Individual Details
Dorothy Ann Malin
(28 Aug 1941 - )
Memories written by Dorothy Ann Malin Judge-Schenke, Grandaughter of Katherine Delly
Katherine was born in Czechoslovakia, in a farming community. The farming communities were arranged differently than in the US. There was a village where everyone lived. They would go out every day to their farmland which was a little distance from the homes. Family members were close and there was plenty of opportunity for the children to get to know all their aunts and uncles etc. She told of getting into some kind of mischief and being afraid to go home to face the punishment. So, she went to her Aunt's house and stayed for several days, weeks, or months, (I don't know how long) at least until she figured the trouble had passed. She worked as a domestic in her home village to help with the family income. She told of the lady of the house giving her a nickel every day to buy a glass of beer so she would grow bigger. The lady found out she was taking the nickel home to give to her mother and became angry and insisted she buy the beer!!! She was a very small person. She stood at about 5' and weighed just over 100 lbs. She felt very big when she was older because she weighed about 120lbs.
Came to this country at the age of 16. Her sponsor was Mrs. Pulas, her Aunt. At that time a single woman could not immigrate to this country without a sponsor. She came to stay only 3 years. She promised her Mother she would be back in 3 years. She never returned the the land her birth, and never saw her Mother again. She lived in Chicago, and worked as a domestic for a Jewish family on the north shore of Chicago. She named her first child Leona, after the lady she worked for. She learned Kosher Jewish cooking from this family. One time she had fixed some kind of meat for a party and had it on the side board. The dog got hold of it, and of course it was ruined. She was frantic and knew she did not have time to do the whole thing again. She went to the butcher and bought something else. She figured the family would not know it was not kosher and the party was saved. She felt guilty about that for many years. It was during her stay in Chicago, that she went to night school to learn English. She always had a heavy accent and almost always put her nouns before her adj. or verbs after the adverbs, as in "wash dish" for diswasher, whether she was speaking or writing. except when she said it it sounded like "vash dish".
She met Ladislav Shimek, the married in Chicago. They fell for a sales pitch by a land salesman, bought land in Utah, and moved to the 40 acre farm in Tremonton. It was not the kind of land they thought they were buying, but they persevered. They planted apple trees and made their living growing and selling apples. They raised cows, pigs, chickens, geese and ducks. They had work horses for the plowing etc. They built a small house, barn, chicken coops, smoke house and other buildings. Ladislav and Katherine butchered and smoked their own meat, probably made cheese and raised bees. They were accepted in the community of Tremonton, but never joined the Mormon church, so they were always sort of looked down upon. However, they were respected in the community and they had no trouble selling their meat and produce.
They had a difficult time at first and Ladislav (Otto) had to go to Salt Lake city to work in a brewery to make ends meet before the apple orchards started producing. Leona, was born less than 9 mo after their marriage. Otto was in Salt Lake City, working when she was born. Kate had trouble nursing her, and resorted to giving the little baby cows milk. That made her very sick. In the middle of winter, Kate bundled up the baby and herself and ran down the road for a mile to a neighbor for help, she thought the baby was dying. The neighbor helped Kate with feeding the baby and the baby lived.
Kate and Otto had a difficult marriage and she left him several times. He was not home much for the first few years and she had to take care of the baby and care for the farm by herself. This must have been very difficult for her because she was raised in a village with many family members close by to help with farming, child raising etc. She was very lonely and homesick for a long time.
She had many unwanted pregnancies and would go to the indians living in the area for abortions. The real pivotal event that changed she and Otto's relationship forever was a late abortion, and the child was a boy. He never forgave her for that. It was 12 years before they had another child, Opal. She was the light of her father's life.
Kate raised many chickens and was known in the area for the superior quality of her chickens. She purchased fertile eggs in the spring and would hatch them in a brooder. I think that is how she raised all her fowl, ducks, geese, and chickens. She cared for the baby chicks and when they were old enough they were given the freedom of the farm. She fenced off her flower and vegetable gardens to protect them from little beaks. Every evening the pullets (very young chickens) would go to roost in the chicken house. I remember her telling stories of the cyotes that would raid the chicken coop and kill and eat chickens. I do not know how she stopped the raider. She butchered and sold over 500 chickens in a season. She was very particular about the chickens she sold whether it was 2 or 60 at a time. She made sure each one did not have a flaw, feather, or hair on it's skin. She could tell which young chickens were roosters and they were the ones that she butchered. The hens were saved for egg laying. She always tried to get all the roosters out of the way before they started mating with the hens, because that would cause blood spots in the eggs and she could not sell them. The as the hens grew up, they would start laying eggs all over the farm. It was a game of hide and seek for the eggs. When they started laying she would put them in the adult hen house, there were two. One was for the young ones and the other was for the 2yr. olds. After 2 yrs they did not lay well and she butchered them and sold them as stewing hens.
I do not know what else they may have done on the farm, but they had an apple press, so I assume they made apple cider and probably fed the mash to the livestock.
There was a big iron kettle in the yard that hung from a pole suspended over a fire. This was where they would boil water for hog butchering. The kettle was also used to separate the honey from the honey comb before they had a honey separator. It must have taken great skill to have the fire hot enough to separate the wax from the honey without burning the honey. ( a honey separator was a centrifuge. You would take the honey comb and cut off the very top of the comb and put it in the centrifuge and all the honey would be spun out and would run into containers.)
There was no running water in the house. There was a pump in the back porch area, this is where they got all their water. There was an outhouse, a "one holer". The house was quite small. There was a kitchen, eating area with a built in china cabinet and pantry, living room, two small bedrooms, and an attic that could only be entered from outside the house.
One bedroom had a double bed and a dresser and there was just enough room to get into bed between the bed and the dresser. Sometimes it was easier to climb over the end of the bed. Grandpa slept in the room with the twin bed. It was somewhat larger. His room was the only one with a closet.
The attic had a wooden floor, a double bed, and exposed rafters. There were lots of things stored in the attic. Grandma had several down comforters and down pillows hanging over the rafters. She had a trunk with very beautiful things inside. The most special was the Czechoslovakian womans dress. There was a cotton blouse with a big lace standup collar and puffy sleeves and a black skirt with the most beautiful embrodery and beads around the skirt. As a child it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. She also had buckets, pans, canners, boxes of pictures and who knows what else. It seems the attic was a place of fascination and mystery. I do not remember getting to go through the attic like I wanted.
The built a china and dish storage cabinet, it was also a place of fascination. She had sets of cups and saucers all decorated with flowers and gold rims. My sister sold all of them after Mom died. They would have been nice to pass along to the family. She had different kinds of every day glasses too. We had our favorites of these too. The most favorite was the one that was in the shape of a barrel.
The pantry always had goodies and a very good smell. We could almost always find "kisses" in various containers. She would make special things for our summer visits.
The back porch was screened in the summer and glassed in in the winter. The floor was concrete and had a drain in the middle of the floor. There were 4 steps that went into the cellar. This had a dirt floor, shelves, and an old icebox. It was always cool down there and had the smell of hops and other beer ingredients. Grandpa made beer and sometimes the bottles would burst, hence the beer smell.
She had a wood fired stove and many very large pans for heating water. There was also a large coal stove for heat in the winter. Baths were taken in a "bath tub" in the kitchen eating area. Water was boiled on the stove and added to the cold water from the pump for bathing. I do not know how the bath tub was emptied. I cannot imagine carrying the thing out to dump in the yard. There was a drain in the floor on the porch and the household waste water was emptied there. The water ran down the drain and into a "ditch" close to the house. Sometimes she would use the waste water to water her garden.
They always had livestock, cows, horses, and pigs. The horses were used to pull some of the machinery that they used to care for the apples, harvest the alfalfa etc. I am sure they used the pigs for slaughter and Otto would smoke the meat. It was probably stored in the cellar under the house.
