package after the six-month offer ended. I wouldn't have a choice because I'd be locked into a two-year contract. 

The next eighteen months would cost five times as much. In the end, I'd pay a lot more over the two-year period than the service I have now. Plus, I'd have to pay hundreds of dollars in cancellation fees to get out of the contract if I didn't like the service. It pays to read the fine print and not get suckered in.

However, cheap introductory offers in any type of business, often blind people to the total cost, and they seldom read the fine print.

Whenever I can, I like to support local businesses. When we bought appliances for our house, we went to a local business, rather than a big box, national store. Could we have saved a few dollars by going the big box route? Maybe. But we received great personal service from people we can trust. If something goes wrong, I know we can get help without getting the run-around.

Many things have changed. We live in a much different world today. It's getting harder to find local businesses that are family owned and operated. Too often we're dealing with a local outlet of a national company. It's pretty hard to walk into their headquarters and talk with someone if you have a problem. I remember when I had a phone/computer problem in Madison. Even though it was a large company with a "so-called local office," I ended up talking with a woman I could hardly understand. I asked her where she was located. "Malaysia," she replied. When I tried changing my TV service I talked with a woman in India. She scheduled a "local" appointment. They never showed up. I tried for two days to get service and finally called the :local" Madison number and got a man in India. I told him to forget it. I didn't want their so-called "Local" service.

Another advantage of doing business locally is money stays in the community and is used over and over again, to the benefit of many within the area. Those local friends and neighbors aren't going to offer you a deal "to good to be true." They don't want their offer to take a big bite out of your pocketbook later, and make you an irate, unhappy customer. They want you to keep coming back.

The bottom line is, read the fine print, ask questions, and if the deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Above all, whenever possible, do business with local people you know and can trust.

Living In Harmony

Across the Fence #130

They must have read "Across the Fence" in the paper and realized I was worried about their safety. On Thursday the story appeared that said I hadn't seen a deer since hunting season last fall. I feared the five deer we had enjoyed watching last year were all dead.

Thursday evening around 7:30, I was working in the basement when Linda said, "Come quick, there are two deer in the back yard!" I ran up the stairs and cautiously approached the large windows in our four-season porch. I didn't want to scare them away. There they were in the middle of the yard. Then I noticed two more deer at the edge of the yard. I looked around and spotted another larger deer, standing alone, off to the side. Five deer! What a welcome sight they were. It was as if they had gathered in our yard to let us know they were still alive and well.

They hung around for about fifteen minutes, grazing on whatever they could find. There isn't much to munch on because the grass is still a drab brown, and even the weeds haven't started growing yet. Maybe they heard we're planning to put in a garden and came to check it out. That should make life interesting this summer. When they realized the garden had yet to be planted, they wandered off into the corn stubble behind the house looking for something better to eat, It was pretty slim pickings there too. As darkness started to take over, they slowly made their way down toward the pond and eventually disappeared into the night.

What a wonderful encounter. As you might have surmised by now, we love living in harmony with nature and the animals and birds all around us. It's great living in the country again where we can look out a window and see Whitetail Deer grazing in the fields around our house, or see a Bald Eagle sitting in a tree next to the house. We have plenty of rabbits too. That will make trying to grow a garden interesting. Even so, having nature all around us is great.

I've got to admit, there were times when I felt like a caged animal living in the city. I realize the shift in population is away from country living to city living. That's a fact of life these days, but I prefer the country. Some people feel more at home away from the bright city lights, traffic noise, and congestion of the city, while others would feel lost and isolated if they had to live in the country.

Just as we need to live in harmony with the animals around us, city folks and country folks need to respect each other and live in harmony too.

A Letter To the Editor regarding my Combine and Tractor Trail story brought up some points of conflict. He said that farmers receive very little respect. Non-farmers don't like when slow-moving equipment slows them down and they often flip off the farmer when they can finally pass; they don't like that their animals stink up the countryside; and they don't like the fertilizers and pesticides farmers use on their crops. He said many of them use more fertilizer and weed killer per acre to have green, dandelion-free lawns, than a farmer uses on his crops.

It's the season when farm machinery will be traveling on the highways and side roads again. We all need to exercise a little patience when we get behind slow-moving equipment. That goes for Amish buggies and wagons too. A lot of Amish live in Vernon County and many people drive much too fast on the roads in Amish communities. We all need to slow down a bit and learn to live in harmony with all our neighbors, or it could lead to disastrous results.

I think there's a correlation between me living in harmony with the deer that inhabit the back forty of this farm, and farmers and non-farmers existing in harmony too.

