When I was young in the early 1960’s, we lived in Bellevue, Nebraska. However, every summer we would spend a week on my Grandpa Olson’s farm in rural Freeborn County, MN. It was a typical farm for that period of time. It had a dairy barn with stanchions, a hayloft, and an attached stave silo. There was a separate pig house and a chicken house too. I remember my grandma’s pink kitchen and having oatmeal with brown sugar in small glass bowls for breakfast. After breakfast, I helped my grandma gather eggs in the chicken house which had quite a powerful smell!
It was a wonderful place to spend a week because my uncle, aunt and cousins my age lived on the same farm site. My sister and I would spend hours with our cousins playing house on the rock pile, looking for kittens in the hayloft, following my uncle out to the pasture to call the cows into the barn, and watch the cows being milked. I was amazed that each of the cows knew which stanchion was hers.
It was especially exciting to watch hay being hoisted up into the hayloft or chickens being butchered. I learned what it meant to say “running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”
The farm was situated on a quiet gravel road that was perfect for a leisurely stroll in the early morning. The tall, dew laden grass along the roadside shone brightly while the gravel crunched beneath my feet.
My Grandpa Olson’s farm in Hayward Township in Freeborn County.
Glenville, MN