There was also a large equipment shed where the tractor and other equipment was kept. The roof of the shed was sod and grass and weeds grew all over it. All the tools and a large tool bench resided here. At one end there were steps that went down to another cellar. She had large containters for eggs. They were kept there and she sold them to market. There was a bare lightbulb for "candling" the eggs. Candling meant holding each egg up to the light and looking for a blood spot or double yolks. The word candling came from the time when they used candles to "see through" the egg shell. The eggs were then put pointed side down into the egg flats. The rejects were taken into the house for family use. She used egg yolks to shampoo her hair. They made her hair very shiny and pretty. Her hair was long and sort of an auburn color. She wore braids pinned up over the top of her head.
In the 1940's I remember her talking about sending packages back to her family. This was after the war. she tried very hard to help them. She talked about having to be careful about what she sent because the packages were almost always opened and the good stuff was removed. She may have hidden money in the packages too. This was during the Soviet occupation. I remember once when she sent oranges. Her family had not seen oranges for years and were so grateful. This was at Christmas. They would write letters and had some kind of code because the letters were opened and read. She would let them know when a package was sent etc. All in some kind of code.
I must have been about 6 or 7 when they had the house remodeled and got indoor plumbing and running water. It was quite an event for them. It made their lives much easier. They still had well water that tasted terrible. Every year when we went to visit the water would make us sick, so the folks went to town to get water for drinking.
She got up very early every morning. Around 5 or 6. It was out to let the chickens out of the chicken coop, scatter wheat, put mash in the feeding troughs, and give them fresh water. Then it was out to the barn to milk cows. It was very hard to get up when Grandma did. Mom did not like us up that early. I am not sure whether Grandma liked us up to help her. As we got older we would make it out to the barn to watch her milk the cows. It was so exciting when she let us milk the cows. She did not waste any time and could milk a cow in a flash. I know we would slow her down, but she never seemed to mind. If there was a calf she would use some of the milk to feed the calf. They would go crazy when they saw the bucket of milk. It was too difficult for us to hold the bucket for the calf, but it sure was fun to watch.
Some mornings started busier that others. She would put the pans of water on the stove to boil for butchering chickens. This was a particularly exciting time for us as children. She would get all her other chores done before starting to kill the chickens.
The night before she would go to the chicken coop, after all the chickens had settled down for the night, with a long pole that had a hook on the end. She would pick out the roosters and use the long pole to hook their legs and pull them off the perches. The chickens would be taken to a very small chicken coop for the night.
When the water was hot it was poured into a large tub. There were two other large tubs that were filled with cold water, plus another one in the cellar. She would take about 4-5 chickens at a time, holding them by the legs and take them to the chopping log. with the chickens being held upside down, she would grab one of the chickens heads, shake it, put it on the chopping log, take the ax, and chop the head off. The headless chicken would be thrown into the ditch where it flopped around for a while. We loved to watch the headless chickens flop around like that. When the flopping had stopped the chickens would be taken to the hot water tub, where they would be plunged, one at a time into the hot water. They would be held upside down and dunked like they were old clothes being slopped up and down in the water. The feathers were then pulled off very easily. I remember her pulling feathers, stopping to cool her hands off by clapping them together, and resuming the feather pulling. After much begging, she would let us try our hand at feather pulling. Of course the excercise did not last long, as the feathers were much too hot for little hands.
Each chicken had its turn at the cutting board. The guts would be pulled out and fell into a bucket. She would carefully cut the gall bladder from the liver, clean out the gizzard, and clean the heart. If she accidently broke to gall bladder, the liver would be discarded as the bile would make it taste very bitter. The chicken was rinsed under the pump and checked for errant feathers and hair. She burned the hair off with fire from a newspaper. The chicken was then put into a tub of cold water. After a period of time, the chickens were moved to the second tub of cold water, and then were placed in the cellar in another tub of cold water. The cold water cooled the chickens quickly and prevented them from getting stiff. The buyers would usually come the same day to pick up the chickens.
All the feathers and guts were buried in the field.
She did not like sparrows and took great pains to make sure they did not nest in her yard. The sparrows would eat the chicken feed and the wheat. She would wait till the little birds hatched and were feathered and would take the ladder and pull the nest down. Of course us children were very sympathetic to the baby birds and if we saw what was happening we would take the babies, put them in a box, and try to keep them alive. I imagine it kept us quite busy and most of the baby birds must have died. She was pretty careful about when she took the nests down. There is nothing like an outraged child having a fit over some baby birds.
Memories of Life
by Dorothy Ann Malin Judge Schenke
Grandpa
My Grandpa was a sort of mysterious person to a little girl. He stood 5’9” tall with a rotund figure. He had a mustache that hid the fact that he kept his teeth in his dresser drawer. At least I did not notice that he did not wear his teeth. He had bright blue eyes, and eyelids that drooped at the outer corners. His forehead melded with his doomed bald head and had the kind of age spots that you would find on the hands of an older woman. He wore Oshkosh coveralls over a dingy low cut undershirt, or if it was cold, a long sleeved thermal knit. When he dressed up he wore a plaid shirt under the coveralls. Curiously, (at least to a child) he wore copper bracelets that turned his wrists slightly green. He said they attracted electricity and zapped his arthritic joints. He walked with a waddle that told you his knees complained with every step. He had at least one tattoo, blurred with age, on his arm. I do not remember exactly where on his arm or even what it pictured ( maybe an eagle). It was just a part of grandpa.
As a very small girl, I’m told, I followed him around all day watching what he did and asking very small girl questions. He would go out to the barnyard to feed the cows and horses, who were kept in a corral behind the barn. He used a very large pitch fork to throw big piles of hay into the manger. We loved to climb to the top of hay stack, with Grandpa’s permission, and slide down to the bottom. The hay was dusty and dry, and smelled very good. Mom was mortified, and more than a little jealous because she never got to slide down the hay stack. . I remember her telling us to get off the hay stack, and he telling her to leave us alone. Of course, that is what Grandpas are for, to bend the rules and let the kids have fun.
He had two horses, a big white horse named King and a dapple gray named Queen. They were work horses, and he used them instead of the tractor to pull the spray machine out into the apple orchards and the “slip” into the fields to bring in the hay. August was the time of cutting hay, and the horses pulled the “slip” out to the field where Grandma and Grandpa would use pitch forks to pick up the dry alfalfa from the field and throw it onto the “slip” to bring it back to the hay stack.
The “slip” was a large flat platform made out of wood that slid along the ground. I do not know if there were runners underneath, or if the bottom was flat. When it was empty they let us ride on it out to the field. Most of the time we would sit down it was too scary to stand up like the adults. They had the forks to help steady them on the jerky ride. When the slip was full, the hay was stacked way above our heads, and there was only the smallest of foot holds along the sides and back of the slip. We would hang onto the hay with our little hands, and try not to fall off. Falling off meant that we would have to walk back to the yard because it was impossible for us to get a foot hold and a hand hold on the moving slip. How we hated to fall off! It was hot in Utah in August, and the walk back seemed really long. Somehow he would get some ropes around the hay on the slip, and attach them to the tractor and pull this big pile of hay onto the top of the hay stack by the barn. I really don’t remember that process. I am sure that he used the horses to do all the work before he bought himself the tractor. I do not remember how long the horses were around, but one summer when we arrived at the farm, they were gone, to the glue factory I guess.
Of course, this was before events and stories forever colored our relationship.
Memories written by Dorothy Ann Malin Judge-Schenke, Grandaughter of Katherine Delly
<p></p>
<p>Katherine was born in Czechoslovakia, in a farming community. The farming communities were arranged differently than in the US. There was a village where everyone lived. They would go out every day to their farmland which was a little distance from the homes. Family members were close and there was plenty of opportunity for the children to get to know all their aunts and uncles etc. She told of getting into some kind of mischief and being afraid to go home to face the punishment. So, she went to her Aunt's house and stayed for several days, weeks, or months, (I don't know how long) at least until she figured the trouble had passed. She worked as a domestic in her home village to help with the family income. She told of the lady of the house giving her a nickel every day to buy a glass of beer so she would grow bigger. The lady found out she was taking the nickel home to give to her mother and became angry and insisted she buy the beer!!! She was a very small person. She stood at about 5' and weighed just over 100 lbs. She felt very big when she was older because she weighed about 120lbs.
