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Remembrances of the Past and Dreaming of a Future with Haflingers

by Volkhard "Fritz" Fritzsche  from Hof Waldeck, Vancouver Island, British Columbia

We bought our own farm on Vancouver Island on the West Coast of Canada in the fall of 1963.  Our first daughter was seven months old and we were ready for our own piece of land and ready to test our combined training in agriculture.   Here I am today, looking back on raising four children, 36 years of milking cows for a living and developing the place to what it is today - a home for two generations.  

We call it Hof Waldeck Farm.  The best translation probably would be “homestead in a corner of the forest”.  We are now raising anything that eats grass and the next generation is doing most of the work.  This gives me a little more time for dreaming about my first love when I was a young man in Germany - Haflinger horses.

Much to the dismay of my parents, I chose to end my schooling in the 10^th grade, a respectable level of education at that time for somebody looking for a career in agriculture or any other trade.  I signed my first “Lehrvertrag” (a contract with an approved teaching farm) with the Bavarian Ministry of Agriculture.  My father was rather frustrated since I still had 7 weeks to go until my 16th birthday.

It was long trip by train from south of Munich to a place near Ochsenfurt in Unterfranken which was almost across the entire State of Bavaria .  I was picked up at the train station by my new boss, or as we called him, “Chef”, and driven the 15 miles to the village which would be my new home for the next year.  Only a week before I had taken a course in basic operation of farm equipment and passed the test for my driver’s license for farm tractors, so I felt I was ready for the challenges ahead.

At the evening meal, I was introduced to the household consisting of the Chef, his wife, his mother and his aunt. The lead farm hand was the most important man after the boss and so were the two apprentices in the 2nd and 3rd year.  There were also several day workers, “Tagelöhner”, who helped out when they were needed.  I had arrived on the bottom of the totem pole, however that didn’t bother me at all, because even though it was a week day, there was meat for supper.  Anybody who could serve meat for supper in the middle of the week surely must be doing something right!  I was told that the chances of using my newly acquired license would not be very good because I would be assigned to the Haflinger team and that the lead hand would meet me in the stable at 6 A.M to give me my instructions.

The farmstead was in the middle of the village, hidden behind a huge iron gate from the cobble-stoned road, across from the only pub in town and a couple hundred yards away from the Roman Catholic church, which sat on a rise of land overlooking its flock.  On the right side of the farm was a big manure stack right in front of the house and everybody coming through the people gate in to the farm, had admire the neatly stacked pile of manure before entering the house.  Attached to the house was the cattle barn with 18 Gelbvieh bulls.  One could walk right from the “mudroom” at the end of the kitchen hallway, into the barn.  Across the back was the horse barn in the right corner where the Haflingers were kept.  It actually was more like a dungeon made from granite and local limestone as the walls.  It was also part of the “Scheune”, where the various stacks of cereal crops were stored.  The main alley was filled chock full of wooden wagons, “Leiterwagen”, a 1936, 36 H.P. Lanz Bulldog and a 1952 18 H.P. Eicher tractor.  The left side of the yard, if one could call it that, was also built with solid limestone and there was a concrete pig pen and above it was the chicken coup.  The garage for the car and a couple of motorcycles and the farm workshop completed the square. 

