MEMOIRS PART 9 - JO-ANN OF ARK

I remember two more stories about farm animals. The first was about a Guernsey cow named Joan d'Arc. Dad always called her Jo-ann of Ark. I think he bought her in Wisconsin during a trip he made on behalf of his fellow dairymen some time around 1920. She was a wonderful cow, producing about 5 gallons of milk a day with butterfat content over 5%. I'm sure she did this for at least 12 to 15 years. For a couple of years in the mid-1930s I noticed she was dry, that is, not producing milk. This of course was because she didn't have a calf each year. One day I noticed her missing from the herd and asked Dad where she was. He was quite evasive, and I never did get an answer. Later I concluded that he had sold her to a slaughterhouse, because only once did I see him show compassion for a farm animal that had served him for many years.

This was the case with Old Dick. Dick and Bill were Percherons, and I think they were the first draft team Dad ever owned. He probably got them when he bought what he called "the old Severe place". This, of course, was the farmyard at our home on Cooley's Lane. Dick was a strong, willing, gentle horse, while Bill was just plain lazy. When they pulled as a team, Dick did most of the work. I remember them both well, since they were the mainstays of the 10 or 12 horses we used for farm work. Gradually, after about 1937 when Dad bought a tractor, these horses began to disappear. You can imagine my surprise when I came back in 1946 and found old Dick all alone down on Fishing Creek, where he had been put out to pasture.

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In the late summer of 1938, an episode took place concerning Mother. An itinerant peddler had come to our house offering to sell a fur coat for $50.00. Dad wasn't home. Mother really wanted that fur coat, and the peddler probably was pressuring her. She knew I had some money which I had earned during the summer, so she asked if she could borrow the $50. I gave it to her immediately, and she wore the coat proudly for many years. I'm sure I got paid back, because $50 at that time was 2 months room and board at Henry and Edith Jefferies' home in Salt Lake, where I stayed the first year or two of college.