Carver County Drive

Driving to Aidan's doctor appointment in Norwood Young America reminds me a lot of driving in rural Alexandria. There's plenty of fields and woodlots. But like Alexandria, few of the farm places actually are full-time farm sites. I'd say the majority of farm places are the homes of retired farmers where they raise some heifers or rent out their crop land.

Some of the farm places have been fixed up very nicely. We passed one place that has new windows and decorative siding. What made it really stand out was the old round-style barn to the west of the house. Having worked in a traditional gable-style barn, I think the round barns are fascinating. Of couse to have a place like that and keep it looking good takes piles of money and this particular place has the obligatory steel shed out back where the pile is kept.

The farm places that get my attention are operating dairy farms. Not the bright and shiny mortgaged-the-farm-for-the-500 -cow-milking-parlor kind. But the small scale family farm that reminds me of how we milked cows.

There is a place on Cty Rd 153. They have a old, red barn running east-west and tempory paddocks outside with woven wire fencing where calves are kept. and some calf hutches, too. The ground is low so you can see where snow melt has made puddles that tractors drove through and froze making treacherous ruts to navigate.

Not only is it low ground, but flat, too. Which makes me wonder about the place in spring when the snow melts and all the frozen manure melts with it and the ground. Spring was my least favorite time on the farm. You had to wear waders all the time and lift your legs up as you walked to pull them from the sucking ground.

The worst was letting cows out to check for heat in that muck. They'd go out and not want to come back in, so we'd have to slop through that knee-deep sludge to get them back in. Then that evening their undersides would be coated in plaster-of-poop when it was time to milk.

Back to that farm place. They had two houses on the property. One is facing the road, the other is behind and perpindicular to it. I can't easily tell which one the orginal because they both have newer siding, although if I had to guess the one out back. The second story seems short like older homes.

On the home farm place we had two houses for a few years. The original house "Sandvik," was were my great-great grandparents and great-grandparents lived. Before them it belonged to the original owners and I believe served as a boarding house.

We lived there for awhile when my grandparents built their current house. I remember the front porch and having breakfast in the kitchen. There was a box in the hallway we kept toys in which was probably the old wood box. There were bats in the walls my mom says, I don't remember that.

The most peculiar thing I remember was the main floor bedrooms. Threre were green-glass partions between our beds. At least that's the way I recall it. I was only 4 or 5 years old.

Anyway, that's the drive to the doctor. Aidan's fine. Funny how eastern Carver County (Chanhassen/Chaska) is so different from the west side.