<p></p>
<p>Came to this country at the age of 16. Her sponsor was Mrs. Pulas, her Aunt. At that time a single woman could not immigrate to this country without a sponsor. She came to stay only 3 years. She promised her Mother she would be back in 3 years. She never returned the the land her birth, and never saw her Mother again. She lived in Chicago, and worked as a domestic for a Jewish family on the north shore of Chicago. She named her first child Leona, after the lady she worked for. She learned Kosher Jewish cooking from this family. One time she had fixed some kind of meat for a party and had it on the side board. The dog got hold of it, and of course it was ruined. She was frantic and knew she did not have time to do the whole thing again. She went to the butcher and bought something else. She figured the family would not know it was not kosher and the party was saved. She felt guilty about that for many years. It was during her stay in Chicago, that she went to night school to learn English. She always had a heavy accent and almost always put her nouns before her adj. or verbs after the adverbs, as in "wash dish" for diswasher, whether she was speaking or writing. except when she said it it sounded like "vash dish".
<p></p>
<p>She met Ladislav Shimek, the married in Chicago. They fell for a sales pitch by a land salesman, bought land in Utah, and moved to the 40 acre farm in Tremonton. It was not the kind of land they thought they were buying, but they persevered. They planted apple trees and made their living growing and selling apples. They raised cows, pigs, chickens, geese and ducks. They had work horses for the plowing etc. They built a small house, barn, chicken coops, smoke house and other buildings. Ladislav and Katherine butchered and smoked their own meat, probably made cheese and raised bees. They were accepted in the community of Tremonton, but never joined the Mormon church, so they were always sort of looked down upon. However, they were respected in the community and they had no trouble selling their meat and produce.
<p></p>
<p>They had a difficult time at first and Ladislav (Otto) had to go to Salt Lake city to work in a brewery to make ends meet before the apple orchards started producing. Leona, was born less than 9 mo after their marriage. Otto was in Salt Lake City, working when she was born. Kate had trouble nursing her, and resorted to giving the little baby cows milk. That made her very sick. In the middle of winter, Kate bundled up the baby and herself and ran down the road for a mile to a neighbor for help, she thought the baby was dying. The neighbor helped Kate with feeding the baby and the baby lived.
<p></p>
<p>Kate and Otto had a difficult marriage and she left him several times. He was not home much for the first few years and she had to take care of the baby and care for the farm by herself. This must have been very difficult for her because she was raised in a village with many family members close by to help with farming, child raising etc. She was very lonely and homesick for a long time.
<p></p>
<p>She had many unwanted pregnancies and would go to the indians living in the area for abortions. The real pivotal event that changed she and Otto's relationship forever was a late abortion, and the child was a boy. He never forgave her for that. It was 12 years before they had another child, Opal. She was the light of her father's life.
<p></p>
<p>Kate raised many chickens and was known in the area for the superior quality of her chickens. She purchased fertile eggs in the spring and would hatch them in a brooder. I think that is how she raised all her fowl, ducks, geese, and chickens. She cared for the baby chicks and when they were old enough they were given the freedom of the farm. She fenced off her flower and vegetable gardens to protect them from little beaks. Every evening the pullets (very young chickens) would go to roost in the chicken house. I remember her telling stories of the cyotes that would raid the chicken coop and kill and eat chickens. I do not know how she stopped the raider. She butchered and sold over 500 chickens in a season. She was very particular about the chickens she sold whether it was 2 or 60 at a time. She made sure each one did not have a flaw, feather, or hair on it's skin. She could tell which young chickens were roosters and they were the ones that she butchered. The hens were saved for egg laying. She always tried to get all the roosters out of the way before they started mating with the hens, because that would cause blood spots in the eggs and she could not sell them. The as the hens grew up, they would start laying eggs all over the farm. It was a game of hide and seek for the eggs. When they started laying she would put them in the adult hen house, there were two. One was for the young ones and the other was for the 2yr. olds. After 2 yrs they did not lay well and she butchered them and sold them as stewing hens.
<p></p>
<p>I do not know what else they may have done on the farm, but they had an apple press, so I assume they made apple cider and probably fed the mash to the livestock.
<p></p>
<p>There was a big iron kettle in the yard that hung from a pole suspended over a fire. This was where they would boil water for hog butchering. The kettle was also used to separate the honey from the honey comb before they had a honey separator. It must have taken great skill to have the fire hot enough to separate the wax from the honey without burning the honey. ( a honey separator was a centrifuge. You would take the honey comb and cut off the very top of the comb and put it in the centrifuge and all the honey would be spun out and would run into containers.)
<p></p>
<p>There was no running water in the house. There was a pump in the back porch area, this is where they got all their water. There was an outhouse, a "one holer". The house was quite small. There was a kitchen, eating area with a built in china cabinet and pantry, living room, two small bedrooms, and an attic that could only be entered from outside the house.
<p></p>
<p>One bedroom had a double bed and a dresser and there was just enough room to get into bed between the bed and the dresser. Sometimes it was easier to climb over the end of the bed. Grandpa slept in the room with the twin bed. It was somewhat larger. His room was the only one with a closet.
<p></p>
<p>The attic had a wooden floor, a double bed, and exposed rafters. There were lots of things stored in the attic. Grandma had several down comforters and down pillows hanging over the rafters. She had a trunk with very beautiful things inside. The most special was the Czechoslovakian womans dress. There was a cotton blouse with a big lace standup collar and puffy sleeves and a black skirt with the most beautiful embrodery and beads around the skirt. As a child it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. She also had buckets, pans, canners, boxes of pictures and who knows what else. It seems the attic was a place of fascination and mystery. I do not remember getting to go through the attic like I wanted.
<p></p>
<p>The built in china and dish storage cabinet was also a place of fascination. She had sets of cups and saucers all decorated with flowers and gold rims. My sister sold all of them after Mom died. They would have been nice to pass along to the family. She had different kinds of every day glasses too. We had our favorites of these too. The most favorite was the one that was in the shape of a barrel.
<p></p>
<p>The pantry always had goodies and a very good smell. We could almost always find "kisses" in various containers. She would make special things for our summer visits.
<p></p>
<p>The back porch was screened in the summer and glassed in in the winter. The floor was concrete and had a drain in the middle of the floor. There were 4 steps that went into the cellar. This had a dirt floor, shelves, and an old icebox. It was always cool down there and had the smell of hops and other beer ingredients. Grandpa made beer and sometimes the bottles would burst, hence the beer smell.
<p></p>
<p>She had a wood fired stove and many very large pans for heating water. There was also a large coal stove for heat in the winter. Baths were taken in a "bath tub" in the kitchen eating area. Water was boiled on the stove and added to the cold water from the pump for bathing. I do not know how the bath tub was emptied. I cannot imagine carrying the thing out to dump in the yard. There was a drain in the floor on the porch and the household waste water was emptied there. The water ran down the drain and into a "ditch" close to the house. Sometimes she would use the waste water to water her garden.
<p></p>
<p>They always had livestock, cows, horses, and pigs. The horses were used to pull some of the machinery that they used to care for the apples, harvest the alfalfa etc. I am sure they used the pigs for slaughter and Otto would smoke the meat. It was probably stored in the cellar under the house.
