Memoirs of Lloyd Moss: 1910 - 1914
We had a DeLavel cream separator in the kitchen. Every morning father poured milk into the big top bowl, turned the crank which was geared up so that some inner parts rotated at terrific speed, (you could tell by the noise), and cream would start coming out of one spout and skim milk out of another. Later, mother would take the upper part of the machine apart and there were dozens of pieces of it that had to be washed and dried. Some cream was put in a covered milk can and hung by a rope down into the well to cool, and a couple of days later pulled up and churned into butter with our wooden churn that swung back and forth in its supporting frame. I was supposed to help with this, but I was much criticized because it seemed that I always pushed it too fast or too slow. Father took the cream to a creamery over beyond the depot where they made butter with it. They also bought some skim milk to make cheese. I think a good deal of our skim milk went to the hogs and chickens.
Our orchard had peaches, plums, apricots, almonds, pears, cherries and mulberries. Apples didn't grow very well there, I guess. We also had grapes and rhubarb. There was a black cherry tree between the woodshed and the kitchen and I remember that more than once Virginia and I climbed into the top of it when the cry went up that the pigs had gotten out of their pen. For some reason I can't explain we were always deathly afraid of pigs. At the back end of the farm was a fort built during the Revolution, one of a line of them built to hold back Cornwallis. It was square, constructed of earth, had high walls around the outside, a place for cannon in each corner, and was surrounded by a deep, dry moat. It was grown over with pine trees and made a wonderful place for us to play. Over the years everything had become covered with a thick mat of pine needles so the banks were great for sliding. The railroad ran just behind the fort and there was nothing but pines visible from there on except for one little field just across the track that father planted with buckwheat one year.
Near the boundary line between our farm and the Wickers there stood a lone mulberry tree I remember especially well because I tied a pet tortoise name Scallywag under it one summer so that he could eat the fallen mulberries. There were lots of box tortoises around and they seemed to make good pets. We put a small hole in the back lip of the shell so that they could be kept from running away. Often we found tortoises with initials and dates carved on the bottom shell, some several years old. Some specimens were quite tame and would keep their head and feet out, but others would close up tight with head and feet drawn in and would stay that way. We solved that problem by dropping them into the horse trough and after awhile they usually opened up and swam to the surface. One day when we were engaged in this way I suddenly heard a terrific screaming and Donald, aged two, was holding up his hand as high as he could and a box tortoise was firmly clamped onto his index finger. Father came running from wherever he'd been working and with his knife-blade pried the animal loose from Donald and his finger didn't seem to have been very badly hurt. These box tortoises almost never bit anyone, but we knew enough to stay away from snapping turtles because they would bite a finger completely off with one snap.