Six A.M came early and in the shadow of a single light bulb, the horses looked black and huge.  The precise rations, depending on the day’s expected workload for Hansi and Susie, were written on the black board by the Chef, and the measuring containers had to be used correctly.  “Dip them into the oats, make sure they are full, then wipe off what’s above the rim and put the content into a wicker basket, together with some chaff and a chopped up turnip“, were the instructions.  Then, while talking to the horses all the time, politely asking them to move over, so I could serve breakfast I dumped the mixture from the basket in to a cast iron manger.  Hay was served from an overhead cast iron rack and was filled with a very long pitchfork, which as far as I could tell, was the only purpose for that fork.  Next came the cleaning of the team and the various tools to accomplish the job were explained.  It was followed by a short demonstration on how to use everything and where to start with the morning toilette for the horses.  I almost missed the remarks about Susie who was ticklish and that I should be careful while cleaning her belly, which she didn’t like.  I was also told that she would bite me in the butt, if I didn’t follow the exact routine and order while cleaning her hoofs.  So while I tried to apply all those instructions under the watchful eye of the lead hand, the team knew full well that I was the new greenhorn.  Every hesitant command was obeyed reluctantly or only after a louder reinforcement.  I had walked in on the mare from the wrong side and she pushed me against the wall, trying to break my ribs.  In desperation, I dumped my wicker basket with her breakfast right on the floor of the stall.   How was I to know, that Hansi wanted his breakfast served from his left side and Susie from her right side.  It wasn’t a very good start.

The importance of those four foot long lines, five for each horse, behind every stall in the granite floor slabs, were duly noted.  Generations of teamsters had deposited the grime from those grooming sessions and worn those neat lines into the granite so the superiors, which for me meant everyone, could satisfy him or herself, that the team was cleaned sufficiently for the days work. . The night’s manure was pushed with a wheelbarrow up a plank and used in the construction of the manure pile and was stacked in straight lines, as though building something very permanent.  In between grooming, the team was watered, the harness checked and the wagon pulled out ready for the team and ready for the next adventure.

A hearty breakfast was served at 7:15 and the day’s workload was assigned to the various people, the team and the tractors.  I didn’t count since I was just part of the team.  So the instructions were: the team will do this or that.  Policy number one: the team has to work daily from 8 to 12 and from 1 to 5.  Only if the horses could not handle any given task in a timely matter, would a tractor be allowed to help out until the team caught up again.  The team was to be ready to leave the yard when the church bell rang 8 times.  The gate was opened and the workday, everyone’s workday, began.  I never got around to wondering, why the time from 6 A.M. on, was not counted as work.  The first job was to drive to one of the 234 fields on the 105 acre farm, to find the spot where last years sugar beet tops where ensiled in a ground pit.  Often those pits were loaded out and hauled home in three or four loads.  The soil cover was carefully removed and so was the wheat straw, before the silage was uncovered.  A big knife with a step on it was used to cut blocks of silage from the pit and then it was loaded with a pitchfork on to the wagon.  That first day I was lucky, because two of us did the job that was to become my daily routine, except for weekends, when several wagons were hauled home and parked in the shed on Saturday for the weekend feedings of the bulls.  Often the wagon was loaded with manure for the trip to a field where it was unloaded into neat piles to be spread by a fork later on in preparation for fall plowing.  The daily challenge was to get the equipment, whatever it was, to the right field.  In various sheds and outbuildings spread in all four directions of the compass around the village, those bits and pieces had to be found and it was a logistical masterpiece if anyone remembered where it had been parked last year.  Large tracts of land were under “Flurzwang”, a parcel often only the width of the eight foot seed drill, and could only be accessed by driving over the neighbors property and careful counting of the different strips.  The village commission decided the crop rotation and the varieties to be planted and everyone did as they were told.  When the lead hand and I were suppose to plant a bath towel size parcel of land to a crop of green manure, we discovered we had forgotten to harvest the early potatoes.  A few wicker baskets and a couple of digging forks solved the problem, and since the market was already waiting for the main potato crop, those forgotten spuds ended up in the bull pen raw and chopped and steamed for the pigs and chickens.

There was always firewood to be hauled from the trimmings of the different orchards or the brush from all those field lanes crowding the crops or the roads.  The bundles were three feet long, about one foot in diameter and were held together with the same sisal strings used to tie sheaves together after the binder.  The wood was used to heat the boiler for the central heating system of the house and the enormous wash kettle, where on Saturday all the work clothes from the whole crew were boiled clean.  The team loved those jobs, because all I had to do is talk them into moving a couple of yards before they could stop and fall asleep again.  Sheaves were pitched onto a wagon and the people on top would tell the pitchfork man how they wanted them delivered.  If he didn’t pay attention, down they came again.  The team would haul the wagon to the edge of the field and a tractor would take it home.  On the road in front of the entrance gate, the tractor was unhooked and with a solid pole it pushed the wagon into the barn.  After unloading, the process was reversed.  In our yard, or in any other yard in the village, there was not enough room to turn a wagon around.

