“We had her for about three or four years. It was always my job to feed and take care of the mule. She got out one night. We hadn’t had her long, and we had to get out and try to find her. We did find her and got her back to pasture, no problem. She wasn’t hard to catch or anything like that, she had just got out. We found her and brought her back. That night, I was coming back from the barn barefooted, and the old house I was raised in had about seven steps up to the front porch of that house, and coming back from that barn there was a big copperhead right at the bottom of those steps. I stepped on that thing barefooted, and the next step I took, I was standing in the middle of the front porch! I missed the steps completely. Then they got a light out there and killed that snake.
“A couple of years after that, the mule got sick. We believed that she got some molded hay or something, and it gave her colic, and she died from that. But while she was sick, I remember how we tried to keep her going. The veterinarian came and gave her some medicine. Daddy gave her medicine that he knew how to give. He took a Coke bottle and mixed medicine in it and stuck the neck of the bottle down the throat. We kept her moving because Daddy said if she laid down she would die, or she would roll and get her intestines messed up. So we tried to keep her up and a-going, but she’d try to lay down anyway. The veterinarian came, and he had a bull shocker, and he could get her up with that bull shocker by punching her with it and making her get up. After he left, the only thing we could get her up with was a power saw; he remembered she was scared of a power saw. He run up behind where she was laying with the power saw and cranked it up and revved up the motor on the power saw real loud, and the mule jumped up, but when she did, she hit me. She throwed her front foot out in front of her, and that foot landed right on one of my feet, and when she come up, her weight was on that foot, and her head come right up under my chin. Like to tore me in two and knocked me down on the ground.
“I got over that, but she didn’t. She died that night. I guess that was the loss of a first love. She got me kicked before she died, even if it was with her head and her front foot.”
“I know about mules. I used to plow them,” J. C. Stubblefield stated. “We had a mule one time; it knowed just as well as you did when eleven o’clock come. If you was out there in the field laying off or anything you was doing, that mule would go to the barn with you. I tried not to let him go to the barn down there. I thought I would just stall it down. I had a lay-off plow. I set that in the ground just as deep as it would go, and that mule just went right on with me. It went to the barn. When it come eleven o’clock, you’d better be ready to go. The mule was like that when we got it. Somebody else must have fed it at that time. He was like that all the time we had him. You couldn’t stop it, wasn’t no way to stop it. But I got to where, just a few minutes before eleven, I’d take the doggone mule to the barn and feed him. Of course, I guess somebody else had done that too.
“I had another mule; you had to give that mule a whopping about ever’ spring, ’cause it got to where it wouldn’t work hardly. It wouldn’t go like off the branch bank. We had a good place to walk, you know. It wouldn’t go in there, and I was going across the branch to plow some over there. He wouldn’t go. I picked up a stick there, and I just mauled that thing over the head. He got to where, when I hit him, he’d go across.”
SHEEP
Terry Dickerson remembered caring for sheep when he was younger. “We had free-range back when I was young. All of these mountains were free-range, and you had to fence your crops in [to keep the cows and other livestock out]. Everybody had sheep, and that called for fetching them from the mountains. Brother Jim and I had to fetch the sheep when we were boys. Then, when I was thirteen years old, my dad died [and we had to take on a lot more chores].
PLATE 123 Terry Dickerson
“Brother Jim and I built a sheep pen, and we had a black sheep over there that wore a bell. We would go over there to feed her, and one of us would get on that sheep’s back while she was eating her corn, and she’d just twist around and try to shake us off. She’d leave her head in that trough still eating just as intelligent as a pet dog.
“A lot of time in the fall of the year, we would go out and hunt the sheep. [Sometimes, though, they’d come on in by themselves.] The black sheep wore the bell, and I remember I woke up early one morning, and I heard the bell ringing right up there on that ridge. She brought all the sheep in. We had twelve or fifteen of them then, and that old mother sheep—when grass or stuff was bit down in the woods—she’d come home for feed, and the others would follow that bell just like people will go to a bell now. That sheep lived ’til the black wool on her back had turned white, and the wool around her head was white.
