Before the “New” barn was built in 1979, chores were done in the old barn built in the 1950’s which was connected to the original haybarn.

The cows went out most days, and it was pretty easy as all they had to was cross the street and go into the pasture. We could put up fence across the road when it was time to put them out or bring them back in, and we even had cones we put in the road in case someone happened to drive down the road.

The barn was too small to run the tractor in, so to clean it out, we had a gutter cleaner which moved the manure around behind the cows and outside, usually into the spreader parked underneath. It some ways this was much more efficient than how it was done later on.

The cows would be brought inside, put into their stalls, heads put into hanging stanchions, and fed. The beds would be scraped down, and the manure from any calves tied in the middle would be put into the gutter. The gutter cleaner would run, we’d have to monitor the corners to make sure manure wasn’t getting lost over the side, and if so, push it back into the gutter for the next paddle to push along.

When the cleaner had finished, Dad would bring a bucket load of sawdust and dump it at the end of the barn, and we’d spread it around under the cows and in the middle where the calves were tied.