<p></p>
<p>There was also a large equipment shed where the tractor and other equipment was kept. The roof of the shed was sod and grass and weeds grew all over it. All the tools and a large tool bench resided here. At one end there were steps that went down to another cellar. She had large containters for eggs. They were kept there and she sold them to market. There was a bare lightbulb for "candling" the eggs. Candling meant holding each egg up to the light and looking for a blood spot or double yolks. The word candling came from the time when they used candles to "see through" the egg shell. The eggs were then put pointed side down into the egg flats. The rejects were taken into the house for family use. She used egg yolks to shampoo her hair. They made her hair very shiny and pretty. Her hair was long and sort of an auburn color. She wore braids pinned up over the top of her head.
<p></p>
<p>In the 1940's I remember her talking about sending packages back to her family. This was after the war. she tried very hard to help them. She talked about having to be careful about what she sent because the packages were almost always opened and the good stuff was removed. She may have hidden money in the packages too. This was during the Soviet occupation. I remember once when she sent oranges. Her family had not seen oranges for years and were so grateful. This was at Christmas. They would write letters and had some kind of code because the letters were opened and read. She would let them know when a package was sent etc. All in some kind of code.
<p></p>
<p>I must have been about 6 or 7 when they had the house remodeled and got indoor plumbing and running water. It was quite an event for them. It made their lives much easier. They still had well water that tasted terrible. Every year when we went to visit the water would make us sick, so the folks went to town to get water for drinking.
<p></p>
<p>She got up very early every morning. Around 5 or 6. It was out to let the chickens out of the chicken coop, scatter wheat, put mash in the feeding troughs, and give them fresh water. Then it was out to the barn to milk cows. It was very hard to get up when Grandma did. Mom did not like us up that early. I am not sure whether Grandma liked us up to help her. As we got older we would make it out to the barn to watch her milk the cows. It was so exciting when she let us milk the cows. She did not waste any time and could milk a cow in a flash. I know we would slow her down, but she never seemed to mind. If there was a calf she would use some of the milk to feed the calf. They would go crazy when they saw the bucket of milk. It was too difficult for us to hold the bucket for the calf, but it sure was fun to watch.
<p></p>
<p>Some mornings started busier that others. She would put the pans of water on the stove to boil for butchering chickens. This was a particularly exciting time for us as children. She would get all her other chores done before starting to kill the chickens.
<p></p>
<p>The night before she would go to the chicken coop, after all the chickens had settled down for the night, with a long pole that had a hook on the end. She would pick out the roosters and use the long pole to hook their legs and pull them off the perches. The chickens would be taken to a very small chicken coop for the night.
<p></p>
<p>When the water was hot it was poured into a large tub. There were two other large tubs that were filled with cold water, plus another one in the cellar. She would take about 4-5 chickens at a time, holding them by the legs and take them to the chopping log. with the chickens being held upside down, she would grab one of the chickens heads, shake it, put it on the chopping log, take the ax, and chop the head off. The headless chicken would be thrown into the ditch where it flopped around for a while. We loved to watch the headless chickens flop around like that. When the flopping had stopped the chickens would be taken to the hot water tub, where they would be plunged, one at a time into the hot water. They would be held upside down and dunked like they were old clothes being slopped up and down in the water. The feathers were then pulled off very easily. I remember her pulling feathers, stopping to cool her hands off by clapping them together, and resuming the feather pulling. After much begging, she would let us try our hand at feather pulling. Of course the excercise did not last long, as the feathers were much too hot for little hands.
<p></p>
<p>Each chicken had its turn at the cutting board. The guts would be pulled out and fell into a bucket. She would carefully cut the gall bladder from the liver, clean out the gizzard, and clean the heart. If she accidently broke to gall bladder, the liver would be discarded as the bile would make it taste very bitter. The chicken was rinsed under the pump and checked for errant feathers and hair. She burned the hair off with fire from a newspaper. The chicken was then put into a tub of cold water. After a period of time, the chickens were moved to the second tub of cold water, and then were placed in the cellar in another tub of cold water. The cold water cooled the chickens quickly and prevented them from getting stiff. The buyers would usually come the same day to pick up the chickens.
<p></p>
<p>All the feathers and guts were buried in the field.</p>
<p></p>
<p>She did not like sparrows and took great pains to make sure they did not nest in her yard. The sparrows would eat the chicken feed and the wheat. She would wait till the little birds hatched and were feathered and would take the ladder and pull the nest down. Of course us children were very sympathetic to the baby birds and if we saw what was happening we would take the babies, put them in a box, and try to keep them alive. I imagine it kept us quite busy and most of the baby birds must have died. She was pretty careful about when she took the nests down. There is nothing like an outraged child having a fit over some baby birds.
<p></p>
<p>Memories of Life</p>
<p></p>
<p>by Dorothy Ann Malin Judge Schenke</p>
<p></p>
<p>Grandpa</p>
<p></p>
<p>My Grandpa was a sort of mysterious person to a little girl. He stood 5’9” tall with a rotund figure. He had a mustache that hid the fact that he kept his teeth in his dresser drawer. At least I did not notice that he did not wear his teeth. He had bright blue eyes, and eyelids that drooped at the outer corners. His forehead melded with his doomed bald head and had the kind of age spots that you would find on the hands of an older woman. He wore Oshkosh coveralls over a dingy low cut undershirt, or if it was cold, a long sleeved thermal knit. When he dressed up he wore a plaid shirt under the coveralls. Curiously, (at least to a child) he wore copper bracelets that turned his wrists slightly green. He said they attracted electricity and zapped his arthritic joints. He walked with a waddle that told you his knees complained with every step. He had at least one tattoo, blurred with age, on his arm. I do not remember exactly where on his arm or even what it pictured ( maybe an eagle). It was just a part of grandpa.
<p></p>
<p>As a very small girl, I’m told, I followed him around all day watching what he did and asking very small girl questions. He would go out to the barnyard to feed the cows and horses, who were kept in a corral behind the barn. He used a very large pitch fork to throw big piles of hay into the manger. We loved to climb to the top of hay stack, with Grandpa’s permission, and slide down to the bottom. The hay was dusty and dry, and smelled very good. Mom was mortified, and more than a little jealous because she never got to slide down the hay stack. . I remember her telling us to get off the hay stack, and he telling her to leave us alone. Of course, that is what Grandpas are for, to bend the rules and let the kids have fun.
<p></p>
<p>He had two horses, a big white horse named King and a dapple gray named Queen. They were work horses, and he used them instead of the tractor to pull the spray machine out into the apple orchards and the “slip” into the fields to bring in the hay. August was the time of cutting hay, and the horses pulled the “slip” out to the field where Grandma and Grandpa would use pitch forks to pick up the dry alfalfa from the field and throw it onto the “slip” to bring it back to the hay stack.
<p></p>
<p>The “slip” was a large flat platform made out of wood that slid along the ground. I do not know if there were runners underneath, or if the bottom was flat. When it was empty they let us ride on it out to the field. Most of the time we would sit down it was too scary to stand up like the adults. They had the forks to help steady them on the jerky ride. When the slip was full, the hay was stacked way above our heads, and there was only the smallest of foot holds along the sides and back of the slip. We would hang onto the hay with our little hands, and try not to fall off. Falling off meant that we would have to walk back to the yard because it was impossible for us to get a foot hold and a hand hold on the moving slip. How we hated to fall off! It was hot in Utah in August, and the walk back seemed really long. Somehow he would get some ropes around the hay on the slip, and attach them to the tractor and pull this big pile of hay onto the top of the hay stack by the barn. I really don’t remember that process. I am sure that he used the horses to do all the work before he bought himself the tractor. I do not remember how long the horses were around, but one summer when we arrived at the farm, they were gone, to the glue factory I guess.
<p>Of course, this was before events and stories forever colored our relationship.
