Balking horse

One time my father decided to redo the kitchen porch. He tore the wood out from the old porch. He needed to excavate a good bit of dirt in order to build a new porch. He hooked a mare and a mule to a wagon. He backed the wagon into a spot where he could shovel the dirt from underneath the old porch into the wagon. He had built sideboards on the wagons would could hold a lot of dirt. The ground where the wagon was sitting was soft and the weight of the dirt in the wagon cause the wheels of the wagon to dig deep into the ground. When he started to move the wagon with horses the mare balked. The mule was straining to pull the wagon forward but the mare was holding back so that made him you need to pull not only the wagon of dirt but the mare who was pulling backwards.

This was the first and only time in my life that I heard my dad swear. He was a very angry man at that moment he grabbed one of the timbers that was holding the sideboards on and jerked it out of its position and struck the mare on the rump as hard as he could. When this timber which was a 4 x 4 came down on the back of the mare she lunged forward with enough force that the wagon started moving forward. That was the end of her balking. And this was the first and only time I ever saw an animal balk.

Plowing with horses and mules

My father never owned a tractor but he did owned horses and mules. As a boy I had learned how to catch the horses, harnessed them, and hook them to the plow. One plow I had to work with a lot was called a double shovel. This plow had two metal prongs that went down into the ground. One prong was in front and one prong was in back. The prong in back was set over about 8 inches. Attached to these prongs were the plow blades. These plow blades were triangular in form and had a bolt that fasten them to the prongs. The sharp end of the triangle blade went down into the dirt and the two sides of the triangle push the dirt to the side. 

You could burst your ribs plowing with a double shovel in new ground. New ground is ground that has trees cut off of it and has been cleared for planning crops. It is easy enough to cut trees down. But the roots of the tree go everywhere across the ground. Some of the roots are deep enough that you don't have to deal with them. It is roots close to the surface that give you the problems. When you walk behind a double shovel you walk in between the handles. These handle strike you about the middle of your waist or just about where your ribs are. The horse is a powerful animal and when he is moving along at a good clip and one of your plow blades hits a big root causes the plow to go sideways the axis being the blade of the plow and the handle pops into your site at a terrific force. I've had this happened to me several times. Sometimes I would have to stop for a while to regroup.

Living in tin houses

Some of the labor camps that we lived in during those years that we worked in the fruit were metal houses. One such labor camp was close to Weedpatch California. The town of Weedpatch was about 40 miles from Bakersfield California. The afternoon temperature in July around Bakersfield California and be up the hundred and 120°. Can imagine trying to live in a metal house with the outside temperature 120°? It was like living in an oven. It had these advantages, you could clean it by hosing it down, it was durable, it was cheap and after all you only had fruit tramps living in it. We did not stay indoors during the heat of the day and the temperature in the desert drops drastically after dark.

Picking peaches

One of the jobs we used to do when we worked in California was to go to Marysville, Yuba City area and pick peaches. The peach trees were laid out in the field in straight rows and the trees were the same distance from one tree to the next tree. You could pick peaches on the lower branches standing on the ground. But for the peaches on the higher limbs you had to use a ladder. The ladder use was a high three pronged ladder. The first three or four steps of the ladder was wide then they narrowed down and you went toward the top. The third leg of the ladder was attached at the top by a hinge. When you pick the ladder up the hinge on the third leg of the ladder came back into the ladder. You position the ladder facing the tree in the place he wanted to be and then pushed out the third leg of the ladder into the tree thus making a tripod. You ascend the ladder to the higher limbs the tree and pick peaches there.

The temperature in this part of California at peach picking time was over hundred degrees. But when you were picking peaches in among the branches the temperature could get up to as high as 120°. You would get hot and sweaty and peach fuzz would filter down around the neck of your shirt and itch would drive you crazy. You put the peaches you picked into a canvas bag. This bag had a built-in hoop at the top with straps around your neck. The bottom of the canvas bag was open and had to straps attached to both sides. You would take over straps and bring them up to the top of the loop and attached them there. By doing this you double the bag in such a way that the peaches could not follow the bottom. When the bag was full of peaches you came down the ladder went over to a wood box undid the straps and that peaches fallout the bottom into this wood box. We were paid $.07-$.08 a box the amount of money you made dependent on how hard you could work. I could pick somewhere between 150 and 200 boxes a day. In the 1950s that was good money for a teenager.

Stripping sorghum cane leaves and making sorghum

One job we worked at when we were children was on my daddy's farm. We grew sorghum cane, the juice was used to make sorghum syrup. Sorghum cane looks a lot like cornstalks. Not quite as large around as cornstalks are but they have the overall general appearance of cornstalks. After the sorghum cane has reached its maturity stage, my dad would take a sharp knife and cut the heads off. The head grew on the top of the stalk and was covered with hundreds of seeds. The seeds could be used as chicken feed or two plant next year's crop of sorghum cane. It was the stalks that we wanted to use for making sorghum syrup. The sorghum cane stalks were filled with a juice which was used in making sorghum syrup.

From a small plank my dad would make what looked like a hand sword made out of wood with one side sharp and the handle on the other end. With this wood sword we children would attack the stalks in the field and cut the leaves from the stalk. These lease we would bundle up for feed, to feed the cows. This left the stock standing bear in the field. With a team of horses pulling a wagon we would go through the fields cutting the stalks off at the ground and loading them onto the wagon. When the wagon was full of sorghum stalks we would haul the stalks over to a mill that my mother's uncle had.

I called it a mill but it was more like a press. There were three large rollers standing vertically on the end attached to the top was a long pole. This press was attached to large timbers and the press itself weighed probably close to 500 pounds. This long pole was about 20 feet long and was attached to the mill with about 5 feet sticking out on one end and 15 feet on the other end. To the 15 foot into the pole we hooked a single tree pulled by a mule or a horse. The animal would walk in a circle pulling the pole thus turning the rollers of the mill. A man would set next to the press feeding the stalks into the press thus abstracting the juice from the stalks. This juice ran out into a number two wash tub. This juice would be carried to the cooking vat. 

The cooking vat was about 3 feet wide and 10 feet long. It was placed upon a brick fireplace. A wood fire was built under the cooking vat. The vat itself was about 8 inches deep and divided by many metal walls with doors that could be closed or open. Starting on one end of the vat these metal doors alternated sides going to the end of vat. You would start cooking the sorghum juice pouring in on one side of the vat and as it cooked you would move it through the doors to the other end of the vat. You put the raw juice on one end and took the sorghum syrup out the other end. As the sorghum cooked a foam would be on top of the juice. This was a sticky foam and us kids would take a sorghum stick and collect the foam and eat it. We would collect the sticky foam on a stick much like the man at the county fair does when he collects cotton candy on a stick. We were walking in high cotton when we ate this stuff.

The following paragraph I took from Google where someone explains the process I was talking about above.

The evaporator was partitioned at regular intervals throughout its length with gates or openings on every partition, alternated to control the flow of juice as it meandered through the channels to the finishing compartment, where it was completed and drawn off into containers ready for

market or home consumption.  The cooking vats were placed over a furnace and

fired by wood.