The barn, where we milked the cows, had a large room all the way across the north side. There was a door at each end where the cows could enter and exit. There was a walk way into the other sections of the barn in the center. Along the wall to the south of this big room was a manger with feed boxes for each cow.

Each cow had a leather strap around their neck with a ring hanging from it. At each feed box was a chain, about 30 inches long with a snap on the end. Every cow knew her place and would go there where we would snap the chain to the ring. Woe to a cow who tried to steal feed from another cow.

In the winter the cows stayed in the barn at night. Every day we put clean bedding down and every morning it would not be clean anymore. From November until March, the floor would grow to about 18 inches thickness. As soon as the weather became good enough, usually about March, we would dig out all the winter�s collection and spread it on the fields. This was very hard work and something we hated to do.

Dad came up with the idea for a sort of trolley that hung from a track on the back wall and could be pushed out the door and dumped on a pile. He put a track of strong, oak boards out about a foot from the wall and made a box type container of oak wood. It hung from the track on two wheels. The idea was, each morning, clean up the barn and put it in the box, then wheel it out to the pile outside.

Well, not everything works out the way planned.

In early November there came a big freeze. Sheets of ice covered everything, including the track outside the barn. My brother, J. W., and I cleaned up the barn, put the cleanings in the trolley box and pushed it out the door. It rode upon the ice and fell off the track, totally full. That stuff is heavy, and fresh, even heavier. We could not lift the thing up enough to hook it back on the track and we had to go to school, so we left it with intentions of scooping it out when we got home. Well, the day did not warm up much, so when we got home from school, it was a solid chunk of frozen cow-processed fodder!

We tried to beat it apart but that failed. Finally we took a mule and pulled it far enough away so we could close the barn door. That frozen box of soil enrichment sat there until late December. The weather got warm enough that we turned the box over and the entire contents dropped out, still in one piece. It stayed that way until February when it melted enough to be scooped to the storage pile. The rest of the winter we left the bedding and all it had mixed with in it on the barn floor.

All was not lost, however. The box became a water trough after a little conversion, and the rail was great for hanging things from. We made large �S� hooks from � inch round rod and hung buckets and other things from it. The part that extended outside was removed that spring so we could drive the wagon close for scooping all that cow feed that had not been made into milk, beef, or baby calves, out of the barn.