Grandpa Zielke had a Farm

Currier & Ives: The Farmer's Friends

While we know that "the farm" in Oswego wasn't Reinhold's first farm, this is the one that holds the memories for Aunt Grace. I'm certain life was pretty similar on the previous farm, although Grandpa did make sure this one had some perks, like electricity, in the farmhouse!

The farm itself was 100 acres. They had a HUGE garden that Grandma took care of as she LOVED to be outdoors. Aunt Grace remembers the typical garden produce with a LOT of asparagus, raspberries and potatoes. Grandma taught Grace and Marge to can and they were often left to it while Grandma spent time outdoors in the garden.

They kept about 12-15 dairy cows, a bull, pigs, chickens, ducks, sometimes sheep or geese and a team of horses. As we would expect, the primary goal of farm life was to feed the family and provide for their needs through the sale of the excess production.

Holstein Cattle

While the house had electricity, milking was still a job that had to be done by hand twice each day. Ray helped Grandpa with the milking most of the time while he was home, but Grace had to learn how to do it and did her fair share. She specifically remembers that Marge NEVER had to! She remembers that milking was especially hard for her because she was afraid of the livestock and Grandpa would milk 8 cows in the same amount of time she'd milk 4!

Brown Swiss Cattle

The Zielke herd was one of mixed breeds. They kept a few of the Swiss for their good butter fat, while the Holsteins provided a thinner milk for drinking. They had a bull for breeding the cattle. Fortunately, their bull wasn't a mean one, but he did have his own stanchion to keep him separated from the cows unless his "services" were needed.  I know the "citified" among us wouldn't think of this, but it is necessary for cows to calve periodically to ensure they will continue to produce milk for months into the future. Calves would be butchered for the veal, integrated into the herd or sold. Aunt Grace said they didn't frequently butcher the calves as it was harder to preserve the beef than pork from the pigs.

The primary purpose to raising pigs is to preserve the meat. No part of the pig went to waste. The lard was rendered to use in lye soap making, the intestines were cleaned to make sausage casing, blood was collected to make blood sausage and the other various parts of the pig were preserved for later consumption. In our "Staffeldt Family History," we can learn more about the preparation and preservation from Howard Dannenberg*:

 Lard (fat) was cooked slowly on the stove and then strained into crocks for storage. The bits strained out were like fried bacon and called 'crackling.' They made pork sausage and metwurst (like today's summer sausage). The pork sausage was all fried down, usually in the oven while the lard was rendering, then packed in fruit jars or crocks with the lard poured over it. There were no freezers then. 

A wash tub would be used to mix sausage The sausage was kneaded and salt and pepper  was added in the wash tub. After mixing, it was tasted. A patty was made, fried and tasted to see if there was enough seasoning. According to Howard, this was the best part of butchering, although he never got to be a "taster." The sausage was then pressed into a casing (made from the pig intestines) in a sausage press. The intestines had been washed out and scraped with a silver knife. In scraping, the inner and outer skin was scraped off and the center skin was used for the casing.

Summer sausage (metwurst) was smoked for three days in the smokehouse. They would build a fire of sawdust to just smolder and smoke; too much fire would cook the sausage. After three days, it was left to hang until used. Hams were smoked seven days or rubbed with salt and put in crocks in a brine. Pork liver was not tasty alone, so Howard's mother blanched it in boiling water until it was no longer red, then ground it to make the sausage. Then, they even used the pig head!!! Howard said he had to saw the head, cut the snout off and throw it away, and split the head down the center. The brains were removed and fried. The rest of the head was boiled to add to the liver sausage or added to the ears and feet and legs for head cheese. Pork chops were fried, packed in crocks with a lard cover and then stored in the basement/fruit cellar. When used, they were dug out and heated to remove the lard.

Before the animals could be used for food, however, they needed to ensure the livestock was taken care of so that they were beneficial to feed the family. Primary crops on the farm were corn, oats and hay. Of course in the summer months, the animals were able to graze in the pastures, but preparation had to be done in the summer/fall to be able to feed them in the winter.

Silage was a primary food for the cattle. Silage was basically fermented corn and smelled to high heaven! Corn was chopped while it was still green and then added to the silo on a silo filler. The chopped corn needed to be tramped down to pack it tight so that it would ferment. 

Antique silage chopper
May not be exactly what the Zielkes had,
but it gives you the idea.

Aunt Grace and Aunt Marge didn't have to tramp down the silage, but they did have to throw it down from the silo to be able to feed the cows. The silo was the circular structure on the north side of the barn, about six feet away. It had a cement floor and no roof.  They had to climb up the ladder on the outside of the silo to the door at the level of the silage and crawl in to break up the silage.

View of a silo showing
doors to enter various levels

Once they got in the silo, they used 5-tine silage forks to break up the silage and throw it onto the chute made of galvanized metal. The chute led to a wheelbarrow at the bottom. They had to work systematically as they broke up the silage to make sure the level of the silage stayed consistent and easy to access the next day. From the wheelbarrow, the silage was taken and dropped in the feed trough in front of the cows to eat. This task alone took about a half hour to complete.

Silage Fork

Oats were ground into a feed for the livestock as well. The oats were stored in the grainery and about once each month, a truck with a grinder would come to the farm to grind oats to make the feed. 

"Modern" Amish Hay Loader

While the picture above is a modern Amish hay loader and wouldn't be the same as what Aunt Grace remembers, it gives a pretty good idea of what was involved in the early days on the farm. She says that the hay was cut and thrown onto a wagon and then, from the wagon, a HUGE two-armed hay fork was used to lift the hay and drop it into the hay mow on the upper level of the barn. They would climb the ladder up to the hay mow and using pitchforks, throw the hay down to for the animals. She says she wasn't the most coordinated person (maybe it's in my genes) and while she was okay climbing the ladder to get into the hay mow, she had a terrible time getting back on the ladder to come down! All in a day's work on the Zielke Farmstead!

As I conclude this post, I marvel once again at how difficult life had to have been without all the equipment and technology available to us today. I know my generation has had great benefits, but I think we can all imagine what our parents/grandparents experienced and appreciate them for all they did to help make our lives easier. When next we're tempted to grumble about how hard our lives are, I hope we can stop, take a moment and be thankful we don't have to hand milk the cows, throw the stinky silage down from the silo or eat parts of a pig that I wouldn't even want to look at!

*Howard Dannenberg is the great grandson of Karl Staffeldt, brother of Wilhelm (Martha & Louisa's father)