I can accept the fact that deer and rabbits view our garden and plants as their personal food supply. That's their nature and I can't fault them for that. They don't understand that people plant gardens for their own use, not for the critters and birds. We can avoid some conflicts if we construct fences around our gardens to discourage them from getting a case of the munchies. Remember, good fences make good neighbors, and those animals and birds are our neighbors too, just like our human neighbors.

Sometimes living in harmony with the world around us can be very challenging. It's now 4:30 in the morning as I finish writing this story. I was awakened by the howling of dogs and couldn't get back to sleep. They keep up a constant, mournful howl, interspersed with barking. Perhaps they're howling at the full moon that's visible through the trees beside the house.

As irritating as the howling is, I can't fault the dogs. I'd howl too if I was imprisoned in a pen or constantly chained up. I said earlier that I once felt like a caged animal while living in the city. I can relate to how those dogs must feel. When it gets down to basics, we're all in this world together... animals, birds, and humans. We need to respect each others space and learn to live side by side in harmony.

Silo Is A Four-Letter Word

Across the Fence #229

My story, "Silo Philosophy 101 Revisited," stirred some memories in my brothers and others who have spent time in silos. Maybe it brought some back for you too. It appears that most memories are not of the warm, fuzzy variety. Silo is a four-letter word for many people.

I had an interesting note from one lady who shall remain anonymous. She told me, "We too had a silo on the farm, but instead of going inside, which we occasionally did to catch pigeons, my cousin and I would climb up the staves on the outside of the silo. If my grandma had known, she'd have had a heart attack many years earlier."

Talk about having no fear, or being crazy. I'm not sure which category I should file that in. Maybe both! She was much braver and adventuresome on the outside of the silo than I was. I think we'd climb up about ten feet and decide it was high enough. Besides, if Dad had caught us climbing up the silo, falling off would have been the preferred outcome.

The tobacco shed was another story. I never had any fear climbing around in the shed and walking on the poles. Which brings up another silo story. One "adventurous" man told how he would walk around the rim on the top layer of blocks when the silo was filled to the top. That seemed a bit foolhardy too. Granted it wouldn't be far to fall to the inside, but it's a long way down if you fell to the outside.

The more stories I hear about the adventures and misadventures of young farm boys and girls, it's a wonder that any of us made it into adulthood, let alone in one piece. No wonder parents turn gray.

My brother, David, reminded me how tough it was to throw down silage in the winter. His memories triggered similar images in my mind. He mentioned busting chunks of frozen silage from the sides of the silo with a pick axe, and lifting them with all his might over to the silo door. Then throwing them through the little door and hearing them go 'clunk, clunk, clunk' down the chute. He didn't remember any deep thinking up in the silo. He said, "Just me, the pick axe, the pitch fork, and the sweet smell of frozen silage. Oh, and dad would holler up once in a while and say, 'Are you still alive up there?' Then he's tell me to bust up the chunks into smaller pieces. No deep thinking required, and I doubt I used more than a couple percent of my brain."

David's thoughts about frozen silage made me remember the clanking sound and how sparks would fly when we'd accidentally hit the side of the silo bricks as we tried to break the frozen silage free. Those frozen walls of silage were often six inches to a foot thick. If you didn't keep breaking them loose as you went, they could get too tall. If they broke loose and fell, there was a possibility of a big chunk falling on you. I wonder if anyone was ever killed by a falling chunk of silage?

My brother, Arden, also had some memories about silos being a four-letter word. He said, "You forgot the part about leveling off the silage for hours when the temperature of the heating silage would reach 120 degrees, or fixing the silo unloader in the dark with a flashlight in your mouth, usually when it was 10 or 12 degrees below zero, and your toes and fingers were completely numb with cold. I think my brain was either fried or frozen. The only deep thinking I used to do was, 'what the h... am I doing in here.'" Imagine that's how most of you felt about it.

Arden is younger than me, and the silo unloader was installed after I was gone from the farm. Remember, I'm from the dark ages when WE were the silo unloaders, armed only with a silo fork and pick axe! His experiences in dealing with a cantankerous silo unloader were different from mine. But either way, you still had to crawl up the long chute to get into the silo and work on the problem. And... it was usually dark and cold when you were working in the silo, just like Arden said. All things considered, I think it was probably easier to deal with a fork and pick axe. Not too many things could go wrong with them.

With all the things that could go wrong with unloaders, coupled with the expense of a huge silo, is it any wonder that farmers build bunkers and use bags these days?

