[Granville-Hough] 5 Jan 2009 - Animal Folks

[Trustees and Executors for Granville W. Hough]

Animal Folks.

On a subsistence farm with no running water, telephone, or electricity,
you lived in a community of other animals who looked to you for their
food, water, and support. There were cows who gave you their milk,
chickens who gave you their eggs and meat, hogs who gave you their meat
and fat, cats which kept the mice down, dogs who guarded the place, and
mules who furnished their muscle to do the heavy work. Each of these
fitted into the overall scheme and must have thought of themselves as
family members with rights and privileges. The hogs and chickens we
tried to keep anonymous, but the others had names and places they
considered their own. We learned to treat each one a little differently.
This is the way farm folks lived in Southern Mississippi through WW II.

The mules of course considered themselves the elite, with rights to
harass others. If a cow had horns, mules were very careful not to get
too close to them, but they liked to push and shove dehorned cows. We
frequently had to yell at mules we saw harassing cows, and even use a
whip to stop them. After a whipping or two, a mule would jump when you
yelled. Each mule also had its own gait in plowing, and a mule with a
fast gait would tire sooner. Ada was our oldest mule and she had a fast
gait. For light work, she could do more than any other mule. She was
reddish in color and average size, I would guess 800 pounds. Pet was our
most reliable mule for most work, average gait, average size, and
gentle. However, she was not safe to take to town as she was terrified
of locomotives. Pet was gray, nearly white. Tobe was our meanest mule,
and he had been reared as a colt from a mustang mare named Maud. Tobe
learned to open doors with his nose, so we had to have latches at 45
degree angles so they would fall back in place after being lifted. Tobe
had all kinds of quirks for frustrating humans, especially small boys.
He was small and red but capable of pulling heavy loads. Blue was a
lackluster worker who tended to balk, or refuse to pull heavy loads.
However, once out of harness, he joined Tobe in play fighting and
mischief. Pat was a brown gentle mule who was given to me as my
beginning plow mule when I was 12. I got along well with Pat, but I
worked him so hard one hot August day gathering peanuts that he got sick
and either died or we traded him because he had recurring colic. I think
we traded Tobe and Pat for two small young mules we named Annie and Ida.
Dueward was to break (train) Annie and I was to break Ida. Ida and I got
along well and she became a reliable work mule. Dueward and Annie did
not agree on anything, and at the end of the year, she was as wild as
ever. The next year, I had to take her to the Richardson farm, where we
had moved, and train her there. I made a crop with her, and she learned
enough so that other people could work her. My older brother Harold
thought he had a solution to the mule problem when he found a brood
mare. We named her Dixie, but she was not smart. All she ever learned
was having colts. The first colt was Beck, a black mule I trained on the
Richardson farm. She lived most of her life there. The second colt was
Ben, who I also trained on the Richardson farm. In my six years of
plowing, I trained Ida, Annie, Beck, and Ben. I made a mistake with Beck
and made a pet of her. A mule which is a pet has no respect. They tend
to think of you as another mule with whom they can play fight, sneak up
on, or step on.
One would think that anyone can learn to train mules, but that is not
the case. Mules do not trust some people, and I do not know why. My
father Elisha and brother Dueward were neither mule people. The mules
would rear and resist putting on gear, would run or kick the traces, and
do all sorts of strange things with them. Tobe and Blue nearly killed my
father one morning when he hooked them to our wagon. They dragged him
around the lot until he passed out and let them run. I could put a
bridle on Annie, but she turned her tail to Dueward and kept turning so
he could not get to her head. So mules had these quirks, likes, and
dislikes. You could see how the mules were feeling by watching their
ears and eyes. Ada was a generally happy mule whose ears went loosely
back and forth as she plowed. Tobe’s ears were generally tightly against
his head, letting you know he was ready to take advantage of any mistake
you made. Sometimes mules would “run away,” suddenly rearing and kicking
and running as far as they could, generally back to their stable or
toward their pasture. After such an episode, they would be mad all day,
with their ears back and glaring at one and all. It was important to get
them back to work immediately, so they would see no reward for “running
away.” In caring for our mules, each day we had to curry them, removing
the sand from their backs from their wallowing. Monthly we gave them a
haircut, really a mane trim, and trimmed their nails, or hooves. We did
not shoe our mules, as that was necessary only if a mule spent a lot of
time on gravel or hard-surface roads. The mules apparently had some
vague understanding about a hoof trim. Even wild mules would tolerate
it. I was never kicked by a mule, but I have been kicked-at a number of
times. The mule may have been just giving a warning to be careful with
those hind feet.

The milk cows were not dairy type cows. They knew nothing about feed
lots, stanchions, etc. They did understand their rights to see their
calves, morning and night, and gave milk for the convenience of their
calves, not particularly for us humans. Our main stock was Jersey or
Guernsey, but that had been bred to “range cows” from the open range
days dating back to the Spanish cattle released into the Piney Woods.
The range cow blood seemed to give a better ability to forage in the
woods. But it did not make for quiet milking time. These cows would kick
you without hesitation if they did not like your milking technique. We
put chains on their back legs during milking. In my earliest memory, our
cows were not dehorned. Those with range cow blood had big horns, and
those with Jersey and Guernsey blood had more modest horns. One of our
horned cows was Lillie, and she lorded over all the others. However, we
dehorned all our cows about 1930, and Lillie became just one of the
girls. Sometimes she would forget she had no horns and give someone a
good butting. However, Lillie had to give way to Big Cow, who may have
had some Holstein blood, certainly some sort of larger strain of cattle.
She was big and heavy and took no guff from other cows. Big Cow had a
gentle disposition and looked forward to being relieved of her load of
milk, but Lillie resented giving one drop.

