Lighthouse Reflected XLVII

The following essay serves as the fourth chapter of One Grew Up in the Cuckoo’s Nest.

A morning in my life as a farm hand working at the Medfield State Hospital.

Cows Crooning to Donovan!

Recollected and Written

by

Mark R Ellsworth

I was sixteen years of age when the Head Farmer of Medfield State Hospital gave me my first paying job. By Head Farmer, I mean my father. By paying job, I mean a job that actually paid me with a check and stub that displayed taxes and other deductions each pay period. Sure I had been paid by neighbors in Danvers to pull dandelions, weeds and all, when I was eight. Other summers I worked for my aunt who owned a nursing home in Washington Massachusetts. She taught me how to fold and deliver laundry. I was paid real money, $5.00 a month during the summer until I was fifteen. (An aside here, today the silver quarter is worth $5.00 and more, real money indeed. Also throughout my adult life I hated pulling out dandelions by the roots, much to the chagrin of neighbors! )

State hospitals were modeled to be self sufficient. A large working farm located on the state property was a logical extension of that model. Medfield had a dairy barn that housed approximately 120 Holsteins. Of course there were pens with the occasional bull and his offspring, calves and heifers. Medfield’s farm also housed , if I remember correctly, a thousand chickens along with hundreds of acres of hay and cow corn along with tanks of molasses used to mix with the corn. Once mixed with the chopped corn it became food for the cows. Silage, as it was called, was stored for winter feed in three or four large silos. The farm also produced vegetables to feed the patients and staff of the hospital. Danvers State Hospital had a similarly sized dairy and vegetable farm except pigs were the feature instead of chickens. The shear size of these farms produced different jobs for farmhands. Dad tried to teach me how to gap plugs, tune and change the oil in his old Maverick however he must have noticed my disinterested apathy. He wisely offered me a part time weekend job feeding, cleaning and milking the cows. No tractors for me!

Our house at Medfield was located about a fifteen minute walk to the dairy barn. Working only weekends because of my school year, my shift started at 3:30 am and ended at noon. At the start of my shift an other farm hand and I would muck out the barn and give grain and hay to the cows. No, wait a minute that is not quite true!

Now I remember. Before mucking out the dairy parlor, we always turned on the radio. It crooned a great soothing melody of music the cows and I loved. Those milking mornings Petula Clark’s Downtown and Donovan’s Mellow Yellow were hits routinely playing on the AM radio. After that radio woke up the cows were fed. Cuds filled, they chewed on with the smooth sound of Donovan in their ears while their tails swished seemingly in time to his song.

The predawn milking routine was always conducted in a warmth generated by these one hundred plus peaceful souls. It could be snowing out and frigid cold yet that milking parlor would be comfortably warm. After the morning milking chores were finished, the cows were herded to the many pastures positioned around the barn. During winter days that barn was empty and cold. However those same cold snowy days and nights when the falling snow was so thick the flakes made whispering sounds pushing each other aside as they raced to the ground, even then, the full dairy parlor of milk-laden cows was like a cozy steam bath. Each cow’s breath a vapor trail collectively building a London-like foggy day. Of course I would be bundled in long-johns and layers of outer wear that I could discard as the bovine heaters performed their magic.

Picture, if you will, a long barn containing two rows of cows facing each other separated by a walk way approximately fifteen feet wide. On each side of the walkway there were two long rows of metal stanchions anchored in concrete at the head of the cow. Behind each row of cows was a trough. Its job was to catch the inevitable plop of manure. Automatic metal water bowls were attached to one side of the head. These bowls would fill with water activated by the touch of their soft cow nose as they drank. Just in front of their stanchion was a somewhat larger trough and a hanging bucket that afforded the cows grain and hay. Breakfast served to Donovan’s Mellow Yellow. That metal stanchion, though closed around her neck during the milking process, still allowed the cow the flexibility to turn her head. Once done with the process of discharging her milk she could also lie down if she wished. If she did recline she would find a bed of wood shavings underneath her. It was our job as a farm hand to make sure her bed of shavings was changed and made before she entered the barn or after she left for the day to go out to pasture. These beds of chips always added a clean smell of cedar to the air.

Behind the manure trough was another six foot wide space that traversed the length of the dairy barn, the floor was concrete too. The ceiling behind the cows was seven feet high. The middle walkway’s ceiling was double in height, approximately fifteen feet. Behind the cows located on the ceiling of the walk way was a suspended two inch wide metal rail. It reminded me of one rail of a trolley track except it hung like a monorail. That rail supported a hanging metal drum like bucket, (cut in half), with chains running up to the rail. The chains were attached to small metal brackets and metal wheels. The frame of the drum had a side mounted lever that allowed the drum to spin on its axis and dump its manure into a parked manure spreader. Two trolley cans, one behind each row of cows, traveled to two spreaders parked outside the end of the milking parlor in ten foot pits. This long barn had white washed walls. We were white washing these walls often. Tom Sawyer is my simpatico brother sharing my disdain for that chore.

At the head of each stanchion a connection to the clear plastic-like tubing was located. One connection enabled the four rubber lined metal cups to complete a pulsating vacuum seal on each of the teats located under the cow’s udder. My task was to sanitize/clean the connected cups activate the lever that allowed the vacuum cups to stay connected to the underbelly of the cow. As the milk was let down by the pulsating rhythm it began a journey up to the clear tubing. The milk traveled down the length of the barn around and back over the cows on the other side. The pulsating milk was always visible as it moved around the large loop into and through another attached three story high hay barn. The milk continued via the clear pipe into a smaller concrete building where it was deposited into a large stainless steel vat. The parlor was walled in tiles. The walls around the vat supported stainless steel ladders, wall mounted gauges and temperature graphs used to monitor and record the pasteurizing process of the delivered milk. If I remember correctly the vat had a skimmer bar that was part of the process. I believe heat and cold was somehow automatically timed to expedite a successful out come. As a part time farm hand most of my day was spent working close to the cows and not in the dairy parlor. I spent more time in the parlor as a pr-teen racing my brother as we followed the milk’s push from the head of a cow around and through the barns before spilling into this vat. The milk was fast, my brother was faster, and I undoubtedly was last! Now a grownup, sixteen you know, pulling a paycheck and somewhat professional I am back at the job at hand.

At the stall I used a one legged stool attached to my butt by an old cracked leather belt. I looked like a well padded upside down unicorn. In my hands I held the aforementioned four rubber metal tubes with rubber hoses connected to the plastic tube. One hose facilitated the vacuum rhythm, the other hose carried the milk given up by the cow. One spigot with connections could connect eight pulsating tubes to two cows at a time.

The radio music, the rhythmic pulse of air, the swoosh of the traveling milk and the swish of the tail accompanied all of us; the cows, my farmhand partner, a three-legged cat with a milk problem and sleeping pigeons who love disabled cats! For two or so hours this song and dance continued until, after starting at opposite ends of the rows of cattle, we farmhands met in the middle. With our milking chores finished and the cows fed and led back out to pasture, we finished our chores and put the mucking tools back in their place. Walking through the fields back home after a morning shift with the cows is a satisfying memory I conjure up often over time. My father passed away too early for me to thank him for the opportunity he gave me to work with his cows so long ago. I do suspect he had a clue that I found some peace of mind, a rare gift for a gangling teenager who knew only the scourge of impatience with too busy of a mind.

His spoken words, job well done, enabled me to reach into adulthood with his seeds of warmth and compassion.

Thank you Dad!

The fifth chapter in this series of essays is titled The Ice Rink and The Hill.

And thank you for reading.

Be in peace and joy!

Mark