Firsts

Nicky

Our new experience farming was the beginning of a lot of firsts. It was the first rime we ever owned farm animals like pigs and goats. Each of us had preconceived ideas of what these animals were like, usually from little things we had heard or read, and usually wrong. For instance, doesn't everyone know that pigs are, well just that, pigs! They are a mess; everybody knows that. They live in dirty pens, eat rotten food, and wallow in the mud just to be filthy, right? Wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth. Pigs happen to be incredibly clean and smart animals. What I noticed first was their insatiable need to be recognized and given attention. Our first pig was Petunia. We bought her while she was still young and brought her to the farm in the moving truck we borrowed from ... She was young but pretty good size sow already. She would oink and grunt as though you understood every word she was trying to say you. We would scratch her side, and she would roll over on her back so you could scratch her tummy. She was playful and kind, and she kept an immaculate home: orderly, clean, and organized. Goats were new for us, too. We learned how to milk them by following instruction in a book. Nicky, an French Alpine goat and veteran milker, was our first experiment.

Luckily, she already knew the routine and was patient while we learned the process: wash the udder, pinch and squeeze from the top to the bottom until the foamy white milk sprayed into the gleaming steel bucket until eventually no more would come. We milked twice a day, morning and evening, and she produced about 1-2 quarts of creamy white milk each milking.

Marmee

Marmee a Sanaan goat was younger and we purchased her for forthcoming breeding and milking. Both were great goats and beloved. We kept them for years and loved having them around the farm. The milk was good, too, and healthy. We learned that we had to be careful about what the goats ate or various flavors would start appearing in the milk. Starting with goats was perfect, because they were easier to manage and milk. They added a premium dimension to our farm. Kimberly and Robyn were their caretakers early on. But I suppose we all got our chance at milking. It quickly lost it's novelty late at night when you were just getting home and it was dark and the goats still needed to be milked. Later we purchased a Jersey cow. Her name was Janey. Grandpa loved her and milked her on pretty much the same schedule everyday. We made butter, cheese, sour cream, and buttermilk from Janey's creamy jersey milk...it was a staple in our home and a blessing to all of us. Jersey milk is notoriously creamy and rich. Janey's was among the best. We helped out Grandpa occasionally, but he pretty much did all the milking of Janey. I think he loved it. He got a chance to rest and think, and he often talked non-stop to calm and befriend her. She loved Grandpa as much as was a good-natured cow for the most part.

Janey

I could tell many stories about Janey, and I will. But the one typical instance comes to mind. Linda and I had just purchased our first VHS tape recorder. We went down to the farm and began recording history, or so we thought. One particular evening, Grandpa was on his way to milk Janey, and that was the perfect chance to record an epic event repeated daily in the history of the farm. He stopped and filled his box with grain. Then with stainless steel milking buckets under one arm and a bucket with warm water for washing, he somehow balanced it all as he walked across the field to the milking barn. Janey knew the ritual well and came trotting over for the grain. While the recorder captured history, Grandpa spoke gently to Janey while scratching her back and said, "Now you're such a good girl. You have been waiting patiently.  Now we are going to milk you so you can rest." He situated the milking stool and gently washed and damp dried Janey's udder. Then he placed the gleaming silver bucket under her belly to begin the milking. The first two streams of milk were shot into the grass, then he aimed directly in the bucket. As the streams hit the bottom of the bucket, the metal vibrated and the milk splashed to the sides of the bucket. When the bucket began to fill and the foamy warm milk, I prodded Grandpa to tell us a story while he milked that we would capture for posterity. He began telling us missionary stories and spoke softly to Janey all the while, occasionally looking up to the camera to stress a point here and there. It couldn't have been more than thirty minutes, and it was finished almost as quickly as it had begun.

Camilla and Steven were just little children at the time, and this tape became their favorite to watch. They watch it more than any other, and each time was a treasured memory of the farm and Grandpa and Granny. Unfortunately, video tapes were not that resilient back then and before long the sound began fading, until it was completely gone. And later the tape video began to show problems, but the memory of that day capturing a routine activity repeated hundreds of times over the years, will forever linger in our memories...the day we recorded Grandpa with his beloved Janey during milking time.

Heavenly

We moved to Castle Valley in June 1976. Rather than hiring a moving company to pack and transport all the belongings we owned, our move to Castle Valley was accomplished by taking truckloads of our stuff to our new home. Since we didn't have a place built yet to put our things on the farm, we stored the majority of our what we owned in a warehouse down in Moab. One of the most memorable trips was when we loaded our old Chevrolet pickup and a large moving truck loaned to us from the Harmons with our belongings and other preparations for the farm, leaving enough room in the back of the moving truck for a few of us kids and the animals we purchased and planned to pick up on our way down to the valley. Since all the family would not fit in the front of the trucks, the younger children crawled into the back of the moving truck and found places to relax during the trip. We stopped along the way at various farms to get Marmi (a Sanaan goat), Nicky (a French Alpine goat), Petunia our pig, and a crate of chickens. The journey progressed fine until just outside Green River, Utah. The old pickup truck had engine trouble and refused to go any further. Stranded on the side of the road, we arranged to have the truck towed to a garage inside Green River. The mechanic examined the engine and explained that it had "thrown a rod." Like I really knew what that meant at the time. As a result, we needed to stay the night in a motel and pull the pickup behind the moving truck the next day to reach our destination. After arriving late in the day, we parked the truck toward the rear of the property and used it as a shelter initially. We erected tents around a fire pit, and our new home looked vaguely like a pioneer wagon train. We gratefully slept under the stars at night--a literal milky way of galaxies. The starry night sky was remarkable. With no city lights of any consequence, the Milky Way displayed across the entire sky--billions of stars. We spent many nights studying and marveling at the countless stars and awe-inspiring heavenly bodies. That's how it all started for us in the beginning, but the miracles continued throughout the years while we were there.