With everybody being so close, whatever you did right or wrong was discussed in the evening in the pub.  I am sure my Chef knew when I lost a wheel on one of those seldom used wagons before I came home for lunch.  I am sure the blacksmith was already working on building the pieces for the hub that was broken.  The village information line worked very smoothly, but it also protected the villagers.  When I was told to take all the Leiterwagen to one field because of an unexpected allocation of a rail car, I hooked all 12 of them together and went with my little train through the village, proud as punch that I got them all out of the yard.  That evening in the pub the Chef found out about it, and what I didn’t know was that the policeman from the neighboring town had paid the village a visit, as he did every Thursday.  As he stood with his bicycle in front of the blacksmith shop, he watched in amazement as a tractor went by in the morning mist and a convoy of Leiterwagens, that didn’t seem to have an end.  So he tried to chase me in order to find out who would do such an unlawful thing.  But between the fog, the slippery field road and the length of all those wagons, he never made it to the front of the train.  It also helped, that the field tracks were only the width of those wagon wheels.

Even on “Schlachtfest”, when the butcher and his two helpers came to convert a bull and several pigs into sausages and smoked ham, the whole village watched in anticipation when I was sent to the blacksmith to get the “sausage press” with the wheelbarrow.  It turned out to be a good sized rock and it took two guys to load it onto the wheelbarrow.  Smelling a rat I refused to haul it home, however that didn’t stop my Chef from inquiring innocently if had brought the big or the little one!  The village cider press was taken from farm to farm to produce the basic ingredient for our daily drink, “Most”.  The stuff closest to vinegar was mixed with carbonated water and a prescribed quantity of partially fermented fruit juices.  Granny was in charge of grading the refreshments for the crew and determining how much “juice” was used in the mixture.  The best became apple or pear wine and was saved for harvest festivals when all the outside help was paid off with a good party and some meat and fruit wines.  Only I, the greenhorn, drank the fresh juices right from the press.  All the others with experience knew where I would spend the next three days.  One of the worst jobs was cleaning the wooden barrels in what almost was a “waterproof cellar” in preparation for another batch of juice.  Right after it was emptied, the access door was removed and you had to crawl in and scrub the whole barrel several times with ever changing water, before it was allowed to dry out.  Than a stick of sulfur was lit inside the barrel and it was closed, ready to receive the juice at a later day.

The crops determined the routine of the day and hauling feed home, taking manure out to the field’s or moving equipment from one parcel to the next took up most of the team’s time.  The church bells divided the day into manageable portions and it was impossible to make the team do one more round with the sled for topping sugar beets if the 11: 30 bell had announced that it was almost lunchtime.  Driving into the farmstead too early made you lazy and too late was considered stupid for wasting your own lunch hour.  So the team and I learned loitering or killing time, stretching the 15 minute walk to the farm into 30 minutes so we would pass into the farm gate just as the church bells struck 12 noon .  It wasn’t hard to do, because I could see the golden hands on the clock from any field I worked on and I am sure, so could the team.  Lunch was at 12:15 and you better had a good reason for being late, so we became pretty inventive.  At 1 P.M. the team left for the afternoon shift, with quitting time set for 5 P.M.  The team was looked after, the harnesses wiped down and stored and the wagon was pushed back into the shed and the shed locked.  The keys for all storage cubby holes, were hung on a key wall.  They were so big that no one could leave them in a pocket and forget about them.  In addition, before sitting down to supper, the Chef would check that wall and it would tell him at a glance who didn’t finish with his assigned job.  

