Katherine Day Part 11

The Water Diviner from Sincoe County

Part 11

Life in the Country - With Canadian Artist, Katherine Day, of Oro-Medonte

By Ted and Suzanne Currie

     The typewritten inclusion, in Katherine Day's otherwise handwritten journal, is entitled simply, "Goats and the Weather," and a secondary story, composed later in the 1940's, post Second World War, is headed "Notes on a Well." First, we'll check out her view on goats and how they are influenced by inclement weather, at Day's farmstead in Oro-Medonte, probably written in the early 1940's; when still residing at her first house, known with considerable affection as "Hawthornes." Her second dwelling, built to her specifications, a short distance away, was called "Pax Cottage."
     Now in the words of Katherine Day: "It was the occasion of the first fall of snow this season. It came with a nasty blizzard ripping down from the north, and it came all one afternoon and on into the night. Preceding it came a rain quite suddenly. It caught Polly (the goat), Susie and their escort Ferdinand out in the open, and they came romping home. Nannies run rather awkwardly, but they certainly make time, as you would see if you raced to close a gate ahead of them. Ferdinand prances like a wooden doll, rocking along with his fore-feet together and his hind feed together. And he brings up the rear.
     "They leap into their goat-shed and shake themselves. Then they complain, if of course they see anyone around to hear their complaint. They tell us about all the bad things they ever thought of the rain, and they repeat it over and over. Unnecessary wet stuff that gets into their fur, they utter to those who might pay attention to their plight. Oh, woe is me! They peer out of the door and scan the heavens for a break. If no sunshine is coming, they lie down in their stalls. They carefully scratch a clear spot with their hooves and lie down, turning around like a dog to survey the spot from all angles. Then ill-temper being over, for the time being, they chew their cuds. When the sky is clear again, they will go out.
     "They got fooled the first day of the snow. The sky cleared and the sun shone, and out they trotted to nibble on the dry hay, that was left along the edge of the field. They were so occupied that they did not notice the snow-clouds zooming overhead, and they were caught in the blizzard. That was around the noon hour, and I had taken their leaf of baled hay out to them, when I noticed I had no goats where they should have been. Ferdinand's bottle was in my pocket, and sooner than let him miss it on such a dramatic day, I went down to the end of the land and called. No response. Usually they answer quickly.
     "Well, it was pouring down with heavy wet snow, and I had only a scarf covering over my head, so I decided to leave the goats to fend for themselves. Fifteen minutes later, it was pouring, and the goats were still away somewhere on the property. They have sense, and those goats were probably sheltering in the spruce grove, snug and warm together, and they were wearing their good thick fur coats, more than I was. So I came in and had my lunch, and then went out again with Ferdinand's bottle. They were back. They were gulping down their alfalfa in great chunks and butting each other out of the way. Ferdinand was skipping from side to side of the cream separator, snatching at a sprig of alfalfa, whimpering as they butted him. He gave a crow of delight when he saw me and butted his hard head at the nipple of the bottle before he started drinking. Then he got down on his front knees, waved his tail in circles, tipped his rear end up and started to swallow that gruel of his. He loves it by the way. He gets a bottle three times a day, with eight ounces each time, and he swallows it in nothing flat. It froths out over his nose, and when he shakes his head he throws froth over his ears. 'Good stuff,' he would probably say if he could."
     Katherine Day writes that, "It is a gruel of calf-meal. It is made with about a cup of water and a table-spoon of dry calf meal, put on to boil. When it boils it is cooled down with milk, and that's Ferdinand's treat. I got five pounds of meal for him, and when he has finished that, he can go on dairy ration and hay, like the two grown-ups in his company. They all stayed in for the rest of the day. I closed the lower part of the half-door, and the snow still blew inside. As I had already brushed out the snow from that floor, I thought they had enjoyed enough of the stuff, and I closed the top half to keep the weather out. Polly looked at me out of the window with a smug look on her face. I think she had an idea that I was shut out in the storm, and it served me right."
     Now for locating a well on her property, Katherine Day composes a little story about her water needs at the home she had just erected near the Hawthornes cottage which was constructed first. Note, Miss Day also sketched the fellow she contracted to locate her well, and it appears with today's chapter. She writes: "When I built Hawthornes, I simply asked a well-digger in the nearest town, to come out with his equipment and drill me a well. With the help of a 'witcher' - or 'dowser' if you like, that part was done speedily, and we tapped an underground stream. That was all. The next house was built after the war, when everyone was either hanging on to what they had, in the way of a house, or dazedly scrounging all the materials he or she could collect, and calling themselves lucky for the effort. Everyone was beseeching the building brotherhood for a quarter of a quarter of a minute of their time. All the builders had two or three jobs going at one time. There seemed to be no ordinary labour to be had. Everything had become specialized. Dig a well, indeed. Too hard was the work, said some. And by this time, the men who had drilled the well at Hawthornes, was suffering heart strain from overwork.
     "Optimistically, I at least located the well. I had it 'witched'. The witcher was a small and undistinguished man who lived on a few acres over near Lake Simcoe. He made his living by farming, and this gift of locating wells was just something a little extra. He would not state a charge, and seemed rather shy of commercializing this strange virtue. He arrived in a rattling old car on a misty morning in October. By this point, we had suffered a prolonged dry spell in the region, and the omen for non-discovery seemed propitious. He had several forked sticks with him, which he had cut that morning, for freshness was necessary in his tool chosen to use in that hour of discovery. He did not say much. He looked at us with his large intense, innocent blue eyes, and heard what we had to say. Then he stepped apart, twig in hand with the point up, and paced the ground. He held the two forks, one in each hand, thumbs down, elbows tight to his body, and strode along intent and wrapped. He and the earth were communing. He would walk into the mist and then come back to us,and we dared not speak for fear of breaking the spell.
