Cows and Hired Hands

With the arrival of my friend Judy Marks, life began to be a blast. I told her straight off she could stay as long as she liked but I expected her to help with the work and share expenses as well. Jude was never a user or a “mooch” and readily agreed to those circumstances. She seemed enthralled with my cabin and the outdoor biffy did not bother her one bit.

    The Aldingers were quick to see that they could get even more work done with two female hired hands and in no time put Jude on the payroll. And so we embarked on our careers as “Aldingers Hired Girls”. We seemed to be most popular, even with the Aldingers themselves and often they would talk us into going to a dance with them and would pay our way. We later found out they were getting two hired hands for the price of the one useless guy they had had previously but we were happy and had a home and worked hard without thinking twice about it.

   When I first knew I would be working outside a lot I used the last of my money to buy appropriate clothes. Boots and gloves and things like that. I have to admit I was a bit jealous of Judy when she walked in and the guys supplied her with boots and gloves etc. I told her she must have a horseshoe up her butt and she always seemed to land on her feet with never a care in the world. She also never seemed to worry about a thing and that drove me crazy as well. Still, she helped me be more carefree as well and those were good times.

   Judy arrived in April and in May it was once again the May Day Celebrations in Kaslo. Besides taking part in the horse show, (Judy did her first barrel race) we also took part in the Logging Sports which had a Ladies Nail Hammering event. Judy won and I coveted her silver cup for years. Of course we were good at hammering, with all the fencing we were doing.  We took pride in our many jobs and tried never to back down but to just get the job done. At times we hadn't a clue what we supposed to do but managed somehow. One morning Fred wanted a caribou fence built on a particularly rocky spot where the cows were getting out. Right! Says I. When Jude asked what one was I told her I thought the neighbour had one and we would go and look at it and then build one.  A caribou fence leans on cross pieces and requires no actual posts to be put in the ground.  When it is properly put together it is a good strong fence.  Our fence more or less 

blocked the hole and that was about it. We used whatever wood we could find even rotten birch so by no stretch or the imagination could this be called a strong fence or even a fence for that matter! Still, no one ever called us on it.  The Aldingers continued to buy up land and soon we were sent to the Airport pasture to pick roots and rocks just as I had at the Loftsted farm. We spent many hours there and then it was time to plant the pasture as well and fertilise it. Fred brought in two large truck toolboxes that were used for fire tools and then showed us how the alfalfa seed had to be mixed with NITROGEN in these boxes and then it would grow better? Now alfalfa seeds are very tiny and I asked Jude if she thought we had to check every one for a black spot of NITROGEN? It seemed a foolish endeavour at best but what did we know? Fred told us to treat the alfalfa like gold as is was so expensive. Well, to top things off when we put it in the hopper at the field the seeder would not close properly and I lost all the seeds on the way to where I was supposed to plant them!  I looked for many years to see if any alfalfa grew but never found any.

   Preparing that pasture was often a scary experience and we really should not have been doing it for safety reasons. Also there was often only one of us up there. Luckily we had no accidents. At one time Judy thought the tractor might come right over and actually got off of it and gave it a push. Another time I had to take a heavy plow up there and the front wheels came right off the ground but it didn't go over because the plow prevented it from doing so.  Some of our jobs left us very dirty indeed and we insisted on turning up in the bar in our work clothes.  Sometimes we were full of grease or brake fluid or creosote from treating posts. It did no good to try and clean up because inevitably there would be a call of “Girls! The cows are out!” and we would have to go and chase them back in. We could get away earlier on a Friday night if we just left straght away. We got to hate the cows at times but never mistreated them. I was always surprised that they had no dogs to drive cattle. These cows had come from many places and were picked up at sales etc. And would not drive well or easily. Getting them to the new Airport pasture proved to be a large task indeed and took all weekend. At that we never did get six of them up there and they stayed at Lofsted for the summer. Ed Davidson decided to help us and Judy gave him her cow stick
at one point and only got back a nubbin.  We worked so hard to get the cattle
up to the new pasture and within a week they had eaten everything off of it.  I
found that rather disappointing but the cattle drove better coming back home.  A few times the cattle bedded down on the gravel airstrip and the Aldingers even got a letter from the government about that. Ed Davidson's comment on cows seemed very true at times. He said he didn't know how something that tasted so good could be so dumb.