In 1933, Mother and Dad went to the Chicago World’s Fair for a few days. It was the first time they left Carolyn alone with Grandmother and Granddaddy Brown at the farm. A visit to the farm happened every summer, for two weeks or more. Granddaddy owned several hundred acres of land and two barns. The first barn contained the pig pens and was where they slaughtered pigs each year. There were many acres of tobacco and corn were grown. The tobacco was stripped in the barn and hung from the rafters to cure. The second barn was a bit more appealing as it held one tractor and all of its attachments, Cows and horses. . Granddaddy owned around eight cows and every morning and evening he milked them. He brought the cows into the stalls which smelled of fresh hay and tied them up to be milked. Granddaddy grabbed the milk stools and taught Carolyn from a her young age how to milk a cow. By the time Carolyn was about six or seven years old, she could milk a cow on her own. Prior to those years, her hands were too small and too weak. One thing Carolyn loved most about milking was being able to drink warm fresh milk straight from the cow’s utter. To this day, she cannot drink plain white milk because it pales in comparison to the delicious unpasteurized goodness of the warm creamy milk from the utter.
In the stables, the drinking troughs were eight by three feet; the horses and cows shared them. When Carolyn grew up, the hen house was the original farm house. Carolyn often went in to collect what now would be considered free range eggs. For their chicken dinners, Grandmother went down to the hen house and chose a chicken. On the back walkway of the house, she twisted off its head allowing it to flop around on the sidewalk. When the chicken stopped moving, she put it in scalding hot water, plucked the feathers, and brought it inside to cook, a process Carolyn would not soon forget.
In the Spring of 1939, Carolyn was nine years old. She, her cousin Freddy, who was a year younger, and cousin Ronnie who lived on the farm next door was seven. As the cherries became ripe they spent their days climbing cherry trees and picking cherries. Meanwhile, Carolyn’s mother Ruth, Aunt Gladys and Aunt Evelyn, and Grandmother Brown worked in the kitchen making Cherry pies. Grandmother Brown used a huge old wood burning stove for all her cooking. Underneath the window, at 90 degrees to the stove sat a solid chest with thick oak boards was filled with firewood. The oak chest was made from an oak tree felled on the farm.
The cousins picked cherries although the picking was not fun, picking the cherries. By the time they were finished picking cherries, the first pies were done. Carolyn, Freddy, and Ronnie sat on the back-porch steps and ate fresh cherry pies with the fruits of their labor.
