When I was growing up on the farm we occasionally had salesmen stop by selling their wares and whatever. We would have the Rawleigh's Man, the Watkins Man, The Farmers Advocate Salesman (a Scotsman who would not leave until you subscribed) , The Diamond Bakery man (smoked cigars and the bread smelled like cigar smoke), Fish pedlars, potato pedlars, Apple pedlars, The Cream truck brought butter or buttermilk and picked up our cream for sale. The drover who wanted to buy your excess farm animals or chickens, dad said 'for nothing' so he could resell and make a profit. And once every two weeks on a Tuesday a white cotton bag was left by the mailbox around eleven A.M. and this had our share of Beef from the "Beef Ring" for that week (I will explain).

One time a vagrant knocked at our door asking for a loaf of bread to eat. Dad said no, and to be on his way, but mom had a loaf of bread in the man's hand almost as soon as he asked. Dad just stood back in awe at her act of kindness. The man took the bread, walked down the lane to our animal water trough ( it held 2000 gallons). He sat on the cement edge of the trough and dipped the bread into the water and ate the whole thing. My dad , at mom's prompting, offered the man a job and he worked for us two weeks. Mom fed him like a king and dad paid him a small wage for his work that had been agreed upon. He thanked our whole family for our kindness to him. Years later he returned with a wife, just to visit and to introduce his wife to the people who had helped him when he was down and out.

This was a ring of twenty farmers or sometimes less, who each provided a beef to be slaughtered. Every other week a different farmer brought forth an animal approximately 800 lb size for ‘Frank the Butch' to kill, cut up and put into very clean heavy cotton bags to be delivered a portion to each farmer in the ‘Beef Ring' . With twenty farmers in the ring, it would supply everyone with a cut of beef every two weeks for forty weeks and then they would stop in the hot summer months and resume again when it got cooler in the fall. The farmer supplying the beef would also get a portion plus the liver or heart or both and the tongue. I remember there were a few farmers who didn't like liver, heart and/or tongue and our family with six boys and mom and dad were often the recipients of those delicious parts of the beef. This worked well in the days when we had no electricity to refrigerate or freeze the meat. It had to be cooked that day or kept in cold water until tomorrow and then cooked.

So, now you know what a beef ring is. It is a group of farmers working together to supply a portion of beef to each family every two weeks during the coolest time of the year.

As you can see, we had lots of visitors during the week and on weekends, because we lived on the home farm to a family of 17 children, that meant we nearly always had relatives visiting then too. My dad was the youngest child of seventeen children born single births to George and Jenet Oke from 1885 until 1910 when dad was born.We had lots of fun when extended family visited, one of the entertainments was usually always dad reading aloud the "Song of the Lazy Farmer" from the monthly ‘Farmers Advocate' magazine. They were always hilariously funny and I am going to give it a go to see if I can come near to the literary masterpieces that would appear under that heading in every new magazine that arrived. This was better than the funnies and we always read it first before anything else got looked at in the magazine.

The cows aint milkin cause we're out o hay, and those darn hens refuse to lay, I threaten them with the chopping block, and they filled each nest with their weekly plop, it sure gets hot inter the house these days, an the flies is near to carry me away, Maw is mad and grumpy too cause she needs milk in a cake for the women's doo, I try real hard to grow more hay, but it's too much wirk to mow it away, got a salesman at the door just thin an maw said not to let the bugger in, he's sellin stuff we just don't need, an so I said to him he'd have to leave, my backs bin aching an I need to rest, move over rover gimme half of this, the couch'l hardly hold us both, an I think its me will have to go, so if the barn don't burn and I get some hay we may have some milk fer maw another day, I'm getting winded long right here so will talk to you gin another year.You all don't work too hard now, hear. To be continued with the next disaster on the farm in the next special news issue.

SECOND TRY- Christmas Special Dec.25, 2008.

Rover dog's been howling at the moon and New Years day is comin soon, its Christmas morn an Im up real soon, cause all the kin are comin at noon, maw's bin stuffin up a storm with the biggest darn turkey ever born, she's try'd a new one, stuffin today, takes whole unpopped popcorn, chopped onion, apple, sage, and carroway, some bread crumbs too and stuffed turkey real good, into the oven and turn heat up with lots of wood, the house smells good with that turkey smell and time to eat will come as well, has a built in timer says when it's done, and you will really like this one, when the popcorn blows the turkeys rear end off, Its time to carve whats left and get the cranberry sauce, turkey should be real good but can't find much stuffing as you usually should, They're here mom calls and the turkey's carved, those kin can eat like nearly starved, where's the stuffin Karen, says uncle Bill, and maw scowls at him so I sit real still, she's mad as heck at aunty Beck, for this popcorn stuffin recipe trick, she's like to kill with that aweful scowl, so tread lightly Bill a while, and till she starts to smile. --Merry Christmas to all from down on the farm, with this kind of stuffin don't need a smoke alarm.

My wishes for you: May the Hope, Joy, Peace and mostly Love of Jesus birthday be with you. from Harold

By Harold - Hope you enjoyed that. This was good entertainment for me growing up. I will not be starting a column but thought it worth a laugh to give it a try from memory for those on Hubpages. Enjoy !

Should you ever visit Gardener Harold, you will probably find him out back in his daylily gardens.