<p></p>
Katherine was born in Czechoslovakia, in a farming community. The farming communities were arranged differently than in the US. There was a village where everyone lived. They would go out every day to their farmland which was a little distance from the homes. Family members were close and there was plenty of opportunity for the children to get to know all their aunts and uncles etc. She told of getting into some kind of mischief and being afraid to go home to face the punishment. So, she went to her Aunt's house and stayed for several days, weeks, or months, (I don't know how long) at least until she figured the trouble had passed. She worked as a domestic in her home village to help with the family income. She told of the lady of the house giving her a nickel every day to buy a glass of beer so she would grow bigger. The lady found out she was taking the nickel home to give to her mother and became angry and insisted she buy the beer!!! She was a very small person. She stood at about 5' and weighed just over 100 lbs. She felt very big when she was older because she weighed about 120lbs.
Came to this country at the age of 16. Her sponsor was Mrs. Pulas, her Aunt. At that time a single woman could not immigrate to this country without a sponsor. She came to stay only 3 years. She promised her Mother she would be back in 3 years. She never returned the the land her birth, and never saw her Mother again. She lived in Chicago, and worked as a domestic for a Jewish family on the north shore of Chicago. She named her first child Leona, after the lady she worked for. She learned Kosher Jewish cooking from this family. One time she had fixed some kind of meat for a party and had it on the side board. The dog got hold of it, and of course it was ruined. She was frantic and knew she did not have time to do the whole thing again. She went to the butcher and bought something else. She figured the family would not know it was not kosher and the party was saved. She felt guilty about that for many years. It was during her stay in Chicago, that she went to night school to learn English. She always had a heavy accent and almost always put her nouns before her adj. or verbs after the adverbs, as in "wash dish" for diswasher, whether she was speaking or writing. except when she said it it sounded like "vash dish".
She met Ladislav Shimek, the married in Chicago. They fell for a sales pitch by a land salesman, bought land in Utah, and moved to the 40 acre farm in Tremonton. It was not the kind of land they thought they were buying, but they persevered. They planted apple trees and made their living growing and selling apples. They raised cows, pigs, chickens, geese and ducks. They had work horses for the plowing etc. They built a small house, barn, chicken coops, smoke house and other buildings. Ladislav and Katherine butchered and smoked their own meat, probably made cheese and raised bees. They were accepted in the community of Tremonton, but never joined the Mormon church, so they were always sort of looked down upon. However, they were respected in the community and they had no trouble selling their meat and produce.
They had a difficult time at first and Ladislav (Otto) had to go to Salt Lake city to work in a brewery to make ends meet before the apple orchards started producing. Leona, was born less than 9 mo after their marriage. Otto was in Salt Lake City, working when she was born. Kate had trouble nursing her, and resorted to giving the little baby cows milk. That made her very sick. In the middle of winter, Kate bundled up the baby and herself and ran down the road for a mile to a neighbor for help, she thought the baby was dying. The neighbor helped Kate with feeding the baby and the baby lived.
Kate and Otto had a difficult marriage and she left him several times. He was not home much for the first few years and she had to take care of the baby and care for the farm by herself. This must have been very difficult for her because she was raised in a village with many family members close by to help with farming, child raising etc. She was very lonely and homesick for a long time.
She had many unwanted pregnancies and would go to the indians living in the area for abortions. The real pivotal event that changed she and Otto's relationship forever was a late abortion, and the child was a boy. He never forgave her for that. It was 12 years before they had another child, Opal. She was the light of her father's life.
Kate raised many chickens and was known in the area for the superior quality of her chickens. She purchased fertile eggs in the spring and would hatch them in a brooder. I think that is how she raised all her fowl, ducks, geese, and chickens. She cared for the baby chicks and when they were old enough they were given the freedom of the farm. She fenced off her flower and vegetable gardens to protect them from little beaks. Every evening the pullets (very young chickens) would go to roost in the chicken house. I remember her telling stories of the cyotes that would raid the chicken coop and kill and eat chickens. I do not know how she stopped the raider. She butchered and sold over 500 chickens in a season. She was very particular about the chickens she sold whether it was 2 or 60 at a time. She made sure each one did not have a flaw, feather, or hair on it's skin. She could tell which young chickens were roosters and they were the ones that she butchered. The hens were saved for egg laying. She always tried to get all the roosters out of the way before they started mating with the hens, because that would cause blood spots in the eggs and she could not sell them. The as the hens grew up, they would start laying eggs all over the farm. It was a game of hide and seek for the eggs. When they started laying she would put them in the adult hen house, there were two. One was for the young ones and the other was for the 2yr. olds. After 2 yrs they did not lay well and she butchered them and sold them as stewing hens.
I do not know what else they may have done on the farm, but they had an apple press, so I assume they made apple cider and probably fed the mash to the livestock.
There was a big iron kettle in the yard that hung from a pole suspended over a fire. This was where they would boil water for hog butchering. The kettle was also used to separate the honey from the honey comb before they had a honey separator. It must have taken great skill to have the fire hot enough to separate the wax from the honey without burning the honey. ( a honey separator was a centrifuge. You would take the honey comb and cut off the very top of the comb and put it in the centrifuge and all the honey would be spun out and would run into containers.)
There was no running water in the house. There was a pump in the back porch area, this is where they got all their water. There was an outhouse, a "one holer". The house was quite small. There was a kitchen, eating area with a built in china cabinet and pantry, living room, two small bedrooms, and an attic that could only be entered from outside the house.
One bedroom had a double bed and a dresser and there was just enough room to get into bed between the bed and the dresser. Sometimes it was easier to climb over the end of the bed. Grandpa slept in the room with the twin bed. It was somewhat larger. His room was the only one with a closet.
The attic had a wooden floor, a double bed, and exposed rafters. There were lots of things stored in the attic. Grandma had several down comforters and down pillows hanging over the rafters. She had a trunk with very beautiful things inside. The most special was the Czechoslovakian womans dress. There was a cotton blouse with a big lace standup collar and puffy sleeves and a black skirt with the most beautiful embrodery and beads around the skirt. As a child it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. She also had buckets, pans, canners, boxes of pictures and who knows what else. It seems the attic was a place of fascination and mystery. I do not remember getting to go through the attic like I wanted.
The built a china and dish storage cabinet, it was also a place of fascination. She had sets of cups and saucers all decorated with flowers and gold rims. My sister sold all of them after Mom died. They would have been nice to pass along to the family. She had different kinds of every day glasses too. We had our favorites of these too. The most favorite was the one that was in the shape of a barrel.
The pantry always had goodies and a very good smell. We could almost always find "kisses" in various containers. She would make special things for our summer visits.
The back porch was screened in the summer and glassed in in the winter. The floor was concrete and had a drain in the middle of the floor. There were 4 steps that went into the cellar. This had a dirt floor, shelves, and an old icebox. It was always cool down there and had the smell of hops and other beer ingredients. Grandpa made beer and sometimes the bottles would burst, hence the beer smell.
She had a wood fired stove and many very large pans for heating water. There was also a large coal stove for heat in the winter. Baths were taken in a "bath tub" in the kitchen eating area. Water was boiled on the stove and added to the cold water from the pump for bathing. I do not know how the bath tub was emptied. I cannot imagine carrying the thing out to dump in the yard. There was a drain in the floor on the porch and the household waste water was emptied there. The water ran down the drain and into a "ditch" close to the house. Sometimes she would use the waste water to water her garden.
They always had livestock, cows, horses, and pigs. The horses were used to pull some of the machinery that they used to care for the apples, harvest the alfalfa etc. I am sure they used the pigs for slaughter and Otto would smoke the meat. It was probably stored in the cellar under the house.
There was also a large equipment shed where the tractor and other equipment was kept. The roof of the shed was sod and grass and weeds grew all over it. All the tools and a large tool bench resided here. At one end there were steps that went down to another cellar. She had large containters for eggs. They were kept there and she sold them to market. There was a bare lightbulb for "candling" the eggs. Candling meant holding each egg up to the light and looking for a blood spot or double yolks. The word candling came from the time when they used candles to "see through" the egg shell. The eggs were then put pointed side down into the egg flats. The rejects were taken into the house for family use. She used egg yolks to shampoo her hair. They made her hair very shiny and pretty. Her hair was long and sort of an auburn color. She wore braids pinned up over the top of her head.