Of course, the horses had to haul the sugar beet tops to the ensiling pit, but an other crew unloaded the wagons, built the piles and covered them up.  I became pretty good in hitching and unhitching my two charges.  Plowing out the beets with a single row “sugar beet-lifter” became the next job for the team.  With a spike tooth harrow dragged over them upside down, the attempt was made to keep some of that heavy clay soil at home.  However, most of the time, two beets had to be banged together several times to remove the soil before being thrown in an elegant curve in to the wagon.  This was also when I found out why we had so many Leiterwagen.  The team kept dragging the loaded wagons to the edge of the field only to repeat the process with the next unit.  The crew had a breather while the teamster, gum boots full of clay, made that trip back and forth until all 12 wagons were loaded.  What they had not told me was that the next day the tractor would haul the wagons at the breath taking speed of four miles per hour, the speed limit for steel clad wheels, to the rail road siding for unloading.  Which meant from either end of the wagon, two people with a two prong pitchfork would load the beets, one at a time over the top of the open lorry.  The fork was then banged against the side of the car, knocking off a little bit more soil and leaving it outside of the railcar on the ground.  Before returning to the field, that soil was carefully scraped up and returned to the fields.  Up and down the spur, the metallic clanking of those forks was repeated and nobody wanted to be the last to finish with his wagon.  The biggest challenge for the tractor driver, however was to deliver his wagon in one fluid motion to the correct spot beside the rail car without getting hit by an other wagon trying to do the same.  Eventually the 20 ton car was heaping full and the loading crew got the rest of the day off.  The “report card” from the sugar factory for the farm was the sugar content, and for the crew the deduction for soil content in the load.  All others went back to the fields preparing for the next rail car.  As soon as a field was cleared, the horses went in with a two bottom 12” Wendepflug and plowed in all the leftover debris preparing it for a green manure crop of mostly Brassica’s, like Stoppelrüben or Rape.  By the time the last of the sugar beets, the late potatoes and the Futterrüben, were safely stored either in a pit or in one of the concrete bins in the barn, some of the first fields were ready for the winter cereals.  Again it was the team that plowed in the green manure with a12” plow and with a single gang disk and harrows prepared the seed bed.  All those jobs required the teamster to walk behind the implement.  Seeding fall rye or winter wheat was a job for three people.  One would lead the horses by walking between them, the second would steer the drill machine, all eight feet of it, and the third would walk behind the drill with a hook on a stick dislodging whatever would hang up on the seeding shoes.  The different positions on the drill were changed with every field so the Chef could check later who could drill straight lines and who didn’t watch the seed shoes like a hawk.  It turned out to be me!  The mistake of that one plugged seed tube had to be fixed by walking up and down that one field with a beer bottle full of seed and reseeding the missed rows, and in a shuffling series of steps making sure every grain was covered with soil and in good soil contact.  I never again took that job of watching the seed shoes lightly.

Eventually everything was harvested and all the winter crops were planted.  The fall plowing was done and the fields rested, shining like rich fudge in the evening sun light.

The apprentices had to report once a week for a whole day to the Berufsschule (the trade school).  That is why the farm needed two 100 cc motor cycles.  Being in different towns and on different days for first second and third year apprentices, we all had to use those bikes to get to school.  From all the basic legal background of farming, agricultural chemicals to land surveying, the school reinforced the practical training.  Everybody had to go to a two-week milking course, which included everything from the care for the cows to the care of the milk.  Since we didn’t have milk cows we were just collecting credits for the final exam for Certified Agricultural Technician.  It was also the time when we would get to spend time in the sugar factory while we were picking up beet pulp and soil, or at the blacksmith repairing equipment, or even better yet, being loaned out to an other farm as part of the threshing crew.  Each day after supper, every apprentice had to work for at least half an hour on his journal.  Explaining the different jobs he was assigned to and how and why certain implements were used.  The lead hand would check it and the Chef had to sign off every week’s entries before you could start the next week with a clean sheet.  The same journal was also discussed at the trade school.  At the end of the year it was send off to the Ministry of Agriculture and became part of a permanent file.  It not only rated the progress of the apprentices, but kept a close check on the Chef, the Lehrherren and the operation of the Lehrbetrieb, the teaching farm.

