This is an essay that I had to write for my Expository Writing & Reading class. The assignment was to write a narrative essay about a day that has changed or affected your life in some way. I wrote about my first day on the Torsey Farm. For those of you that know me best, this is my favorite place to hang out. While reading this essay please keep in mind that this day was almost a year ago, so I couldn't remember everything that we did that day, I did remember how the morning went, but from lunch until cow chores I couldn't remember what we did. So I wrote about one of my favorite things on the farm. Hope you like it.
It was February 26th, 2010 on a cold and snowy Friday, which I started my farmers’ education at the Torsey Farm. I had made plans earlier in the week to go up to the farm and hang out. The plan was that I would go meet my farm dad Terry up at his house at eight o’clock in the morning and come Friday morning I was there. It had been snowing hard all night long and there was still a linger of snow in the air. Terry walked into the house and said,
“I don’t know what I can have you do today on the farm. For most of the morning we are going to be moving the snow that has fallen over night.”
“That’s fine with me. I would be happy standing back and seeing how you remove snow with your trucks and tractors,” I quickly replied.
At my house we use the old method of a shovel and a small snow blower. I knew that up at the farm they had a different way of removing snow and I was excited to find out.
The first thing we had to do before we went up to the farm, was to drop little baby Emma off at her babysitter’s house. Emma is the daughter of Terry and my farm mom Whatleigh. The sitters house wasn’t far from the farm and because of the snow the night before, the trees along the road were gorgeous. The road however was not that great. It was slippery and it got narrower the closer you got to the sitter’s house. We dropped off Emma and made our way to the farm.
When you get to the farm you drive up into the driveway. To your left is the house and straight ahead is the part of the garage. The garage extends to the right and then turns into the building where the pigs are kept. The drive way goes in a circle around another garage that is in the middle. The cow and hay barn is behind the garage in the middle and to the left of the barn is the holding area where some bulls and cows are usually kept depending on the time of year. To get to the lower part of the farm, you take the first left right as you start to go into the driveway. As you pull into this part of the farm, to your left you find a long building where a lot of the tractor equipment is located and the saw for cutting firewood. If you follow the driveway around you come to another very tall building where a lot of the trucks are and also the saw mill. If you keep going past that building and stay to the left you will come to find the place where they have started to build the sugar house. Around the farm are a lot of big hay fields where sometimes you might see some cows grazing depending on the time of year.
When we arrived at the farm, Travis came outside ready to start work. He got in a truck with a plow and Terry got into the skid steer to start to remove snow. As for me, I made sure that I stayed plenty out of their way. It didn’t take long for them to remove the snow from the drive ways and when that was all done, it was time to move on to the next thing.
At this point Ryan had come up and Terry said to him and Travis,
“Why don’t you guys get out the maple buckets and coves and Katie and Alisha can clean them up and get them ready for the season.”
So Travis and Ryan brought out the buckets and covers to the buckets and placed them in the back of the truck. I stood on the side of the truck and watched, then decided that I would help and count them as they brought them out. There was well over a hundred buckets that Alisha and I had to wash.
Alisha backed the truck up to the barn where we were going to be washing the buckets and covers.
“Why don’t we take all the buckets out of the truck and put them in the barn before we start. That way we don’t have to keep going outside to get them,” said Alisha
“Sounds good to me,” I said
We took the buckets out of the back of the truck, with little Katie’s help, and put them into the barn. We filled the two sinks, one with clean water and the other with soapy water. I had set up a little place for little Katie to stand so she could help us. She loved putting her hands in the soapy water handing me the covers to the buckets and occasionally she would just splash the water around. She is a strong little girl and when it came time to wash the buckets, she had fun bringing us over at least three at a time.
“Here you go Katie,” she would say.
“Thank you Katie,” I would reply.
Alisha and I had to switch jobs of washing and rinsing once and a whie because washing was a lot warmer than rinsing and because it was the beginning of February, it was still really cold out. It took a long time to clean all of them, though we were done by lunch time. We left the buckets and their covers in the barn to dry and went to meet the boys for lunch.
We went up to Whatliegh’s house to have lunch. On the menu was warm corn chowder and bread and butter. It was really good and it warmed me up. After about a half hour of lunch, it was time to go back to work.
As my job of washing the maple buckets with Alisha was finished, I didn’t have anything to do. So I went down to the lower part of the farm to hang out with the boys. They were down in the saw mill. This is my second favorite place on the farm to be. I love to noise of the saw and the sight of it cutting wood. It was just Ryan and Terry as Travis was off doing something else on the farm. In the mill, they were cutting wood for the sugar house that they were building. My job was to sit back and look pretty while watching the saw.
At three o’clock it was time to feed and take care of the cows. Being in the barn with the cows is my number one favorite part of the farm. This is where I met my favorite cow.
“Does this cow have a name?” I asked Terry.
“I named her Dot,” Terry replied.
Dot at the time was only about a week old. She was the cutest cow in the barn and still is today. Cow chores take about forty-five to sixty minutes to do. You have to start with cleaning out the cow area and putting new sawdust down. Then you give all the cows hay. Terry starts milking while Travis grains the cows and then lets down more hay for the next day so Terry doesn’t have to get it in the morning. Dot gets moved over to her mother so she can eat and the rest of the calves in the barn get milk in a bucket after Terry is done milking their mothers. After the cows were done eating their grain, they get a second round of hay. Once all the cows are done being milked and have eaten, the chores in the barn are done.
After the cow chores were done, we were all done farming for the day. Terry dropped me off at my house and that was the end of my first day on the Torsey Farm. It hasn’t been a year yet and I already feel like part of the family. I hang out on the farm whenever I can weather it’s hiking through the woods to repair the fence, going on long trips to get parts for the saw mill, just watching the boys work, delivering fire wood to people, haying fifteen bails shy of a thousand or just sitting around drinking a mountain dew with good conversation. The Torsey Farms is my farm family and I love them very much.
No comments:
Post a Comment