Job As a Ten Year Old on Rawl's Farm

I had a blast feeding Rawl's calves night after night.  I couldn't believe how lucky I was to have Rawl let me feed his calves.  I enjoyed working with the animals.  I enjoyed taking responsbility for the animals.  Rawl helped correct my feeding of hay and grain to make sure I was not feeding too much or too little.

At the end of a week's feeding of the calves, Rawl came into the calf barn, where I was feeding the calves.  He asked how I liked feed the calves.  He asked if I would be interested in continuing to do it.  He told me that he was busy with his other farming activities, and wondered if I would be willing to continue feeding the calves in the afternoon and morning for the foreseeable future.  I was delighted that he would be willing to let me continue to feed the calves.  The next question was stunning to me.  He asked me if I would work for him.  He told me he was willing to pay me $40 a month to come feed the calves in the afternoon and mornings.  Wow!  I could not believe my luck.  I was head over heels.  Not only would I get to feed the calves, but I would get paid for it as well.

At age 10, I had never had a job before.  I had mowed my parents' lawn for 25 cents, but I had never really earned any kind of substantial discretionary money.  I didn't know how to spend money.   I had a savings account at Davis County Bank.  I had put $5.00 in the account in order to open it..  The whole money thing was a mind swirl for me.  It would take awhile to process.

While I certainly understand Rawl's needing help, what Rawl did for me, in giving me, as a ten year old lad, a chance to take on a significant responsibility and to give me both personal and economic rewards for doing so, was one of the most significant life impacting events of my entire life.  I would learn many things about farming, personal responsibility, animal husbandry, care of animals, kindness, hard work, and a sleep schedule that has never recovered.  Working on Rawl's farm gave me a work ethic that kids today rarely have an opportunity to learn.  Most kids, even when I was young, eschewed responsibilty.  They would rather play and have fun, or sleep in.

Working for Rawl, I learned about hard work.  I learned about being dependable and reliable.  At age ten, for the next couple of years, I would work for about an hour in the mornings and an hour in the late afternoon.  I would get up and go feed the calves before school.  After school, I would go feed the calves as well.  During the summer I would do the same.  I had to be there every morning and every night.  Rawl would give me Sunday night off, which was very kind of him.  As I grew older, bigger, and stronger, I was able to help with field work.  Through most of my junior high school  years and all of my high school years, my summers were full of work.  I would work from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., with an hour break for breakfast and an hour break for lunch.  I would only do that six days a week, resting up on Sunday.

I suspect today that Rawl may have been called out on child labor laws.  I look back and saw the privilege I had to learn, and grow.  I scratch my head when I see current laws that "protect" children from such "exploitation and abuse."  I saw it as a distinct privilege.  I would do it over again.  I wish my kids would have had similar opportunities.

Maybe on Grandpa's Farm, my potential future grandkids or neighbor kids will have an opportunity to learn and grow under my tutelage.  Rawl was an important mentor in my life.  Perhaps I will have the opportunity to pass it on to others.

"Volunteering" to Feed Rawl's Calves

Some time after I went to see Rawl's cows the first time, I started going back again and again and again.  Rawl didn't seem to mind my being around.  I stayed out of the way.  I did what he asked.  I think I asked pretty good questions for a nine or ten year old.  After several days of doing that, he asked me if I would come early one day to help him feed the young calves.  I was pretty excited about that and said, "Yes!"

On the day I went down to feed the calves, at 5:00, Rawl mixed up milk replacer for the calves over four weeks of age.  I actually liked the smell of it pretty well.  It smelled good.  Rawl poured a couple of quarts of milk replacer in a bucket and I would put it in front of the calves that were tied in the calf barn.  The calves would eagerly push their noses deep in the bucket and drink their meal.  It was pretty exciting.  After feeding the calves their milk replacer, I gave them each a good handful of hay.  Rawl showed me how to give each of them grain as well.

After we were done milking the cows, Rawl saved a few gallons of fresh, warm milk to feed to the younger calves.  Rawl had me feed the younger calves out of a bucket with a nipple on it.  It was pretty much the same as bottle feeding the calves, but the nipple was attached to a bucket instead of a bottle.  Rawl told me that his idea was to give the calves a good start on whole milk for the first month before switching them to milk replacer.  Eventually, he would wean them at about three months of age.  I asked him, "If milk is better for them than milk replacer, why do you feed the older calves milk replacer?"  Rawl said, "I sell milk to earn my living.  I lose more money using the milk to feed the calves than it costs me to buy milk replacer to feed the calves.

