Chickens, horses, pigs and cows

Nils-Erik Carlsson, Mom's cousin, with
an Ardennes foal

You maybe have wondered what we made a profit from in a little farm like our's. There were a lot of things to sell. Milk was a steady income and we didn’t keep all the calves that were born either. It was the same thing when the brood mare had foals; most of them were sold. Some sheep were sold, too. Mama usually let the chickens sit on a batch of eggs in the spring and they might have a dozen chicks each. Mama kept most of the young hens to replace the oldest hens in the flock but all the little roosters were allowed to grow up a bit and then they were sold. They were sold to people in town. In those days, women would buy a chicken like that and kill it and pluck the feathers themselves. I’d like to see a townswoman doing that today.

Then one day Mama decided that she wanted to have a sow. She thought if we had a sow we could sell the piglets. Well, it’s a lot of work with any animal and Dad just did not like to fool with pigs. Finally he agreed that Mama could have a sow but he would not help with it in any way, and he kept his word! When it came time for the piglets to be born, Mama and I were up there. Papa wouldn’t set foot in the barn. He didn’t show up at all. We had Lång Anders for a hired man at that point and he felt so sorry for us that he was going to come and help. Funny thing was that the sow would not let him in the pen. She charged him everytime he tried to get in. So there was Mama and I. It took almost all night to help her have 13 piglets and get them cleaned off. Then when finally all was over, the piglets had to start nursing, and we had to help them. We had to watch pretty closely for a few days too because problems can come up. Animals can be a lot like people; having babies is supposed to be a natural thing but it doesn’t always happen without problems. So someone had to stay out there most of the time and keep an eye on the sow and her little ones for a while. It was quite a lot of work. After that, I never heard Mama want to have another bunch of piglets. We kept a few of the piglets but the rest and the sow were sold.

Kids and cows!
Mom is in the middle here, Margaretha is off
to the right and Lennart stands on the far left.
I'm not sure who the other kids are.

There was another time when a cow was due to have a calf and Papa had to go to a meeting. Brita and I were home. Well, the cow had her calf and they didn’t want the mother and the calf to bond so they took the calf away right away. Brita said, “I won’t touch that slimy thing!” So I had to clean the calf off and rub it real good. Then I found a burlap sack and rolled the calf onto it. Then I got Brita to take two corners of the sack and I took the other two and we got the calf in it’s box.

While we are in the cow business, there was another time when I was home helping Lennart get started farming and there was a cow who was pretty far along. I asked Lennart, “When is she going to have her calf?” Being funny, Lennart said, “She hasn’t told me.” I said it looked like she was ready and he made out some other joke. Lennart was working in the forest at this time so he went off and I thought I'd better check on that cow. I went up to the barn several times that day. Later in the afternoon, when I was going up to the barn, I heard all the cows bawling and bawling. It was such a racket in the barn that I thought some of them must have gotten loose. Instead, there was that cow trying to have her calf and she had worked so hard already that she was worn out. I could see the calves feet were already sticking out, and I was afraid it would suffocate in the birth canal, so I went into Torsten Davidson and asked him to please come and tell me what to do. He said, "I think we can pull it out, you and I." He put some strips of cloth around the feet and he and I pulled for all we were worth. We did manage to get the calf out and just as we stood there looking at it, Lennart came home and was so surprised. You can imagine how big his eyes were.

Left to right -- Grålla, Ragnar, Bläsen, Farfar Johan August, Gurli, Henrik, Flora, Papa Thor,
Ajax, Margaretha, Gun, Lennart and Mama Elin. It says something about the importance of
the horses in their life on the farm, that Mom wrote the horses' names on the back of the
picture with the names of the people. She knew and remembered all their names even though she was clearly not very old. Mom also used to shake her head when she looked at her own expression in this picture -- Ha! She didn't like the photographer and she wasn't going to play along but she admired how Margaretha stood with her hands clasped like a good little girl :D