     "Presently the enchanted look left his face and a beaming smile broke out. A smile of triumph. The magic branch in his hand slowly and deliberately dipped its head toward him, his elbows moved out and up, and the branch pointed directly to the earth below him. He breathed a long sigh, and said, 'There she is. I felt a pull back there, and I thought we had water. There's a stream down below. A running stream'. You would have thought he had invented it, he was so pleased with his efforts. He now paced back and forth to establish the direction of the underground stream, and came towards us with the air of a conqueror. 'Where would you like the well to be located,' he asked. We told him, and there it was. In a small amount of time. However, the difficulties of the war intervened. No one wanted to be bothered with the hard work of digging a well. The driller no longer took contracts. It was not until spring that I found some men who would dig it for me.
     "They dug and found a flood of water at seven feet, and they stoned up the sides of the well. It was a handsome bit of stoning, and I was quite proud of it. The water flowed in up to the top while we were occupied in putting a handsome coping around it, with two forked trees as standards and a roller with a real Quebec sort of handle on it. We nailed a rope in the middle of it, attached a bucket on the other end, and worked the windlass with great pleasure. Alas, the water ran out with much the same speed as it had run in on that proud day. In six weeks the bottom of the well was bare, with great rocks which defied an ordinary extraction. A workman got a few of the smaller ones out, and to our surprise, there appeared a circle of stones which could only have been set there by hand. That was as deep as ten feet down the hole. On this we pondered for some time, and came up with three theories, one of which was probably correct. A. The Indians had constructed it three hundred years earlier, when they roamed this land called Huronia. The authorities at the Ontario Museum in Toronto soon knocked that idea higher than a cocked hat. Indians, we were informed, did not need to dig wells in this country three hundred years ago. The land abounded with fresh streams, and when they tired of an inhabitation, they moved to another, also being close to a water source. Why did they need to dig a well?
     B. It was a natural rock formation. Even a child could have proven that this theory was silly, for the stones were at least several layers deep, and the opening was consistently fifteen inches across.
     C. It had been a well at one time earlier, in history, probably for the first settlers to homestead in Oro-Medonte, and abandoned later and most likely filled-in upon departure. Now this was a theory that seemed to hold water. True, the oldest inhabitants could never recollect a house at this point of land, let alone ever knowing about a well having been located there. But evidence is evidence, and we had it down that well. Besides, this spot which had been dug out was full of large boulders such as might have been found on the surface of the land, when it was being cleared for homesteading, some hundred years earlier. What would be easier than to fill in an unwanted, unsatisfactory well with the great stones which had to be placed somewhere on the acreage, out of the way so as to be able to cultivate and plant the farm fields.
     "We had plenty of time to digest this theory, for no one wanted to dig the well anyway. I carried water for a year from a charming little stoned-up well at the side of the road, a hundred yards farther on. One day, the following year, two workmen, who had laid some crazy pavement for me the year before, came and asked me if I wanted them to dig my well. You can imagine my astonishment, to be asked for work after all this time! I pulled myself together, not wanting to get hysterical with my joy, made a bargain with the gentlemen, and they soon began work. We had to dynamite some stones out, and the work was heavy; but these two men persisted until we got a layer of water. They went through hard-pan, and gravel, and shale, and we had everyone calling on us and telling tales about what we could expect after clearing certain formations. But when we eventually encountered gravel again at twenty feet down, we were sure that the water could not be far off. Besides it was July, a hot dry spell.
     "At twenty-two feet down we stopped. This time I made arrangements for large tiles, thirty-six inches across inside. We got nine of them, each thirty inches high, and made a gravelly bed for the lowest one to rest on. Then we got the biggest wrecker (tow truck) in town, to come and lower them into the well. One of my diggers took a ride down on the lowering ropes, so as to guide the great cylinders into place. When all nine were down, the entire group of men, truckers, wreckers, and diggers leaned over the top tile and gazed down into the well. It was a touching sight, but I did not have my camera on hand to record it.
     "All we had to do after that was to pack the earth back around the tiles, wait for it to settle, and then reconstruct the coping and the windlass. The water tasted of cement until the next spring. But the winter's frost cured it, and we have a real and prosperous well for the effort and expense. We put a top on it of double tounge and groove wood, with a square opening hinged to throw back, in order to lower the pail. The odd other thing has got into the well by misadventure. Most notably, a pair of pillow cases accidentally rolled into the opening off the top of the pile, I was making in a basket; and they floated on top of the water, about ten feet down. My frantic efforts to hook them up only made them more water logged, and they soon sank out of sight, with that deliberation, and it made a mere human like me, wring her hands and wail. They were nice pillow cases.
     "There is a pail on the bottom of the well. It was quite a nice pail as well, but it decided, quite on its own, that I had tied an ineffective knot of rope on the handle, and it could escape custody if it so desired, by overwork, and give itself the freedom it obviously desired. It is still on the bottom of the well, mocking me, and likely to remain there forever. There is never less than twelve feet of water during the summer months, which is remarkable, and in the other seasons, you can almost dip a pail out of the top. Alas, there is no resurrection of the things that you accidentally drop into a well."

     Please join me tomorrow, for Part 12 of the biography of Oro-Medonte's artist/ homesteader, Katherine Day.