At three months of age, the calves would get all the hay they would eat, roughly a quart of grain mix a day, and all the water they could drink.  Typically by the time they were about three months of age, the calves would move out of the calf barn, where they were tied, to a small corral for the older calves.  Rawl spent focused time helping me and letting me "help" with the very young stock.  

There was a door between the milking barn and the calf barn that would allow me to get the grain out of the grainary and go in to feed the calves.  The grainary was a big room full of grain mix from Pillsbury, that was delivered about once a month.

I was enthralled with feeding the calves.  I was walking on cloud nine.  After a couple of days of his showing me how to feed the calves, he asked me if I wanted to do it on my own.  Of course I said, "Yes!"  The first day of feeding the calves on my own was a little scary.  Would I do it right?  What if I made a mistake?  Sometimes the calves were pretty aggressive going after their milk or milk replacer.  What if they accidentally hurt me?  When I was ten years of age, the young calves weighed more than I did.  A Holstein calf weighs about 80-85 pounds at birth.  Within a couple of days I was a confident calf feeder.  I was living a dream.  What could be better that feeding Rawl's calves and helping him out?  It was fun.  It was exciting.  It was great.

Visiting Rawl's Cows

One of the chapters in The Have-More Plan was on keeping a family cow.  As a young child, I found myself going back to that chapter repeatedly.  I read the descriptions of the different breeds of cows, including how much milk they gave daily, the butterfat content, and their respective temperments.  I recall asking my Mom what docile meant.  Holsteins were the breed that gave the most milk, with the lowest butterfat content, and a temperment listed as, "docile."  What did that mean?  Was it good or bad?  My Mom was able to help me understand that it meant "calm."  I was fascinated by the idea of a dairy cow, fresh milk, cream that rises that can be made into butter...  There was so much to learn that was beyond the scope of a six page chapter.

We moved to Farmington when I was six.  Down the hill and across the street and a little to the south was Rawl's dairy farm.  Rawl had those black and white Holstein cows.

Over time, I became more and more interested in Rawl's cows.  I wanted to go see them, but I was too afraid, as a child, to go ask Rawl if I could come see his cows.  Rumors amongst the children in the neighborhood were that Rawl didn't like kids.  That made him even more scary.  Eventually, after talking about it over and over again, my Mom called Rawl and asked if I could come see his cows.  Much to my delight, he said, "Yes."

It was late Winter when I went down to see Rawl's cows.  I was nine, almost ten years old.  I recall wearing a jacket because it was chilly.  I went down at 5:00, because that was milking time and I would be able to see the cows up close.  I excitedly walked down the hill to Rawl's barn.  The door was closed, so I knocked on the door, oblivious to the fact that Rawl really couldn't hear my timid knocks.  Eventually, I knocked hard enough that he opened the door.  I walked into the warm barn, heated by all of those cows.  It was amazing.

The smell was actually rather pleasant.  The cows were big.  Rawl told me that the milking barn held 18 cows.  He had a milking machine with three milkers so he could milk three cows at a time.  I was fascinated to see the milkers hanging from the cows udders.  He took me into the milk room where I could see the fresh milk surging into a large glass jar.  I could also see when a pump would click on and move the milk from the jar to the refrigerated tank.  The tank looked huge.  It held 500 gallons, which seemed gigantic to me at the time.

As cows do, some of them pooped and pee'd into the dairy gutter behind them.  I was intrigued by the dairy gutter since there was a picture of a dairy gutter in the dairy goat section of The Have-More Plan.  It held the manure in place, but the urine drained out and disappeared under the wall.  I later learned that it moved the urine out to a pasture.  It was a dream come true.  I got to read about something, then I got to see it first hand.  This became a normal patterm for me over the course of my life.  Read, see, learn.

Sheepishly, as a nine year old, I asked Rawl how he could tell the difference between a cow and a bull.  At that point, somehow I hadn't grasped the concept that in the cow world, only the females lactated and produced milk.  In my mind, I presumed that roughly half of the cows in the barn were females and half were males.  Rawl's response was indicitive of his simple, straight forward answers.  He asked in return, "How do you tell the difference between a boy and a girl?"  I cogitated on that for a minute, and decided it was better not to ask any further questions.  I looked at the cows in the barn and they all looked anatomically similar.  That is because they were.

That visit to see Rawl's cows was a thrilling experience in my young life.  I recall it vividly.  It opened many doors both future experiences and doors in my mind to explore possibilities.  Life was good.