It's been a really nice day today - temperature has been in high 20's and we even had a little sunshine just before sundown. Tonight is a moderate 20 degrees and I think it's clear, but I haven't checked. I can see the lights across the pond very clearly, so I'm sure it isn't snowing.

I woke up this morning with curry combs on my mind. I don't know where that came from, but I tried to remember if we used the same kind of comb on the cows as we did the horses. I used to get to curry comb the horses - big muscular draft horses that would lean into the comb and nearly crush us against the wooden stalls. I seem to remember that my grandfather used a similar comb to clean off the cows, too. The cows were much cleaner than lots of them are today. They were on a raised platform with sawdust bedding and there was a gutter behind them that caught most of the manure, but sometimes a tail would get messed up and - well, not a pretty sight if she switched her tail and swiped whoever was milking her. The stable was kept relatively clean - there always seemed to be a hoe handy by the scuttle.

My Grandfather Bolton was a whistler. He would come into the stable whistling softly and one by one the cows would turn and look at him and sometimes moo as he passed by. We could tell they knew him and trusted him. He kept records on all his cows. They were big Holsteins with distinct black and white markings that he carefully recorded on special record sheets with cow outlines he filled in the distinguishing markings on and wrote in production records and history for each cow. They each had a registration number and a silver metal tag on one ear with their number on it. I suppose that's all done on computers now. My grandfather liked the big Holsteins even though their milk didn't have as much butter fat content. They produced more quantity and that seemed to be his goal.

The big barn was efficient in it's own way. The cows were on the main floor of the barn, and scuttles behind the cows opened to let the manure drop into the pit below which was accessed in the spring. The manure had to be shoveled into the spreader so it could be spread on the fields. It was easier when we got a Farmall tractor with a bucket loader, but still a dirty job nobody enjoyed. Above the stable was the hay loft, and there were handy scuttle holes so we could throw hay down for the cattle. It was designed so the hay fell in the passageway that ran between two rows of stanchions - milking cows on one side, young cattle on the opposite.
There was a wooden cart on iron wheels that would hold a bag or maybe more of grain, and that was wheeled along the passageway and each cow or heifer got a measured portion of grain, mixed according to whatever formula my grandfather thought they needed, depending, I guess, on the time of year and their size or need. There were water basins between every two cows.

This is the farm as it used to be - the smaller barn was for the horses and there was space for a wagon, buggy and sleigh, plus hay storage above the stalls. I think there were four or five stalls. Those barns are gone now. The big barn burned in the summer of 1969, and the horse barn was taken down. The house remains, and there are more modern barns with twin silos there now - but except for an occasional renter, it's been mostly vacant for the last eight or ten years since the Sousa family left. Times change.

I took a picture of our Woody, getting his morning drink in the bathtub. Water tastes much better there than from his dish in the kitchen, but he has a strange way of drinking. Take a look: Woody Fred brushes him every morning, literally from head to the tip of his tail, and Woody relishes the attention.