One more thing came to light as we were talking about silos. It was the use of snow fences when regular silos were full. We built a snow fence silo between the silos and the front door of the barn. As I recall, we built it three snow fences high. We'd fill the first layer, then stack the next one on top of that, then the third layer, and keep filling it. We covered it with plastic when it was full. You don't see any snow fence silos around these days. Times change.

Most silos now stand empty. Only the echoes of the past can be heard in them. If you could hear those voices, they'd probably be saying, "Ya... silo is a four-letter word."

Keeping You Posted

I said I would keep you posted on anything new in deer sightings. Tonight at 7:30 we looked out the windows of our four season room, and saw two deer in our backyard. I looked around and saw three more! There were five deer. What a welcome sight after not seeing any since last fall. They hung around in the yard and cornfield bordering the yard for about fifteen minutes before finally heading back down the lane and jumped over the fence into McClurg's corn field. I watched them for about half hour until it got dark and they wandered off into the dusk.  They must have heard I was afraid they had all died and decided to make a grand appearance for us. It was a great sight and I'm glad to be sharing the land with them, even though they'll probably eat up  any garden we plant this year. 

Then just as the deer left the yard, two rabbits made their appearance under the bird feeder. Looks like the Easter Bunnies are also alive and well and waiting for our garden. That should all make for some interesting stories this summer.

Spring Is In the Air

Across the Fence #228

This week I heard the wonderful sound of geese calling to each other as I was out walking one day. I looked up and caught sight of them. They were headed north; a welcome sign that spring is in the air. I think most of us have had enough of winter for this year.

I also spotted my first Robin of the year during that same walk. It was nice to see him hopping about, stopping to listen with his head bent to the side, then moving to another spot. I stopped and watched for a while, not wanting to frighten him off. Eventually he must have "heard" a worm moving, and started pecking at the ground a couple of times before emerging with one in his beak. As I continued down Sherpe Road, the trees were alive with the sound of Robins. I counted over twenty of them singing to me as I stopped again to look around. This was no power walk to build up my heart rate. This was a walk to look, listen, smell, and experience the wonder of spring coming alive all around me.

I've got to admit, there's one smell that I don't care for; the smell of liquid manure coming alive with the first serious thaw in the spring. I never minded the "old-fashioned" manure smell, but the liquid variety is not my idea of the "sweet smell of spring."

One day I walked around our back forty and down by the pond. I was looking for deer tracks in the mud. There were none. Last spring a fawn was born in the trees next to our house, five deer frequented the fields and even our back yard all summer and fall. I haven't seen one deer since hunting season last fall. I wonder if the "kill a doe" before you can "kill a buck" system of hunting, along with two harsh winters in a row, has depleted the deer herd in many areas. I've talked to a lot of deer hunters who think the deer count is down because they haven't seen as many deer either. I'm still hoping to see deer in the fields again this spring. I'll keep you posted.

Another sign that spring is in the air is seeing the snow retreat farther and farther into the woods and making a last-ditch stand on the north-facing hills. For me, spring has finally arrived when the last holdout patch of dirty snow malts into the surrounding soil.

Spring is in the air when you start thinking about planting a garden. We were looking at seed packets in a store last week. There's something about looking at those packets that gives you a good feeling after a long winter. As I examined the many varieties of vegetables and flowers, my mind drifted back to the days when I was still in school. In FFA we sold seed as a fund-raising project. No friend of the family or relative was safe from a visit from us. My mother always bought a variety of seeds too.

We had a large garden east of the house. After Dad finished plowing and working the ground up, it was Ma who was in charge of the planting. I got to help. We used two broken tobacco lathes with a long string attached to make the rows straight. Then, depending on what we were planting, we dug small holes or long, shallow furrows about half an inch deep under the outstretched string. Each packet had directions on how thick to plant the seeds. Ma didn't look at the directions. She knew exactly how and where she wanted us to plant each vegetable. That was knowledge gained from many years of experience.

Potatoes from the previous year's harvest were brought up from the dark, damp cellar and cut up so each piece contained some "eyes." The eyes were the sprouts that would come alive and provide another crop of potatoes and the cycle of life would continue year after year.

Planting a garden was like a science to Ma and we followed her directions. When we were finished with a row, we covered the seed with soil and moved the stakes to the next row, leaving enough space between them to walk. At the end of each row, or where a new seed was started, we put a stick in the ground and slipped the empty packet over it so we'd know what we had planted in that row.