In the 1940's I remember her talking about sending packages back to her family. This was after the war. she tried very hard to help them. She talked about having to be careful about what she sent because the packages were almost always opened and the good stuff was removed. She may have hidden money in the packages too. This was during the Soviet occupation. I remember once when she sent oranges. Her family had not seen oranges for years and were so grateful. This was at Christmas. They would write letters and had some kind of code because the letters were opened and read. She would let them know when a package was sent etc. All in some kind of code.
I must have been about 6 or 7 when they had the house remodeled and got indoor plumbing and running water. It was quite an event for them. It made their lives much easier. They still had well water that tasted terrible. Every year when we went to visit the water would make us sick, so the folks went to town to get water for drinking.
She got up very early every morning. Around 5 or 6. It was out to let the chickens out of the chicken coop, scatter wheat, put mash in the feeding troughs, and give them fresh water. Then it was out to the barn to milk cows. It was very hard to get up when Grandma did. Mom did not like us up that early. I am not sure whether Grandma liked us up to help her. As we got older we would make it out to the barn to watch her milk the cows. It was so exciting when she let us milk the cows. She did not waste any time and could milk a cow in a flash. I know we would slow her down, but she never seemed to mind. If there was a calf she would use some of the milk to feed the calf. They would go crazy when they saw the bucket of milk. It was too difficult for us to hold the bucket for the calf, but it sure was fun to watch.
Some mornings started busier that others. She would put the pans of water on the stove to boil for butchering chickens. This was a particularly exciting time for us as children. She would get all her other chores done before starting to kill the chickens.
The night before she would go to the chicken coop, after all the chickens had settled down for the night, with a long pole that had a hook on the end. She would pick out the roosters and use the long pole to hook their legs and pull them off the perches. The chickens would be taken to a very small chicken coop for the night.
When the water was hot it was poured into a large tub. There were two other large tubs that were filled with cold water, plus another one in the cellar. She would take about 4-5 chickens at a time, holding them by the legs and take them to the chopping log. with the chickens being held upside down, she would grab one of the chickens heads, shake it, put it on the chopping log, take the ax, and chop the head off. The headless chicken would be thrown into the ditch where it flopped around for a while. We loved to watch the headless chickens flop around like that. When the flopping had stopped the chickens would be taken to the hot water tub, where they would be plunged, one at a time into the hot water. They would be held upside down and dunked like they were old clothes being slopped up and down in the water. The feathers were then pulled off very easily. I remember her pulling feathers, stopping to cool her hands off by clapping them together, and resuming the feather pulling. After much begging, she would let us try our hand at feather pulling. Of course the excercise did not last long, as the feathers were much too hot for little hands.
Each chicken had its turn at the cutting board. The guts would be pulled out and fell into a bucket. She would carefully cut the gall bladder from the liver, clean out the gizzard, and clean the heart. If she accidently broke to gall bladder, the liver would be discarded as the bile would make it taste very bitter. The chicken was rinsed under the pump and checked for errant feathers and hair. She burned the hair off with fire from a newspaper. The chicken was then put into a tub of cold water. After a period of time, the chickens were moved to the second tub of cold water, and then were placed in the cellar in another tub of cold water. The cold water cooled the chickens quickly and prevented them from getting stiff. The buyers would usually come the same day to pick up the chickens.
All the feathers and guts were buried in the field.
She did not like sparrows and took great pains to make sure they did not nest in her yard. The sparrows would eat the chicken feed and the wheat. She would wait till the little birds hatched and were feathered and would take the ladder and pull the nest down. Of course us children were very sympathetic to the baby birds and if we saw what was happening we would take the babies, put them in a box, and try to keep them alive. I imagine it kept us quite busy and most of the baby birds must have died. She was pretty careful about when she took the nests down. There is nothing like an outraged child having a fit over some baby birds.
Memories of Life
by Dorothy Ann Malin Judge Schenke
Grandpa
My Grandpa was a sort of mysterious person to a little girl. He stood 5’9” tall with a rotund figure. He had a mustache that hid the fact that he kept his teeth in his dresser drawer. At least I did not notice that he did not wear his teeth. He had bright blue eyes, and eyelids that drooped at the outer corners. His forehead melded with his doomed bald head and had the kind of age spots that you would find on the hands of an older woman. He wore Oshkosh coveralls over a dingy low cut undershirt, or if it was cold, a long sleeved thermal knit. When he dressed up he wore a plaid shirt under the coveralls. Curiously, (at least to a child) he wore copper bracelets that turned his wrists slightly green. He said they attracted electricity and zapped his arthritic joints. He walked with a waddle that told you his knees complained with every step. He had at least one tattoo, blurred with age, on his arm. I do not remember exactly where on his arm or even what it pictured ( maybe an eagle). It was just a part of grandpa.
As a very small girl, I’m told, I followed him around all day watching what he did and asking very small girl questions. He would go out to the barnyard to feed the cows and horses, who were kept in a corral behind the barn. He used a very large pitch fork to throw big piles of hay into the manger. We loved to climb to the top of hay stack, with Grandpa’s permission, and slide down to the bottom. The hay was dusty and dry, and smelled very good. Mom was mortified, and more than a little jealous because she never got to slide down the hay stack. . I remember her telling us to get off the hay stack, and he telling her to leave us alone. Of course, that is what Grandpas are for, to bend the rules and let the kids have fun.
He had two horses, a big white horse named King and a dapple gray named Queen. They were work horses, and he used them instead of the tractor to pull the spray machine out into the apple orchards and the “slip” into the fields to bring in the hay. August was the time of cutting hay, and the horses pulled the “slip” out to the field where Grandma and Grandpa would use pitch forks to pick up the dry alfalfa from the field and throw it onto the “slip” to bring it back to the hay stack.
The “slip” was a large flat platform made out of wood that slid along the ground. I do not know if there were runners underneath, or if the bottom was flat. When it was empty they let us ride on it out to the field. Most of the time we would sit down it was too scary to stand up like the adults. They had the forks to help steady them on the jerky ride. When the slip was full, the hay was stacked way above our heads, and there was only the smallest of foot holds along the sides and back of the slip. We would hang onto the hay with our little hands, and try not to fall off. Falling off meant that we would have to walk back to the yard because it was impossible for us to get a foot hold and a hand hold on the moving slip. How we hated to fall off! It was hot in Utah in August, and the walk back seemed really long. Somehow he would get some ropes around the hay on the slip, and attach them to the tractor and pull this big pile of hay onto the top of the hay stack by the barn. I really don’t remember that process. I am sure that he used the horses to do all the work before he bought himself the tractor. I do not remember how long the horses were around, but one summer when we arrived at the farm, they were gone, to the glue factory I guess.
Of course, this was before events and stories forever colored our relationship.
Memories written by Dorothy Ann Malin Judge-Schenke, Grandaughter of Katherine Delly
<p></p>
<p>Katherine was born in Czechoslovakia, in a farming community. The farming communities were arranged differently than in the US. There was a village where everyone lived. They would go out every day to their farmland which was a little distance from the homes. Family members were close and there was plenty of opportunity for the children to get to know all their aunts and uncles etc. She told of getting into some kind of mischief and being afraid to go home to face the punishment. So, she went to her Aunt's house and stayed for several days, weeks, or months, (I don't know how long) at least until she figured the trouble had passed. She worked as a domestic in her home village to help with the family income. She told of the lady of the house giving her a nickel every day to buy a glass of beer so she would grow bigger. The lady found out she was taking the nickel home to give to her mother and became angry and insisted she buy the beer!!! She was a very small person. She stood at about 5' and weighed just over 100 lbs. She felt very big when she was older because she weighed about 120lbs.