When the field work was done it was time for celebrations:  Harvest festival, Thanksgiving, Harvest Dances and building of good will for next years harvest crews.  The “Wanderschäfer” came with his flock of 300 Merino sheep to treat the winter cereals to that all important once over “bite and hoof print” to encourage the plants to tiller.  The trick of course was to keep the flock moving, and I marveled at how he handled his dogs, as well as the flock.  The overnight “Pferch”, the corral built with portable fencing, was usually on one of the poorer fields.  The sheep would fertilize the land and the competition to get them on one of your fields was fierce.  In our village, the rights to the sheep manure were bought by public auction.

All kinds of tradesmen would come to offer their services.  From sharpening all tools to soldering leaking pots, from repairing the wicker baskets to building new ones from the willow shoots which were cut along the drainage ditches and soaked in the village pond to keep them pliable.  Friends and family would visit and all the joys and heartbreaks of last year were told and retold and the “crew” was part of it all.  Before “city relatives” came to visit we all had to scrub up and pass muster with Grandma before being allowed to sit around the table with the “outsiders”.  Granny could order you to change your socks and put on a better shirt, to comb your hair or to see a barber.  Since we didn’t have one in the village we were allowed to use the motorcycles to go “out into the world”.  The only other permitted use was for the Lutheran to ride it to church, a few towns away.  Since the sermon was printed in the weekly newspaper I tried only once, to just do some sight seeing, without going to church.  You belonged to the farm, the team, the family and it was their job to see that you looked presentable.  When I arrived, I brought with me a set of work clothes and the farm supplied everything that wore out.  Grandma did the ironing of the Sunday shirt and also mended the holes in the socks.  The farm was responsible for your physical and mental well being and all took part in it.

Too soon winter was over and spring work started, of course with the team.  By that time, Hansi and I were friends, even if I had to remind him often to pull his fair share of the load, and Susie had changed too!  We almost liked each other, but most remarkable was the change in her appearance.  She looked as sleek and shiny as the gelding or as the Chef would say, “Like a nice, fat, smoked herring”.  Her secret was the egg per day that an errant chicken was laying in her manger. I had learned the hard way that Hansi’s harness always had to come off first before it was Susie’s turn.  It took me a while to figure out why she would rush into her stall with lips pursed and teeth bared.  She was determined to get her egg, crush it and lick the manger clean.  Only after all the evidence had been consumed could I take off her harness.  Grandma knew about the chicken in the horse barn, but she couldn’t catch the chicken, find the egg or catch me red handed bootlegging that egg, even though she tried very hard.  So it belonged to Susie and she lost her long ugly winter coat for good and I was praised in front of the whole crew for the good job I was doing with that mare.  I had nothing to do with it, except to brush out the winter coat. 

The team was my confidant and my lawn chair when on Sunday afternoon they were on that postage size meadow enjoying their day off.  I would lie on top of either one of them reading a book.  Riding them home from work during the week was a big No-No.  That was reserved for Sundays as long as it didn’t turn in to work for the team.  I was allowed to take both horses out for a hike and ride one of them going and the other one coming home again.  I was also allowed to take them to the blacksmith for their new shoe,s and I drove the Chef, the Chefin, Grandma and Auntie in an army truck turned into a carriage around the various fields so they too could inspect and see for themselves, the progress of the crops.  My team trusted me to the point of self destruction.  If I was dumb enough to hitch them to something, they tried to move it.  I was sent to move the village threshing box from a couple farms behind us into our yard.  So I hooked my team to the monster and hauled it home.  It was the first time ever, that only two horses had done that job.  It seems that tradition dictated that the farm where it was and the farm where it was going to, had to supply one team each to move it.  Nobody had told me that because they thought I should have known.  We even moved one of those empty railway cars by leading the team, walking backwards and encouraging them to just lean into the chains and not to rush things.  To my own amazement it worked.  Only when the first load of freshly threshed wheat was hauled to the mill, did the Chef take the reins to do the honors.  The whole village had to see how white our sacks were, with the name of the farm proudly displayed so it could be read from all around the wagon.  The Chef was all decked out in his “Sunday going to church suit”. 