“Brother Jim and I would feed the sheep, and we would help shear the sheep. When Mother had to take over [after Dad died], she sheared the sheep and carded the wool, and she rolled it up in rolls about the size around of a broom handle. She’d spin that wool and knit socks and sweaters and winter caps for us children. She’d work ’til ten or eleven o’clock after we went to bed at night spinning that old spinning wheel. It’s still upstairs right now. I can hear it hit now. When she’d pull that wool out, she’d get a long [continuous] thread just as true as it is today.”
Jesse Ray Owens recalled, “We had hogs, cows, and sheep. We kept enough sheep so we would have wool to make us sweaters and socks. We carded our own wool. My mother spun it. She had two or three [spinning wheels]. The parts of one of them is still around here somewhere [over there in the old house]. She’s spun many a night, and she knitted our socks from that wool. I knitted several pairs of socks myself. I had to learn how. I done everything else, but I never could turn the heel.”
DUCKS
Addie Bleckley remembered having ducks on her family farm. “Mother raised ducks so she could pick their feathers to make our feather beds and pillows. We didn’t have to do anything but catch them and hold them and pick out handfuls of feathers. Every time we’d pull, they’d go ‘quack, quack.’ I guess it did hurt them.
PLATE 124 Addie Bleckley
“When we got through plucking, we’d turn them loose. We’d wash the feathers and put them out in the sun. The ducks would grow more feathers. I guess it was just made for us to pick them that way. They didn’t bleed, but they sure could quack when we’d pull out a handful. We had about twelve ducks, I guess, but I don’t know how many feathers we’d get off them each time. It took a pretty good while for them to grow their feathers back, and then we’d pick them again.”
Gertrude Keener recalled, “We had ducks. A lot of fun that I had in the mornings was going duck egg hunting. We had about a dozen ducks, and they would get nests all around our pond and lay their eggs. I enjoyed getting out real early in the morning hunting those eggs.”
CATTLE
“People would hit the mountains for making a living,” Clarence Lusk remembered. “You see, they could range their cattle, grow hogs and sheep, and fence in their little field. They’d build a fence around their gardens and just turn the cattle and hogs out in the woods and the mountains [to graze]. That’s the way they made their living.
“I remember going back in the mountains with my daddy cow hunting. The woods was just full of cows and hogs. We’d mark [our animals] in the ear with so many splits. Some people would brand ’em, but all I ever knowed was cropping them—cutting certain notches out of the ears. I know some people who had as high as three hundred head of hogs up there and every one of ’em marked. They’d have big gangs of cattle too.
“People used to come down the road here [on the way to market]. There was a man from North Carolina, and he had cow dogs. He [raised] a lot of cattle back in the mountains, and he’d come down through here with a string of cattle. [He and his helpers] rode their horses, and they’d have a big gang of cattle in front of ’em. Them dogs would stay out on the outside, and if one of the cows [started] to get out of the road, that dog would run down around yonder and put him back in the road. He’d keep t
hat cow in the road. [They were] taking their cattle to slaughter and selling ’em.”
PLATE 126 Clarence Lusk
Terry Dickerson also remembered working with cows. “We had bells on the cows too. When we’d hunt a milk cow, we’d listen for that bell. You could hear it for half a mile. We knew right where to go. When that bell began to rattle and she’d leave out, the rest of the cows would follow. They had learned. Animal life is sensible. It was interesting to us back then [to watch how the animals took care of themselves].
“[All the cows were out in the mountains together.] They had marks on them, and we used to check the brands and bring ours home. I’ve walked from Wolffork Valley up behind Taylor’s Chapel Church to drive down milk cows. Quite a walk. That would take just about a solid hour.”
