Life on the Farm

Mother did most of the gardening and I helped her. Andrew and I ploughed the garden with oxen. We raised cattle and sheep. We drove the animals to Fort Stewart where we bartered them at the General store. Father came along in the horse and buggy. He would buy a package of “ conversation candy” which we would eat as we returned home in the buggy.

My dad was gone before the depression. My mother sent a good fat beef to Toronto to try and raise some money to pay the taxes. She didn’t get enough and had to dig into her little bank account. In the depression we always had lots of food. “ No money- but lots of food. It was tough paying the taxes. People lost their farms. The farming was first rate but you couldn’t raise any money.”

Land Rich – Cash Poor

We made soap from off the beef, rendering it and using lye. Coal oil lamps lit the night time. I remember the first toilet paper. Bill Prentice went to pick up an order placed by his wife. When asked whether he wanted the cheaper or more expensive he replied: “ Give me the cheaper. After all I’ll only use it once anyway.” He was a great joker.

School

Layton Shouldice, an educator for many years in North Hastings, found an old register from Havergal SS#1 1911/12. In the months of February Henry Taylor went to school 4 days. So I said: “ That’s easy to explain. Henry Taylor’s legs weren’t long enough for the snow drifts.”

When World War 1 took many young men away from the farm Henry ended his formal schooling for now he had to work the farm.He drove a team of horses on the Conroy farm. “ There’s a rhyme that he’s the man behind the man behind the gun. He’s the man behind the plough. You see an army marches on its stomach. With me it was the boy behind the man behind the gun for my older brother was in France behind a machine gun. He was a cook in the lumber camps, on the river drives. The only time he didn’t cook was the 2 years in the army. I asked him why he didn’t get the job as cook in the army and he said ‘ Oh, they didn’t need one there. All you needed was a can opener to open a can of bully beef.’”

Of Horses

I was never very big. The only way I could get the harnesses on those Clydesdale horses was to stand on an old chair. Them horses knew as much about ploughing as I did. I didn’t need the lines on them. They followed the furrow all day. Believe it or not I talked to them horses and they talked to me. They told me it was dinner time more than once. In the cold fields of the Conroy Marsh I’d have a cap over my ears and my sister would ring the dinner bell and I wouldn’t hear it. If they were going north, away from the buildings, they would stop and whinney. I’d whip the cap off my ears and hear the bell ringing.

If we were going towards the buildings they would lengthen their stride. One day they were stepping right along more briskly than usual when the plough went under a great big pine root in the ground. Me and that plough stayed right there. They went on to the stable. They weighed about a ton each. It was a good thing I didn’t have the line around my back.

In 1923 I finished the ploughing and left the farm to join my older brother Jim Taylor.