This is part two of Donald Petty Stanley’s memoirs of growing up in Maine Prairie. The cheese factory The people from many miles around brought their milk. The milk was weighed and about three times a small sample was saved for testing for butter fat. The sample had to be kept sweet and a tablet of corrosive supplement was added to each bottle. There was a steam engine, horse-drawn, for power and a steam boiler for heat and steam to heat the milk and run the cream tester. In winter the cheese had to be turned about every other day. It was my job to put the date of manufacture. The cheese had to be made from full cream milk, therefore the whey was very rich. There were no cream separators and no way of saving it as there is today in cheese making. So we had hundreds of hogs to eat the whey. After some time the neighbors complained about the hogs that could not stand. The inspector came and said the whey contained no material that made bones. The hogs got fat but their bones couldn’t hold them up. The engine came into use to grind feed for the hogs and for the whole countryside, too. The price for grinding was by the sack and you can imagine some of the sacks. The sorghum mill The farm was about 1 1/2 miles from the store by road. After moving to the farm, my father bought a sorghum mill. He moved the steam engine to the farm from the cheese factory. This meant raising cane which was one of the hardest jobs, as to labor: planting, weeding, taking off tops and leaves, and putting the cut cane into bundles. Then was making of sorghum for ourselves and the countryside from miles away. Each party’s crop had to be piled in order as received, and the various containers for the expected sorghum were something to remember. The press squeezed the juice out and put it in a tank and measured and tested as to sweetness. It usually took till 10:30 or later to cook the day’s run. The measuring was done by weight as it would have been hard to measure the sorghum cold. The night cooking had its advantages as it took less fuel and the product was of a much lighter shade of color. Wood came from the farm for heat for the cheese factory and the stove. The plague of hog cholera was a severe blow, but [we were] lucky there were enough survived to supply breeding stock that were immune for five generations. Serum hadn’t yet been found, but it is from the blood of recovered hogs. Hunting and fishing I only remember going hunting with father once. He knew every place for hunting from former experiences. We went to a spring on the north slope of what is called Powder Ridge now, I think, and which we called Whitney Hill. The spring made a pool about 5′ x 8′ and ran back into the ground. It never froze so it was a place for animals to drink and also for other animals to prey on smaller ones. In the attic was a rope ladder with wood steps on it that father used to climb tall trees to catch coons. First he would tie a fish line to a rock and throw the rock over a high limb in the tree. Then tie on stronger cords until he would get one strong enough to pull up the ladder to climb on to see if there were any coon in the tree. Sometimes there were several together. One day my brother Ewart and I decided to go to the swamp east of home to hunt, but father told us that the snow was frozen too hard to track. But we went anyway. We got deep into the swamp where we saw some nesting that had been kicked out of a log. The tree had been broken off about 8′ above the ground and slanted down to the ground. The nesting showed up on the snow and we knew it hadn’t been out long. I climbed up and looked down this hollow log. I could see two shining eyes. I asked Ewart to hand me the old rifle. It was the one my father had used so much in his hunting, an old Winchester 44. I shot and waited for the smoke to clear away. There appeared two eyes again. I said I must have missed him. I had to wait longer the second time for the smoke to clear away. Then appeared one eye. Then I thought of the old saw [saying] that you couldn’t shoot into an empty barrel and hit the bottom. The third time it took longer to clear again. Then there were two eyes looking at me. I was beginning to wonder. I shot the fourth time and this time we could hear him kicking and threshing and he died within reach so I pulled him out. Ewart said “let’s go” but I wouldn’t go until I had seen the other end of the log. About 40′ down the log there was a big growth on the lower side. I chopped into the growth and took out three dead coon. I hadn’t missed after all. The hollowed place in the growth was only big enough for three coon. And as one was shot it would drop into the growth and another would come up. When the three dead ones dropped into the growth there wasn’t room for the last one so he kicked himself out of the log. I patched up the place where I had chopped in the growth so the log could be used by coon to winter again. We done lots of trapping of muskrats, skunk, ermine and mink. It was hard on our hands when we had put them in the water to set muskrat traps. I had fished in Pearl Lake for sun fish and in the mill pond at Fair Haven when I was waiting for feed to be ground. There were no sun fish (or goggle eyes or sun perch, as called in the South) in the lake then or bullhead (catfish), or pike. I don’t know why we didn’t plant some of our catch from Pearl Lake in the home lake. The mill pond was on the Clearwater River. Mr. Arndt put the bullheads in the lake. I don’t know who put the others in. The sunfish were planted before I left there. I remember when some folks speared fish from boats with gasoline torches and balls of rags soaked in kerosene afire for lights at night. There wasn’t much spearing through the ice on our lake because it was too deep. Father used to go to Pearl Lake and spear fish like he had as a boy. When the ice was the right thickness, about one inch thick, they would spear the fish through the ice and jerk the fish up through the ice. Pearl Lake was ideal for it was not deep in any place. Some of the local lakes without outlet or inlets froze so hard the fish died for lack of oxygen. I remember when School Section Lake lost its fish. One day a local neighbor was visiting my father and uncle and the subject of things to eat came up. He said he would not eat a blue heron any sooner than he would eat a snake. After dinner the man said, “You folks better be careful about killing deer” as it was out of season. Uncle Frank and father never had the heart to tell him that it wasn’t venison that he had eaten. I know the breast of heron is exactly like venison, but I have never tasted as meat. ************************************************************** Spring is in the air … and we look forward to celebrating it with you. Join us at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 27, in Kimball’s historic City Hall for our April Historical Society meeting featuring historian Julie Coleman Lindquist with personal family presentation, “Finding Carrie: A child of the Civil War,” not often written about. Originally from Dassel, past-president of Dassel Historical Society, current museum director for the Dassel Area Historical Society, Mrs. Lindquist’s formal education includes a B.A. in music and an M.A. in history. Gifted in communication as well, you’ll enjoy her warm, homespun style. Everyone is welcome; you need not be a member to attend. We are always grateful for stories and photos like you’re reading in this column. The book of Kimball History has begun. Watch history happen as Kimball’s first history book unfolds in the months ahead. Memberships are welcome and appreciated. Thank you for investing in Kimball’s history. For mroe information, memberships, column contributions and “the book,” please call (320) 398-5743 or 398-5250, or (800) 252-2521 from out-state. See you on April 27!