Minnie Dailey said, “We raised cows and milked ’em. We had steers to work in the fields and haul with. My father used the steers most of the time, because he loved them more than he did the horses. I could catch those steers by the horns, ’cause they was gentle, and we could take a rope and tie it around their necks, and they’d lead like a cow.”
Belle Dryman told us, “If you tend t’ cattle like I do, I guess they will come when you call ’em. Mine do. I think I’ll keep that white one over there, just t’ see what kind of cow hit’ll make. I don’t git much milk. We sell three or four calves a year, and when the cows get older, we sell them too.
“We’ve had cattle all my life. I turned them into the cornfield and graze them in the morning. I stay out there with them. Sometimes I piece quilts when I’m with them.”
PLATE 127 Belle Dryman feeding her pig
DRIVING CATTLE
Because there was no stock law, cattle were allowed to roam freely. To keep them from eating all the crops, getting into fields, and roaming the community, farmers had to drive the herd into the mountains. Here the cattle foraged for survival upon tree leaves, grass, and new sprouts. Each summer, farmers drove the herd to the range. In the fall, they drove them back so as to have the cattle close enough to keep them fed tops of corn through the harsh winters.
“We had a lot of chores when I was growing up. We grew meat and stock,” Kermit Thompson remembered. “There wasn’t a stock law at that time, and we would drive our cows to the mountains. Most of the time it was to Black Mountain, right over there next to Tate City. We would run them to the mountains through the summer and then bring them back in the fall of the year. Sometimes the cows would get too far out of range, and we would have to go back up there and herd them back where they belonged. We didn’t have a car, so we had to walk up there.”
Adam Foster told us, “In later days, I got to be the one that had to go to the mountains in the summer season to look about the cattle. Dad sent me one mornin’. He said, ‘You get up in the mornin’, Adam, and go up there and get that big jersey cow.’ Said, ‘She’s supposed to have had a calf a week ago, and we ain’t never went and brought her in.’ Well, I knew she was gentle, and he did too. I knew right where she run—pretty close. He said, ‘You can go up there and be back by eight o’clock. Just get up, saddle your horse, grab you a rope, and go on.’ Said, ‘You don’t need to wait for breakfast. Get your breakfast when you come back. You won’t be gone over an hour and a half It wasn’t but ’bout five miles up there. I went up there, and that cow was gone. I couldn’t find her nowhere. She’d had her calf, all right. But she was gone. And I hunted, and I hunted, and I hunted. I knowed all that country. Found all the other cattle but couldn’t find her. She had a big bell on. And I never did find her that day.
PLATE 128 Kermit Thompson
“I come on back home and told my daddy. I said, I put in all day, and I couldn’t find her.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you go back in the mornin’ and get one of them old Smith brothers to go with you up the mountain. He knows the big mountains back there. He’ll help you hunt that cow.’ I did. I went on back up there. Got one of ’em to go with me. I got up there, and he said, ‘Yeah, I’ll go with you.’ I said, ‘Well, we may have to hunt all day, now’ He said, ‘That’s all right.’
“He went on with me. Hunted, hunted, and hunted and never found the cow. And after a while, I happened to hear a bell ’bout two or three miles away. I knew the bell was on that cow. I could tell the difference of the ring of every cowbell we had. So I said, ‘She’s in that old field right down over yonder where she used to run.’ We went over there, and she was right there pickin’ where she used to run all the time. Well, there wasn’t no calf there, but we knowed she’d had the calf. She’d have to go to the calf. And she was two miles or better away from that calf, the cow was. She hid it way on back in them mountains two miles. She did it to keep us from finding her.
“After the calf got three or four days old, and we hadn’t found it, the cow didn’t want us messing with it. She wanted to raise it wild. So I just followed this cow. I’d keep about a half a mile behind her, so she wouldn’t think I was a-watchin’ her, and she’d go back to the baby. Well, I just kept a-watchin’ and listenin’ to the bell. So after a while, I seen her turn a trail that went back up in the mountains where it was flat. And she turned up that road.