The four hours of work on Saturday, hauling home feed for the bulls was a nicer job than using a birch branch broom to sweep the street in front of our gate, but everybody swept streets on Saturday morning because it was tradition.  In 1953 was also the Volkszählung census and the village crier announced the outcome of the statistical exercise up and down the streets.  It didn’t help me any since I didn’t understand his dialect.  Later I found out that the same information was also posted on the village bulletin board.  To my amusement it listed “523 souls and one protestant“ as inhabitants of the village.  That protestant was me!  Even the village priest and I had our little moments.  May 1st. is by tradition Labourday, which in Bavaria meant socialist rallies and union marches, all activities unbecoming to a little Catholic village and its shepherd so he announced a farm equipment dedication for the Bavarian equivalent of FFA members.  For days all the tractors were polished and I, the little heathen, got the 1936 Lanz Bulldog to turn into a reluctant parade piece.  Since it was held together by flaked off black paint and rust, I choose to hide the whole machine in a forest of birch saplings.  My efforts were rewarded with a blessing from the old priest.  He probably figured I could use a blessing too.

The team was always busy and before I knew it my first year was over and I had to say good bye to the team and the farm family.  As a last favor, I asked Grandma for some recipes of some of my favorite dishes.  She filled a grade school exercise book with those big stiff letters, with hands more used to working than writing instructions for cooks.  My mother was reading it with interest one day when she started to chuckle and finally she burst into laughter.  There was nothing funny about the instructions on how to prepare a certain dish, but for a Lutheran it tickled her funny bone that all the time designations where in prayers.  Grandma did her daily stirring of the pot with prayers and by tradition, it took six Lord Prayers and two Hail Mary’s to do a proper job in preparing a certain dish.  We were able to convert her measurements into minutes, but I am sure Grandma’s originals tasted better.  She also had more practice than anybody I knew because the normal number being fed were 11 hungry people served on that enormous kitchen table.  The table was the center of the farm, the office table, the school bench for us and the place where we sat around after all the work was done and talk about the silly things that happen to apprentices, farmers and horses.

Many years later, I returned for a visit and almost did not recognize the place.  The farm had moved out of the village center with brand new buildings and all the different fields had been consolidated into large tracts of land.  Over two hundred parcels were now reduced to twelve.  All new roads connected the fields of similar agricultural potential.   But tradition had to be changed too.  It was now illegal to divide any field ever again by giving each son an equal share of each field.  I believe farming became better for the people living in the village, however everything has its price, even though the Flurbereinigung brought untold benefits to the village.  Only one family, the son of my Chef, with no employees was looking after the entire place now.  A tool carrier Fendt tractor was sitting in the yard ready to do all jobs.  No crews, no big family dinner table, not even a chicken coop or pig pen.  Some 50 bulls were being fed the “waste” from the sugar beets and machines did the feeding.  Big pit silos stored all the beet tops right on the farm. An equipment Co-op looked after the big machines like the combine and the sugar beet harvester.  I found that I didn’t have the heart to asked what had happened to my beautiful team of Haflingers, Hansi and Susie.

Gone for good were the days where a first year apprentice was being paid the royal sum of 40 Deutsche Mark per month, which at the time was about 10 US Dollars.  But also gone was the intimate relationship with a working team and the connection with the soil where every square foot was walked over several times a year.  And gone also were the property markers that had created so many problems when they got plowed under or moved.

Now here I am, 52 years later, nine time zones further west and dreaming about getting my first team of Haflingers for some pleasure driving in order to inspect the crops or just to enjoy an afternoon with my team.  Now the tractor can do the work, I will just pretend it is Sunday.