Farming is hard work. My grandparents started working the fields with teams of horses. In the 1930s when they bought their 80 acre farm, they kept the horses in the big barn. The barn was two-stories. It had a place to store the hay in the upper level. All the harnesses and horse collars were hung on nails on the walls so they would be ready to harness up the animals for a days work. The horses could be let out in a fenced in carrel through the side doors of the barn.
My brother said that Frank O. Swanson, my great grandfather was a really tall big man. The horses were draft work horses and when Frank would sit on the horse his legs extended well down the side of the animal. There is an interesting enlargement of a photo of my dad, Harold as a young child about two in his grandfather Frank’s arms went Frank was sitting on one of these giant horses. I think I have the black and white negative of this photo. Jim, my sister Nancy’s oldest son has the actual photo.
Big horses lots of work. My dad, Harold and his brother, Clarence (called Swede) grew up working the fields with the horses until tractors came along. When they could afford tractors, they switched over from horses to plows, harrows and other machinery pulled by tractors.
Early on we may have farmed the fields at Tipton’s with horses, but mostly I remember Case tractors. My dad was loyal to the Case brand of farm equipment with its bright red-orange paint. Other farmers preferred the green of John Deere or grey of the International Harvester. It was Case for the Swansons. We did have one small grey Ford tractor that was use for smaller farm projects.
We lived in the three bedroom two-story house at Tipton’s. The steep stairs spilled out into kind of a big hall that was my brother’s bedroom. You had to go through that room to my parents bedroom. My twin bed was in my parent’s also. Walk around the corner and there was my sister Nancy’s room. She actually had her own staircase, but it seems this was not used very much. Not much privacy with the family walking between bedrooms to get to their room. Different from the way houses are set up today with hallways and doors to each bedroom. We had another bedroom on the main floor by the stair case that was our guest bedroom fully decked out with a double bed, white Martha Washington nubby bedspread and dresser. I don’t remember anyone ever being our guests, at least not often.
We had one bathroom off the guest room that had a big old tub with the claw feet, toilet, sink and some cupboards along one wall. It seems there was also a closet there too. I think the closet was in the bathroom. I was too little to know when the bathroom and running water were installed in the house. It must have been in the 1940’s as there was still a usable outdoor john next to the ash pit outside about 20 feet from the back door. The ash pit was where we burned the trash. It was made of large colored brick and was about ten foot square. It had a two foot square hole in the top where you dump the trash. I think there was an other fifty-five gallon barrel that we throw the cans. Recycling before its time.
There was a large tin shed with big sliding doors used to store machinery at the east end of the yard between the potato cellar and the back yard of the house. There was another brick shed used to store machinry in that same area that probably was used for animals at some time before we moved there as there was no door just the brick walls and overhead roof. It was pretty big, maybe about three double garages wide.
Other machinery was lined up at the edges of the buildings until they were needed for farm operations. It took a lot of different types of machinry to grow all the different types of crops. My dad grew everything; sugar beets, potatoes, alfalfa, onions, sometimes barley or wheat, corn of course and pinto beans. He wasn’t much for vegetable crops like carrots or cucumbers. The soil might have been too rocky or this type of crop didn’t really appeal to him. Now farmers specialize to one to two crops to maximize their return and keep their equipment purchases to a minium.
To work the farm in the summer, Dad would hired migrant workers from Texas or Mexico. They mostly spoke Spanish only and Dad learned enough Spanish to communicate with the Mexicans as we called them. They stayed in a migrant house that was next to the tin shed. It was two rooms with an outside pit toilet. I think he piped in some running water some how. This was low tech and an upgrade from what the migrants had before they came to Colorado to work. The laws and requirements for housing are much different today along with status of migrants being legal aliens or illegal. In the 1940’s – 1950’s this wasn’t an issue. These were just people who needed a job and my Dad had one for them.
Many people lived in this Mexican house, as we called it. It took a lot of people to walk up and down the rows of crops thinning the sugar beets or weeding the fields. Today much of this work in accomplished by machinery or chemicals that treat the soil and seed to better manage the weeds. It was what it was at that time.
We were told to not talk or play with the Mexicans. They were always a raft of children that came with the adult families living in this house. They were told to stay in their yard by the tin shed and we were told to stay in our yard between the chicken coop and barn to the house.
Being the inquisitive kid that I was, I ventured back to the brick shed to play or chat with several of the Mexican kids. I was about five or six at the time. I sat down on the edge of a harrow or some type of equipment that had long metal fingers and was about butt high for a kid to sit. It was stored by the brick building. This was close to the barn so it was almost in our yard, not the Mexicans. The machinery was propped up with a pretty thick wooden stick so it would be ready to load onto the tractor.
As I set there swinging my little legs back and forth waving and chatting with the Mexican kids, the stick wiggled with me. Boom! The stick gave way and the machinery fell on the calf of my left leg. The little Mexican kids ran to the milk barn to get my Dad and brother who were milking the cows at the time. Quickly they lifted that machinery like it was light as a feather and pulled my out from under the machinery. Dad carried me over to the car to check out my leg. I’m sure there was a panic from my mom as she scurried out of the kitchen to see what had happened. I vaguely remember either being scolded for talking with the Mexican kids or expecting the scolding. I don’t remember if it was that night that we went to the doctor or the next day. I’m sure the milking chores still needed to be finished. I remember the doctor saying that the fatty cells were smashed and there would be an indention in my calf. There still is a slight one. As I wasn’t trying out for any beauty contests, it didn’t matter.