“I told the man that was with me, I said, ‘Now, that calf won’t follow the cow. We’ll have to do some thin’. I’ll just put the calf on the horse, and I’ll get on behind it, and the cow will follow me and the calf off the mountain.’ And she did. I put that calf up in the saddle, and I got on behind it, and down through there I went with that calf in the saddle. And here the old cow come down behind us, the man drivin’ her.”
TRAINING STEERS
Many people used oxen or steers to work around the farm. While they were slow, they were also strong, durable animals. They had to be trained to pull plows and other farm equipment and to move appropriately to the common commands of “gee” [go right], “haw” [go left], “whoa,” and “get up.”
Numerous Marcus explained, “I used to plow oxen all the time before I got my horses. I’d rather plow a horse ’cause he’s a little faster, but you can do just as good plowing with oxen as you can a horse. There’s a whole lot of difference in working oxen than horses. Oxen are slower and they’re contrary. They’d get hot and take a notion to run off to the branch, and if you wasn’t big enough to hold them, why then they’d take you too.
“Me and Dad used to have lots of fun breaking a yoke of oxen. I got awful tickled at Dad one time. We had a yoke of oxen broke, and they plowed good double.
“Dad said, ‘Well, now, it’s getting about time for us to get ready to start laying off and plantin’ corn. You’ve got to learn these oxen to work single sometime.’
“We put one of ’em up there on the hill, and we was dragging wood with him. He started down the hill toward the road, and he was working the finest you ever did see. We had already pulled three loads with him. All of a sudden, he took a notion he wanted to run. Boys! He kicked up his heels and right down that road he went. Dad was going around and around a bush. He was gonna try and run him into the bush so he couldn’t go. ‘Bout that time, Dad got wrapped around the bush, and that little ol’ steer turned right back in below the bush, and Dad run right over top of that steer.
“Dad said, ‘Son, look out! You’re gonna get run over here directly’ He called that little of steer his son. That tickled me. I laughed at him, but Dad held him. He wasn’t gonna turn him loose, all right. We thought we had him all right for laying off and planting corn, and then he kicked up his heels and off down the hill he went. We used to have a lot of fun with them things when they’d run away with us.
“Sometimes you’d have to put chains around an ox’s nose to keep ’im from running away with you. If the oxen didn’t have any horns, then you made a halter and put chains around his nose to stop him. If they had horns, you could tie a head chain on them. Just take a small chain and put around the horns, and if he started to run, give him a jerk and that would slow him down. They wouldn’t pull much against the chain. If they got their head down,
they could go right on. They didn’t pay no attention to much. I used blocks sometimes. They’re like reins on a horse. They’re just made out of sassafras wood. Or I’d use yokes. I made them myself. It’s according to what kind of places you’re in and depends on what you’re doing.”
June Jones has been training steers all his life. He told us, “My dad would use his steers for logging, farming, whatever he needed it for. I was probably four or five years old when the old man give me two calves. They was just mixed-up steers. I have no idea what breed they was. They were just mixed. I didn’t have a pair of paired steers until I had a pair of guernseys. They was registered guernseys. I had a pair of holsteins, and I guess they was registered, because they came out of the dairy.
“I have no idea how many pairs I’ve had. I’ve had a few that I killed for beef that I couldn’t manage. If they don’t do to suit me, Blalock’s Meat Processing can take care of them.
“Before you can say you got them broke, they have got to be about two or three years old. They got to get about two years old.
“I use cotton lines on the steers, and when I start to drive them, I just put the lines on them and start driving. Mostly, I just play with them—just hook them to the wagon. I hauled all my wood up off the creeks down here with them. That’s the biggest thing I do with them. I just play with them.
Foxfire 11: Wild Plant Uses, Gardening, Wit, Wisdom, Recipes, Beekeeping, Toolmaking, Fishing, and More Affairs of Plain Living Page 25