<p></p>
<p>Came to this country at the age of 16. Her sponsor was Mrs. Pulas, her Aunt. At that time a single woman could not immigrate to this country without a sponsor. She came to stay only 3 years. She promised her Mother she would be back in 3 years. She never returned the the land her birth, and never saw her Mother again. She lived in Chicago, and worked as a domestic for a Jewish family on the north shore of Chicago. She named her first child Leona, after the lady she worked for. She learned Kosher Jewish cooking from this family. One time she had fixed some kind of meat for a party and had it on the side board. The dog got hold of it, and of course it was ruined. She was frantic and knew she did not have time to do the whole thing again. She went to the butcher and bought something else. She figured the family would not know it was not kosher and the party was saved. She felt guilty about that for many years. It was during her stay in Chicago, that she went to night school to learn English. She always had a heavy accent and almost always put her nouns before her adj. or verbs after the adverbs, as in "wash dish" for diswasher, whether she was speaking or writing. except when she said it it sounded like "vash dish".
<p></p>
<p>She met Ladislav Shimek, the married in Chicago. They fell for a sales pitch by a land salesman, bought land in Utah, and moved to the 40 acre farm in Tremonton. It was not the kind of land they thought they were buying, but they persevered. They planted apple trees and made their living growing and selling apples. They raised cows, pigs, chickens, geese and ducks. They had work horses for the plowing etc. They built a small house, barn, chicken coops, smoke house and other buildings. Ladislav and Katherine butchered and smoked their own meat, probably made cheese and raised bees. They were accepted in the community of Tremonton, but never joined the Mormon church, so they were always sort of looked down upon. However, they were respected in the community and they had no trouble selling their meat and produce.
<p></p>
<p>They had a difficult time at first and Ladislav (Otto) had to go to Salt Lake city to work in a brewery to make ends meet before the apple orchards started producing. Leona, was born less than 9 mo after their marriage. Otto was in Salt Lake City, working when she was born. Kate had trouble nursing her, and resorted to giving the little baby cows milk. That made her very sick. In the middle of winter, Kate bundled up the baby and herself and ran down the road for a mile to a neighbor for help, she thought the baby was dying. The neighbor helped Kate with feeding the baby and the baby lived.
<p></p>
<p>Kate and Otto had a difficult marriage and she left him several times. He was not home much for the first few years and she had to take care of the baby and care for the farm by herself. This must have been very difficult for her because she was raised in a village with many family members close by to help with farming, child raising etc. She was very lonely and homesick for a long time.
<p></p>
<p>She had many unwanted pregnancies and would go to the indians living in the area for abortions. The real pivotal event that changed she and Otto's relationship forever was a late abortion, and the child was a boy. He never forgave her for that. It was 12 years before they had another child, Opal. She was the light of her father's life.
<p></p>
<p>Kate raised many chickens and was known in the area for the superior quality of her chickens. She purchased fertile eggs in the spring and would hatch them in a brooder. I think that is how she raised all her fowl, ducks, geese, and chickens. She cared for the baby chicks and when they were old enough they were given the freedom of the farm. She fenced off her flower and vegetable gardens to protect them from little beaks. Every evening the pullets (very young chickens) would go to roost in the chicken house. I remember her telling stories of the cyotes that would raid the chicken coop and kill and eat chickens. I do not know how she stopped the raider. She butchered and sold over 500 chickens in a season. She was very particular about the chickens she sold whether it was 2 or 60 at a time. She made sure each one did not have a flaw, feather, or hair on it's skin. She could tell which young chickens were roosters and they were the ones that she butchered. The hens were saved for egg laying. She always tried to get all the roosters out of the way before they started mating with the hens, because that would cause blood spots in the eggs and she could not sell them. The as the hens grew up, they would start laying eggs all over the farm. It was a game of hide and seek for the eggs. When they started laying she would put them in the adult hen house, there were two. One was for the young ones and the other was for the 2yr. olds. After 2 yrs they did not lay well and she butchered them and sold them as stewing hens.
<p></p>
<p>I do not know what else they may have done on the farm, but they had an apple press, so I assume they made apple cider and probably fed the mash to the livestock.
<p></p>
<p>There was a big iron kettle in the yard that hung from a pole suspended over a fire. This was where they would boil water for hog butchering. The kettle was also used to separate the honey from the honey comb before they had a honey separator. It must have taken great skill to have the fire hot enough to separate the wax from the honey without burning the honey. ( a honey separator was a centrifuge. You would take the honey comb and cut off the very top of the comb and put it in the centrifuge and all the honey would be spun out and would run into containers.)
<p></p>
<p>There was no running water in the house. There was a pump in the back porch area, this is where they got all their water. There was an outhouse, a "one holer". The house was quite small. There was a kitchen, eating area with a built in china cabinet and pantry, living room, two small bedrooms, and an attic that could only be entered from outside the house.
<p></p>
<p>One bedroom had a double bed and a dresser and there was just enough room to get into bed between the bed and the dresser. Sometimes it was easier to climb over the end of the bed. Grandpa slept in the room with the twin bed. It was somewhat larger. His room was the only one with a closet.
<p></p>
<p>The attic had a wooden floor, a double bed, and exposed rafters. There were lots of things stored in the attic. Grandma had several down comforters and down pillows hanging over the rafters. She had a trunk with very beautiful things inside. The most special was the Czechoslovakian womans dress. There was a cotton blouse with a big lace standup collar and puffy sleeves and a black skirt with the most beautiful embrodery and beads around the skirt. As a child it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. She also had buckets, pans, canners, boxes of pictures and who knows what else. It seems the attic was a place of fascination and mystery. I do not remember getting to go through the attic like I wanted.
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<p>The built in china and dish storage cabinet was also a place of fascination. She had sets of cups and saucers all decorated with flowers and gold rims. My sister sold all of them after Mom died. They would have been nice to pass along to the family. She had different kinds of every day glasses too. We had our favorites of these too. The most favorite was the one that was in the shape of a barrel.
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<p>The pantry always had goodies and a very good smell. We could almost always find "kisses" in various containers. She would make special things for our summer visits.
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<p>The back porch was screened in the summer and glassed in in the winter. The floor was concrete and had a drain in the middle of the floor. There were 4 steps that went into the cellar. This had a dirt floor, shelves, and an old icebox. It was always cool down there and had the smell of hops and other beer ingredients. Grandpa made beer and sometimes the bottles would burst, hence the beer smell.
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<p>She had a wood fired stove and many very large pans for heating water. There was also a large coal stove for heat in the winter. Baths were taken in a "bath tub" in the kitchen eating area. Water was boiled on the stove and added to the cold water from the pump for bathing. I do not know how the bath tub was emptied. I cannot imagine carrying the thing out to dump in the yard. There was a drain in the floor on the porch and the household waste water was emptied there. The water ran down the drain and into a "ditch" close to the house. Sometimes she would use the waste water to water her garden.
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<p>They always had livestock, cows, horses, and pigs. The horses were used to pull some of the machinery that they used to care for the apples, harvest the alfalfa etc. I am sure they used the pigs for slaughter and Otto would smoke the meat. It was probably stored in the cellar under the house.
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<p>There was also a large equipment shed where the tractor and other equipment was kept. The roof of the shed was sod and grass and weeds grew all over it. All the tools and a large tool bench resided here. At one end there were steps that went down to another cellar. She had large containters for eggs. They were kept there and she sold them to market. There was a bare lightbulb for "candling" the eggs. Candling meant holding each egg up to the light and looking for a blood spot or double yolks. The word candling came from the time when they used candles to "see through" the egg shell. The eggs were then put pointed side down into the egg flats. The rejects were taken into the house for family use. She used egg yolks to shampoo her hair. They made her hair very shiny and pretty. Her hair was long and sort of an auburn color. She wore braids pinned up over the top of her head.
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<p>In the 1940's I remember her talking about sending packages back to her family. This was after the war. she tried very hard to help them. She talked about having to be careful about what she sent because the packages were almost always opened and the good stuff was removed. She may have hidden money in the packages too. This was during the Soviet occupation. I remember once when she sent oranges. Her family had not seen oranges for years and were so grateful. This was at Christmas. They would write letters and had some kind of code because the letters were opened and read. She would let them know when a package was sent etc. All in some kind of code.
