Village Squire, 1977-09, Page 22masons came walking a distance of 15 miles every day to the
site, split field stone, built the house and walked back. They
really knew what they were doing too, for the house, built on
swampy ground. was virtually without cracks.
Next came the barn. It has been said that the true pioneer
first built the barn, lived in it until it started to return a profit,
and only then built his house. It shows that we were no true
pioneers but more like true hobby farmers.
As I said before, the barn was built of logs. It is quite
possible that the poor sap who tried to make a living out of the
poor land and the swamp, used it as his original home.
A later owner had cut the front out and built an extension to it
and also added a part on each end. Now the building could
hold three or four cows, a couple dozen chickens and a sow.
Since our funds had dried up long ago, we contented
ourselves with cleaning up and with repairing the leaky root.
As hens were relatively the cheapest way to commence
farming, we decided on cleaning up the hen house first. I was
the definite expert on chickens, for my dad had chickens some
40 odd years before, and I remembered clearly him setting a
broody hen on a grass sod in a dark place and of getting baby
chicks.
There was one little problem though. The former owner had
a dog ' tied up in that hen house and no one
couia approach the beast because it was so vicious. So the dog
was shot on the spot. Now, of course, it is well known that
fleas don't remain with a dead dog. So as soon as he breathed
his last gasp, the fleas took it as a sign to leave him and they
remained in the dog -cum -hen house. After months of fasting
the little critters were hungry...oh boy were they hungry. As
soon as Toni stuck her head in the door, it was covered with
hundreds of the tiny blood suckers, and shortly thereafter
with red bumps. Oddly enough, they didn't bother me. I said
that I was too human for dog fleas, but Toni said that my
blood was just as my disposition. too sour. In any case, we
sprayed and cleaned and made rests for the chickens from
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tree branches out of our bush and we felt like real hobby
farmers when the chickens arrived. Only one thing went
wrong. I found out that I didn't really know a thing about
chickens and Toni ran our farm enterprise.
Often, at dusk, we would stroll through our fields, enjoying
the feeling of ownership and space. Once. when stenninp
through an opening in the swamp cedars, we
unexpectedly came upon a herd of deer, grazing our barley.
We stood there for a long time, watching and enjoying. After
this first experience we did this more often. The deer would
graze and a rabbit would fail to notice us and hop quietly close
to our unmoving figures. I have seen deer come into a field
where I was working with the tractor, as they seem to lose
their fear for a sound they hear every day. Curiously enough,
I can't remember ever having seen a buck deer. Once I stood
and watched a doe and her fawn come grazing to within thirty
feet without seeing me, then she gave a snort and a few wild
jumps, stopped to call her fawn and both ran off to the far end
of the field, looking back now and again at my still figure, to
disappear into the bush.
Another time I tested a story from a hunting magazine that
said that the Indians used to walk up to the deer to within
arrow shooting distance. It works. 1 know, for I did just that.
The trick is to move only when the deer's head is down and to
freeze when she looks up every few seconds and to approach
from down wind.
That first summer we rented our pasture field for a herd of
beef cattle, thinking that this was easy money. All we had to
do was to provide fences and water. After that summer I took
a vow never to go into the beef cattle business. The rascals
had to be chased out of the neighbour's fields so often we lost
count and strained the neighbourly relations to the breaking
point.
The fact was that one of the previous owners had
constructed a fence from old cedar fence rails. It looked a bit
like a basket weave, with the rails tied together with wire, and
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