Much of my life has been spent with the Frerichs
name. My mother’s dad was Henry Frerichs. He married Mary McCune, and they
had two daughters, my mother Vera, and Valeda her younger sister. Henry,
Fred, and John were all brothers. My grandfather Henry was quite a
horseman. He was well known for his ability to break and tame horses and
to train teams of horses. Henry and Fred had a marvelous horse barn built
on Henry’s place back in 1906. It was the first in the area to allow the
driving of a team and wagon completely into the barn for unhitching. John
Frerichs was soon to follow with a similar barn on his place. It still
stands, too, and is just to the right and outside of this scene.
The John Frerichs Place is just down the road from the Fred Frerichs farm.
This is the way it was. As sons married they would acquire land of their
own. Usually families tried to stay close in vicinity as it was often
needed to call upon others for help in farming, and family was always the
most reliable.
Often a road derived its name by the families that lived on them; Hough
Road, Smith Road, etc.. In fact there is even a Hosner Road in Metamora,
Michigan. I’m convinced that many of my relatives lived there at the time.
But this particular morning I choose to capture the “Cow Barn” on John
Frerichs farm. These barns are dramatically different then the horse
barns. They were never intended to store wagons or farm implements in,
just cattle.
Often the cows that inhabited them were dairy cows and the bottom part of
the barn was set up with stalls and for milking. The upper portion of the
barn was where hay feed was stored and dropped down to cattle at feeding
time. Thus you see a broader flatter shape with an expanse of roof. I have
a friend in Wisconsin and he, too, remembers when each evening the farmer
and his wife would go out and herd the cows from the pasture back into the
barn for the night. Most of the time the cattle pretty much knew their way
on their own and the couple walked behind chanting calls to the herd. They
followed the herd almost as if being pulled, and the lead cow meandered in
the lead with a cow with the bell around its neck clanging back and forth.
When some of the farms gave up on dairy cattle they still herded the beef
cattle in for the night. This is no longer practiced. The cattle are left
out all the time with a few shallow shelters for inclement weather.
The structure just to the left and in the foreground of this painting is
the hog barn. It is pretty much dilapidated now, from ill repair due to
lack of use. It used to be that just about every farm at one time had at
least a few hogs. This, for the most part, is gone now, too. The huge hog
corporations raise 2 to 5 thousand livestock in one large cement yard, a
practice which is controversial not only for the treatment of the animals
but also for the potential danger of sewage getting into the ground water.
And believe me, you don’t want to be downwind of one of these operations.
If you have clothes on the line, you’ll be washing them again on another
day.
That is something I didn’t remember as a boy, the smell that is. My family
traveled back to Nebraska annually until I was 15 or 16, and I can never
remember an intolerable odor from the hogs. In fact, my brothers and I
used to play down by Uncle Fred’s hog barn and we would get yelled at by
Uncle Fred. He said we were making them “too thin for market”. The
explanation Uncle Bud offers up to the lack of odor back then is this; “It
used to be that every farmer had just a few hogs, and we had them where
they had hog pasture next to the pig sties.” This allowed for more natural
dissipation of manure that resulted in mostly just the smell of the animal
itself. If you’re a farmer, a few pigs don’t smell too bad at all.
John Frerich’s place is no longer in the family. It is owned by Jim
Grundman and his dad. I met Jim when I came to ask permission to go onto
the property to paint. He is a very likeable young man, still farms, and
reminds me of all that is good in people. He explained to me that he is
somewhat in a dilemma about the buildings on the property, as he uses them
little, mostly just farming the surrounding land.
I thought perhaps I should paint a piece of the Frerichs heritage before
it disappears for good.