A cow I reared from birth was Spot, a small cow who was a good milker.
She was mostly Guernsey. We sold her to the Royals (or Rawls) family. I
was only an emergency milker. Cows were particular about the person who
milked them, and preferred someone whose technique just fitted their
teats. They did not like my technique, and would not release their milk.
So others typically did the milking while I geared up the mules, I being
a mule person. Of course, every new calf was a delight to us children as
well as to the mother cow, and we made the mistake of naming each calf
and making pets of them. This gave us grief when we had to thin out the
herd and harvest the young steers for meat. The care we had to give our
cows included dehorning and castrating. We learned to dehorn with a
caustic chemical stick when the calf was a few days old. We also did the
castrating while the calf was young. When a cow got sick, we took her to
the veterinarian at Weathersby. He was an excellent black doctor, a
graduate of the University of Iowa at Ames.

We had a stream of housecats who kept down the mice and at least
restrained the rats. They all had fanciful names and belonged to one
child or another, but all looked to my mother as their guardian angel
and source of food. They never lived in the house but took up residence
in the chicken house or barn or under our own dwelling house. At supper
time, they waited patiently outside the kitchen door for their bowl of
milk and left-overs. In the country, cats would be wiped out every few
years by some disease, either of domestic cats or from wild animals.
Then we would start over with new kittens.

We did have guard dogs from time to time. Our dogs came to grief. One
favorite was Sharp who was with us most of his life. My father had
purchased him from Mr. Jim Meadows, a neighbor, and he was my pal at the
time Clifford was born, and I was 2 and ½ years old. A few weeks before
Clifford was born in August, my father and older brothers had caught up
with the farm work and had gone fishing on Cohay Creek, several miles to
the north. Sharp and I resented being left behind and decided we would
go fishing as well. I can only remember one incident from the trip. We
came to a fence ¼ mile from home, and we looked for a place to get
through. Sharp found a place he could slip under the fence to the other
side. Then I followed. After that, we must have gone about another ¼
mile where we spent the night in a brier patch. The next day a
neighboring negro family heard a child crying and came looking because
they had heard there was a lost Hough boy.

Sharp would allow no one anywhere near, when the negro man recalled that
Sharp had formerly been Mr. Meadows’ dog. They went and got Mr. Meadows,
who got Sharp calmed down and was able to rescue me from the brier
patch. Of course, I was all messed up, so Mr. Meadows took off his
shirt, wrapped me in it and took me home. Later, I remember that Sharp,
a Collie, got psychotic and began attacking the mules in their stables.
I can well remember the last trip with Sharp down into the Hollow, where
my father shot him, and my brothers buried him there. I could go to the
place today.

Our next guard dog was Bob, who was a mixed breed, with something like
Doberman blood. I do not recall how Bob joined us. Bob tolerated
children, but he did not view them as his responsibility. He liked
adults and adolescents who could take him hunting. He learned neighbors
had goats, and he had so much wild dog instinct that he began to stalk
the goats. Then he began to attack and kill them.
My father had had his own troubles with neighbors over their
sheep-killing dogs, and he did not want to be accused of harboring a
goat-killing dog. He and my brothers took Bob to the far end of Smith
County, some thirty miles by road, and gave him to a family seeking a
guard dog. About a month later, my brother Dueward was walking down the
road on a moon-lit night when he saw a shadowy-creature in a nearby
fence row. He was sure it was Bob. He came home, set out some food, and
called Bob. Nothing happened. The next morning the food was gone. This
continued a few days, and eventually Bob would come when someone called.
In effect, he had to be re-domesticated. We were not allowed to play
with him again. My father had told our neighbor with the goats, Mr.
Tommie Amason, to kill Bob if he ever touched another goat. One day, Bob
disappeared and we never again saw or heard of him. We believed our
neighbor had shot him.

Our next dog was a puppy named Fannie brought to us by Aunt Donie
Garvan. I do not recall where she got the dog, but it was something she
had picked up from someone she had visited in Smith County. We had
Fannie about a year. We children did not know how to train her. She
caused a number of near accidents. Some time after my father died, I had
our mule Pet hooked up to do some plowing when Fannie attacked and
frightened her. This was dangerous business, as Pet “ran away,” but as
we were just going through the barnyard gate, Pet soon turned around and
ran back into the barnyard. However, Clifford, Donald, and Roland had to
run to get out of Pet’s way. I grabbed an axe and killed Fannie on the
spot. Then I took her down into the field and buried her. So that was
our last dog. Then, after we moved over to Grandpa Richardson’s, he had
terriers for digging out rats. These had special house privileges and
could come in at will and sleep under Grandpa’s rocking chair.

Now, the animal folks were also residents of our farm, and depended on
us running the farm in such a way that they got their fair share. More
than half our land was in corn and hay, mostly for them, though we
shared in eating the corn. We also grew peas and beans and harvested the
vines for our livestock. Half the total quarter section of land we had
was in woods and pasture, shared by the livestock. All the grazing
animals wanted salt, which is the main thing we bought for them in town.
It was like a candy treat to them.

One has to remember that when you run a subsistence farm with animals
furnishing the power, it is not just humans you have to worry about, but
a whole community of interdependent animal folks. It is a far cry from
the commercial farms of California, with their single crops, corporate
ownership, outside power sources, and transient labor.

Recorded by Granville Hough, 14 July 2005, formerly President,
Mississippi Future Farmers of America, 1942-43.

Category: Farm stories.