We planted carrots, tomatoes, string beans, peas, cucumbers, radishes, lettuce, cabbage, beets, potatoes, and many more that I've probably forgotten. We never planted sweet corn that I remember. We just plucked off some early ears of field corn. Some years we planted pumpkins too, but they seemed to invade the other parts of the garden.

I liked to wander into the garden once the vegetables started growing and pull an onion or radish from the ground, wipe off most of the dirt, and eat it. Those are still the best onions. I also loved to snap off the pea pods, pry them open, and pop the fresh peas into my mouth... straight from the garden. It doesn't get any better then that. Thoughts of spring bring back those memories.

Tonight as I sit here writing, the March wind is howling outside and rain is pelting against the windows. At least it isn't snow. Yes indeed, spring is definitely in the air!

Silo Philosophy 101 Revisited

Across the Fence #227

One of my teachers, while I was in high school and doing my silo philosophy thinking, was Ken Trott. He's always been one of my favorite teachers. Now that I'm older, and hopefully a little wiser, I'm glad to have him as a friend. I was a student in his Civics class as a freshman. My silo philosophy started when he conducted a mock trial and I was on the jury. We learned to think and look at subjects from more than one side and listened to both sides present their evidence and arguments, and then we had to come up with a verdicts. Mr. Trott told me recently, that he still has the notebook where I kept notes for that trial.

I credit that class with opening up my mind and teaching me to not blindly accept everything that I hear or read. We all need to examine the evidence, ask questions, and then come up with a conclusion based on what we have found.

I carried that way of examining things up into the silo with me as I threw down silage for the cows each evening after school. What better place is there, than an old silo, to ponder the great mysteries of the universe?

Today it's hard to find a working silo. Most silage and haylage is now stored in concrete bunkers or those big, long, white "worms" that you see on most farms. Real silos stand empty and unused on many farms. Sometimes you see a lonely silo standing, but the barn and other buildings are gone.

Let me tell you, a lot of deep thinking took place in our silos. There within the concrete block wall that surrounded me, I was alone with my thoughts. It was a great place for uninterrupted thinking. Just as the walls of the silo were round, with no beginning and no end, the thoughts running through my mind were also without end. I always refer to this as my "silo philosophy period." As I loosened the silage with the fork and threw it down the chute, I also loosened the thoughts churning around in my mind. It was the genesis of the way I still look at many things today. The ideas that germinated in Mr. Trott's class were like stones thrown into the water. They caused ripples in my mind that began expanding as I tried to find answers to life's mysteries while working in that silo.

Many of the ideas I came up with, in answer to the things I pondered, seemed very far-fetched back in the late 1950's and early 60's. It was only in the mid-1920's, a mere 20 years before I was born, that the famous astronomer, Edwin Hubble, showed us that other galaxies exist beyond the Milky Way. Before that time, our universe seemed pretty small, compared to what we know about it today. Some astronomers have estimated that our Milky Way Galaxy contains up to a trillion stars. What if each star had only one planet revolving around it? That's a lot of potential for some type of life to exist, besides on earth, just in our own galaxy.

Even in my silo philosophy days, I thought there must be other life forms out there some place. Now we know there isn't just one galaxy. Astronomers estimate that over 100 billion galaxies are accessible to earthbound and orbiting telescopes today. The number of stars and planets within all those galaxies is mind-boggling and many of them must have the potential for life. Those are pretty good odds, even if you're not a betting person.

Back in my silo philosophy days, I even came up with the hair-brained idea that maybe our universe is next to another universe and if we could get to the end of ours and cross over, we would enter another world. Now astronomers and others are talking about the possibility of parallel universes. Maybe that silo philosophy thinking of mine wasn't as crazy as I thought at the time.

A also wondered about dreams, because some of them seemed very real and I often encountered people that I'd never seen before and places that were strange to me. I wondered if the dream state was actually our mind entering another universe or perhaps revisiting an earlier life. It's an out of body trip to another world we can enter with our mind. Perhaps life and death is as simple as that. We continue on to another life and dimension, leaving our old body behind. Call it life after death. Most religions of the world have the concept of some type of life after death. Even the Pagan Vikings were buried with objects that would accompany them to Valhalla in the afterlife.

I've always enjoyed stretching my mind and thinking to the limits and beyond. I've never been accused of accepting everything that's told to me as gospel. I like to think my old silo philosophy thinking days expanded my mind. After reading these thoughts, some of you will probably say the silo gases warped it! We all know those silo gases can kill you. I figure, what didn't kill me only made me stronger.

They say most people use only ten percent of their mind-power. That leaves a lot of exploring to do in the frontier of the mind. I plan to keep exploring.