Whatever It Takes

   Chubby was always innovative and inventive.  He kept himself busy and occupied "overseeing" all aspects of the farm and stepping in when he felt there was a need for his abilities as a "Master Dog"!

   Attached to our long tack shed, we had a small "room" if you will, where we kept the oat pails to feed the horses.  Sometimes,  we would fill these pails with oats beforehand and this of course attracted mice.  With the granary not far away we had many mice anyhow.  Chubby decided to become a better mouser than any cat could be.  For this job he even educated a helper. " Dollar-dog" had passed on, and been replaced with a young black collie named Bud.  True to his terrier heritage, Chubby had long been a killer of rodents and spent many hours hunting gophers and also voles in the field. ( Those were the slow days when he could take time off from getting horses up that were rolling on saddles.)
   But I had a hard time believing my eyes one day when I observed the set-up and system he had arrived at for eradicating mice!  There was a small hole in the corner of the building where the oat pails were and somehow Chubby would get Bud all excited about mice and the young dog would jump and chase throughout the room while the "Master dog-Chubby" would simply wait outside at the open corner and catch and kill the escaping mice at a great rate!  It was a very imaginative and successful plan.  What a clever little cuss he was!  With minimum effort he got to do all the catching while the young dog did all the hard work.  Unlike some dogs and many cats, Chubby was a quick and efficient killer.  Rodents were dispatched quickly and cleanly with none of your "cat and mouse games".  There was seldom a dull moment in Chubbys life.
   There was other work for us wranglers as well.  Although Pops did all the seeding of the green feed crop everyone had to help at times with the actual harvesting.   To me, farm work was a diversion from the day after day of Dude-ing out horses and I didn't mind.  After the "hay" was cut, Pops would hook up the baler and behind that the stooker.  As the bales came out of the baler, the "stookerman" would grab them and pile them in order on the stooker.  The first row would be four bales then three, two and one on the top.Then you would "trip" the load leaving behind a little pyramid of ten bales to be picked up at a later date.   The bales had to be placed "cut side up" and in that way, would repel any rain should the bales not be stored under cover for a time.

It was hot and heavy work and I remember wearing Pops' old "bat-wing" chaps for protection as the bales made short work of a pair of jeans, by days end.  On the weekend the men helpers, usually Ken and Doug, would pick up the bales with a front end loader and stack them in the truck and take them to the barn.  Here again Chubby had left his mark.   The dogs were all fed bones we got from the butcher.  A great long box of them would be spread out near the barn and all dogs helped themselves.

The clever Chubby, ever a greedy guts of a dog, would spend much time retrieving bones and "storing" them in the loft of the barn.  Again, this was a smart ploy as he was the only dog that could negotiate the steep steps to the loft!  So prior to unloading bales into the barn, I had to clean out piles of dog bones from Chubbys' "fridge".  A years worth of bones is quite a lot!
   When I first came to Twin Bridges I had not driven a tractor or even a standard-shift anything, for that matter!  It soon became necessary for me to know, not only to drive the tractor but to hook up the manure spreader to it as well   I ran into trouble right away as could not line up the hitch of the spreader to the tractor.   I would  get things lined up and when I shut off the tractor it would move just enough to be out of alignment again.  My only companions were Chubby of course, and young Fum.  Could I ask a little kid like that to put the pin in when I next had it all lined up?  In later life I would come across a saying from a friend...."Whatever it Takes" and many of those busy times in my life I was doing just that!  What it "took" was me talking Fum into doing what was needed and she listened and stepped out of the way and all was well.  Out to the fields we went to spread the manure.  Yep....Whatever it takes!
    Driving vehicles has never been my forte, I always felt I would rather ride a horse, but vehicles were all a part of life on the farm.  On another occasion Pops would talk me into driving a three ton truck with a load of gravel in it!   I was pretty scared but trusted he was not so drunk that he didn't know what gear we needed.  As always when nervous, the sweat poured off me in buckets!  But we got the job done anyway.

    I now had my own car to get to town in.  It was a little red and white Ford Falcon that I was very proud of.  What I did not have was a legal licence and insurance!  In early spring I wanted to take a holiday out to B.C. to visit my brother and thought it would be a good idea to get my licence and be legal finally.  It took me three tries before I got it.  I made it out there and had a few small adventures and when I returned home again, I hit one of the worst blizzards ever.  Only the tops of the fence posts beside the road gave you any indication that I was even going in the right direction.  I was most relieved to turn down the farm road and although I got stuck in the back yard I didn't care!  I would deal with the stuck car tomorrow when it was daylight.  For now I just needed to go to bed.
   That same winter things had gotten so cold my little car would not start.  You can barely imagine my shock when Pops put a lit propane Tiger torch in a metal bucket and placed it under my nice little car!  But it worked and away I went to town!