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<p>I must have been about 6 or 7 when they had the house remodeled and got indoor plumbing and running water. It was quite an event for them. It made their lives much easier. They still had well water that tasted terrible. Every year when we went to visit the water would make us sick, so the folks went to town to get water for drinking.
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<p>She got up very early every morning. Around 5 or 6. It was out to let the chickens out of the chicken coop, scatter wheat, put mash in the feeding troughs, and give them fresh water. Then it was out to the barn to milk cows. It was very hard to get up when Grandma did. Mom did not like us up that early. I am not sure whether Grandma liked us up to help her. As we got older we would make it out to the barn to watch her milk the cows. It was so exciting when she let us milk the cows. She did not waste any time and could milk a cow in a flash. I know we would slow her down, but she never seemed to mind. If there was a calf she would use some of the milk to feed the calf. They would go crazy when they saw the bucket of milk. It was too difficult for us to hold the bucket for the calf, but it sure was fun to watch.
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<p>Some mornings started busier that others. She would put the pans of water on the stove to boil for butchering chickens. This was a particularly exciting time for us as children. She would get all her other chores done before starting to kill the chickens.
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<p>The night before she would go to the chicken coop, after all the chickens had settled down for the night, with a long pole that had a hook on the end. She would pick out the roosters and use the long pole to hook their legs and pull them off the perches. The chickens would be taken to a very small chicken coop for the night.
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<p>When the water was hot it was poured into a large tub. There were two other large tubs that were filled with cold water, plus another one in the cellar. She would take about 4-5 chickens at a time, holding them by the legs and take them to the chopping log. with the chickens being held upside down, she would grab one of the chickens heads, shake it, put it on the chopping log, take the ax, and chop the head off. The headless chicken would be thrown into the ditch where it flopped around for a while. We loved to watch the headless chickens flop around like that. When the flopping had stopped the chickens would be taken to the hot water tub, where they would be plunged, one at a time into the hot water. They would be held upside down and dunked like they were old clothes being slopped up and down in the water. The feathers were then pulled off very easily. I remember her pulling feathers, stopping to cool her hands off by clapping them together, and resuming the feather pulling. After much begging, she would let us try our hand at feather pulling. Of course the excercise did not last long, as the feathers were much too hot for little hands.
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<p>Each chicken had its turn at the cutting board. The guts would be pulled out and fell into a bucket. She would carefully cut the gall bladder from the liver, clean out the gizzard, and clean the heart. If she accidently broke to gall bladder, the liver would be discarded as the bile would make it taste very bitter. The chicken was rinsed under the pump and checked for errant feathers and hair. She burned the hair off with fire from a newspaper. The chicken was then put into a tub of cold water. After a period of time, the chickens were moved to the second tub of cold water, and then were placed in the cellar in another tub of cold water. The cold water cooled the chickens quickly and prevented them from getting stiff. The buyers would usually come the same day to pick up the chickens.
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<p>All the feathers and guts were buried in the field.</p>
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<p>She did not like sparrows and took great pains to make sure they did not nest in her yard. The sparrows would eat the chicken feed and the wheat. She would wait till the little birds hatched and were feathered and would take the ladder and pull the nest down. Of course us children were very sympathetic to the baby birds and if we saw what was happening we would take the babies, put them in a box, and try to keep them alive. I imagine it kept us quite busy and most of the baby birds must have died. She was pretty careful about when she took the nests down. There is nothing like an outraged child having a fit over some baby birds.
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<p>Memories of Life</p>
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<p>by Dorothy Ann Malin Judge Schenke</p>
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<p>Grandpa</p>
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<p>My Grandpa was a sort of mysterious person to a little girl. He stood 5’9” tall with a rotund figure. He had a mustache that hid the fact that he kept his teeth in his dresser drawer. At least I did not notice that he did not wear his teeth. He had bright blue eyes, and eyelids that drooped at the outer corners. His forehead melded with his doomed bald head and had the kind of age spots that you would find on the hands of an older woman. He wore Oshkosh coveralls over a dingy low cut undershirt, or if it was cold, a long sleeved thermal knit. When he dressed up he wore a plaid shirt under the coveralls. Curiously, (at least to a child) he wore copper bracelets that turned his wrists slightly green. He said they attracted electricity and zapped his arthritic joints. He walked with a waddle that told you his knees complained with every step. He had at least one tattoo, blurred with age, on his arm. I do not remember exactly where on his arm or even what it pictured ( maybe an eagle). It was just a part of grandpa.
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<p>As a very small girl, I’m told, I followed him around all day watching what he did and asking very small girl questions. He would go out to the barnyard to feed the cows and horses, who were kept in a corral behind the barn. He used a very large pitch fork to throw big piles of hay into the manger. We loved to climb to the top of hay stack, with Grandpa’s permission, and slide down to the bottom. The hay was dusty and dry, and smelled very good. Mom was mortified, and more than a little jealous because she never got to slide down the hay stack. . I remember her telling us to get off the hay stack, and he telling her to leave us alone. Of course, that is what Grandpas are for, to bend the rules and let the kids have fun.
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<p>He had two horses, a big white horse named King and a dapple gray named Queen. They were work horses, and he used them instead of the tractor to pull the spray machine out into the apple orchards and the “slip” into the fields to bring in the hay. August was the time of cutting hay, and the horses pulled the “slip” out to the field where Grandma and Grandpa would use pitch forks to pick up the dry alfalfa from the field and throw it onto the “slip” to bring it back to the hay stack.
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<p>The “slip” was a large flat platform made out of wood that slid along the ground. I do not know if there were runners underneath, or if the bottom was flat. When it was empty they let us ride on it out to the field. Most of the time we would sit down it was too scary to stand up like the adults. They had the forks to help steady them on the jerky ride. When the slip was full, the hay was stacked way above our heads, and there was only the smallest of foot holds along the sides and back of the slip. We would hang onto the hay with our little hands, and try not to fall off. Falling off meant that we would have to walk back to the yard because it was impossible for us to get a foot hold and a hand hold on the moving slip. How we hated to fall off! It was hot in Utah in August, and the walk back seemed really long. Somehow he would get some ropes around the hay on the slip, and attach them to the tractor and pull this big pile of hay onto the top of the hay stack by the barn. I really don’t remember that process. I am sure that he used the horses to do all the work before he bought himself the tractor. I do not remember how long the horses were around, but one summer when we arrived at the farm, they were gone, to the glue factory I guess.
<p>Of course, this was before events and stories forever colored our relationship.
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Events
| Birth | 28 Aug 1941 | Los Angeles, Calif. | |||
| Friends | 26 Oct 1963 | Los Angeles, California - James Eugene Judge | |||
| Marriage | 26 Oct 1963 | Los Angeles, California, USA - James Eugene Judge |  | ||
| Divorce | 27 Feb 1984 | Kansas City, Mo - James Eugene Judge | |||
| Marriage | 28 Dec 1988 | Molokai, Hawaii - Charles John Schenke | |||
| _UPD | 11 SEP 2016 23:04:05 GMT-6 |
Families
| Spouse | James Eugene Judge (1939 - ) |
| Child | Ann Marie Judge (1964 - ) |
| Child | Margeret Ellen Judge (1966 - ) |
| Child | Kathleen Elizabeth Judge (1968 - ) |
| Spouse | Charles John Schenke (1937 - ) |
| Father | Charles Bosley Malin (1913 - 1999) |
| Mother | Leona Shimek (1914 - 1999) |
| Sibling | Judy Katherine Malin (1942 - 2008) |
| Sibling | Christina Malin (1947 - 1966) |
Endnotes
1. Ancestry.com, California, Marriage Index, 1960-1985 (Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007).