Anyone who owns animals shouldn’t be surprised that humor abounds on a farm. There’s actually a children’s book called Down on the Funny Farm — a naïve farmer thinks he’s struck a great deal when an old man sells his farm for one dollar only to discover a horse on the roof who thinks he’s a rooster and a barnyard full of animals with an identity crisis. Remember “Babe”? It’s not only farm animals, though. Peggy Fox shared the story of feeding her many cats one morning, where they all sat readied in front of their individual bowls lining the walkway to her house, only to discover at the end of the row – a raccoon, patiently pretending to be one of them.
There are also some animals who mistake themselves for humans, which is usually how “Bossy” earned her name. Virginia Welch wrote humorous articles on the clandestine methods of departing from home due to a goose who considered her family “the flock”, and on her Great Dane, who ”sat upright in the car like a chauffeured dowager”. Peggy Fox, no stranger to animal companions, recalled a frazzled chicken that boldly flew into her kitchen during a storm. She promptly made herself at home in front of the imposing fireplace and settled in. When the evening news came on, she hopped onto husband Charlie’s shoulder and watched the news with him nightly. They named her Mrs. Biddle.
Many townsfolk own chickens, mostly for eggs, a few for roasting, and some for the purpose of entertainment. We can’t tell whether or not chickens have a sense of humor, but they sure know how to fuel one. For a number of years, Cindy Bezanson delighted us with wonderful tales on the antics of her chickens, with the imagined conversations of the members of the flock, all of whom had names that matched their personalities, and with poems like “Little Chicken Fancy Pants”.
In Alison Davis’ Hampton Remembers, Vera Hoffman and Evelyn Estabrooks spoke of the free-range chickens that would hide their nests all over the farm, and of finding clutches of little chicks hatched in secret nests. The solution – placing a china egg into the nest in the barn to encourage them to lay their eggs there instead of where the farmers couldn’t find them.
And then there were Andrew Rindge’s chickens. Harold Stone relayed that when neighbors came once to check on Rindge, “he threw off the bed covers to get out – ‘course he was fully dressed – and there was a settin’ hen in the bed there on the other side from where he was, settin’ on some eggs.”
Stories of Andrew Rindge and his farm are legendary. Margaret Marcus recalled: “The chickens roosted on the bottom of his bed and the pig lived in the little room off the hall there. He would cook potatoes in one of those iron pots – he would fill that with potatoes and cook them over the fire on the hearthstone and then when they were done and cooled off he’d open the door and call the pigs. They’d come in and eat out of the pot and he’d reach down and get a potato and eat right along with the pigs.”
Rindge’s farm is also one of the most famous in Hampton. Known today as “Trailwood”, the nature preserve was once the home of Pulitzer Prize winning naturalist Edwin Way Teale, who also wrote stories of the infamous Rindge in his A Naturalist Buys and Old Farm. “His buckboard, drawn by an ancient sorrel horse, rolled along on wheels of different makes and sizes. It announced its coming by the squeal of ungreased axles…the sheep he brought indoors at lambing time, quarrels with his neighbors over livestock running wild…provided a pre-soap-opera excitement for the village.” Teale wrote of others who dwelled at Trailwood as well. “Monument Pasture”, topped to this day with “Hughes’ Monument”, is named for a hired man who once announced “nobody is ever going to build a monument to me so I will build a monument to myself,” a man who always “drove high-stepping horses”, and a couple, “inclined to nudism.”
This was not the only farm in town notable for this particular attribute. The tall stone walls still seen along the Edwards Preserve suggest that sheep were raised on what was once the Edwards Farm, however, there’s less speculation regarding their son’s enterprise, a nudist colony on the Old Town Pound portion of the property. During the “Random Recollections” that interviewed residents who grew up here, Jo Freeman confirmed that she was the “look out” for neighborhood boys who knew where there was a knot hole in the fence. Her brother Al Freeman recalled the time that the Plymouth coup they were using for surveillance purposes backed into a stonewall when Mr. Edwards heard them and let his dogs out. The most compelling proof was provided by John Berard, whose father Leon built the Rec Hall at the camp, which included a sauna for the colony’s use. Reportedly, there was “activity” while construction was completed, and the mother of one young apprentice expressed concern that her son wasn’t eating the lunches she packed him. Obviously, he had better things to do during his break.
We haven’t encountered any entertaining stories surviving the test of time for sheep, goats or pigs, though we’re sure they exist, and there were probably plenty of laughs at the greased pig contests which were annual events on Memorial Day. Maybe the farmers refrained from cultivating close relationships with pigs since they were meant to be eaten. As Ethel Jaworski relayed in Hampton Remembers, some pigs would be sold, some were reserved for the family, and “all but the squeal” was used.
There are a few for cows. Peggy Fox remembered the infamous Bossy, though not with affection. “Bossy was some kind of cow – couldn’t stand women or a man in a city suit!” Peggy relayed. “It was funny, milking Bossy was no problem – just don’t get in front of her face.” At least not when wearing a suit or a dress.
Phyllis Stone shared her experience at the first cattle auction she went to with ‘The Stone Brothers’, Walt and Clarence. “Elmer always said – look at the back end. It should look like it was hit with a board, and check out its teeth,” Phyllis recalled. “The auctioneer brought out this cow and I thought – look at those teeth! Look at that stature! This must be a good cow!” She raised her hand at the last minute, and the cow was “Sold! For $900!”
“What did you do that for?” Walt asked, aghast at the price. And Clarence christened the cow “Fort Knox”. Needless to say, Phyllis was never invited to another cattle auction. And Fort Knox ‘earned her weight in gold’ again when she broke the diary farm’s milking machine.
Phyllis’ bidding abilities are not the only example of humorous stories originating from the foibles of the farmers rather than the animals. In a Gazette series called “Boyhood Recollections”, Wendell Davis wrote that in the early fifties, he and Charley Peeples, the minister, raised sheep and cattle together in the barn north of to the Congregational Church. For several months they built a manure pile on top of the Chapel’s well, which they removed before there were any serious problems. Perhaps Charley Peeples should have stuck to preaching.
No wonder there weren’t more mistakes made, as one element of farming is undisputed: farmers worked hard. In Hampton Remembers, Arthur Kimball relayed: “My mother was a busy woman. Besides bringing up her twelve children and doing all the cooking, she washed all the milk pails and she took in washing, too. Laundry, that is. And she helped when babies were born. She’d pack her bag and go stay a week with a new mother. That was her vacation.”
Of course, farm work comes with a great deal of dirt, and we ponder today at how farmers ever kept themselves clean in the absence of plumbing, and shutter at the thought of some of their methods revealed in Hampton Remembers.
From Ethel Jaworski:
When it came to be bath time we’d heat more water on the stove in teakettles and put it in the bathtub and open the oven door for heat. Right in the kitchen there, one after the other, or two at a time if we were small, we’d get in and we’d all use the same bath water – every Saturday night or if there was a special occasion maybe during the week.
Harold Stone didn’t bother with the weekly bath: “I use to go swimming every day,” he relayed. “And I went in all winter one year. But I didn’t go when the wind was blowing. Well I certainly enjoyed it! And if I felt a cold comin’ on it would kill it every time. I had to cut through a lot of ice sometimes. But there was only one time I felt a little cool. ‘Course you’d get in, get wet, lather up, get in and soak off — and it wasn’t as bad as taking sponge baths in a cold room in cold water – ‘cause of course you kept moving.”
Harold certainly took cleanliness seriously, and shared some of the odorous consequences of the minimalists’ weekly cleanse:
“If your feet sweat that was ah….like the little fella said when the teacher asked him what he was crying about – he was studying his physiology lesson and he says ‘I was put together wrong,’ he says, ‘Here it says you smell with your nose and you run with your feet, but’, he says, ‘my nose runs and my feet smell!’”
Dayna McDermott