Don't fence me in

New Ipswich Historical Society

Marion Davis Audio-Tape Transcriptions

Sometime before her death in 1986, Marion Davis recorded her memories at the encouragement of her brother, Walter Buck. The recordings were transcribed by a secretary.

The Friends of Wapack have made these available to the Historical Society. Marion was born on February 8, 1894 in Fitchburg, MA.

Fencing the sheep

I missed the sheep so the next spring we went up to Louden to see Carl Moore. We had heard that he had some nice sheep. He had some purebred Dorcets. I bought 24 of then and a lamb. Oh, they were beauties; I thought a lot of those sheep. Right off soon after we got them home we went over to the Conant and we fenced that Conant with 3 woven wire fencing and barbed wire on top of it--about 6" above the woven wire. It took us just 3 days to run out those reels of wire. There was 120 acres in the Conant. Frank had rigged up a pole with a board at one end and a crossbar at the other end. You could set the reel of wine, which was a 20-rod reel, onto this board and put a stake down thru it, which I held onto. Frank took the cross-stick and we reeled out that wire that way. In 3 days we reeled out that wire around that 120 acres. Course we couldn't stake it all but we'd staple on the end of the reel and then carry it, wind around thru trees and down to the edge of the brook. Then we had the job of stapling it up, stretching it. The stretcher is composed of 2 x 4's with bolts in them that were put onto the wire and then there was a big grapple khook that hooked onto those and 2 lengths of chain that we would hitch to some tree to take up the pull with a bar that hooked into the chain. You'd pull that up and you could stretch that wire so it would almost sing. The lunches that Mable put up for us when we were doing that were enormous, but we made away with them.

Photo Archives

Picking flowers

James Roger diary entry & pullet count (7)

30th December 1912

Steady heavy rain all day with southerly wind. David went to Greenville in the morning and brought some grain, bought a horse blanket for Tom, also some alcohol for mother. In afternoon he went over some of the drains and watercourses as Royce is sick. Got letter from Jean today, also post card from Bella Roger at Canaan. Roads are very slushy and sleighing getting poor. Got papers from Scotland and letter from Hamish, who is still helping out in Ex. office at Schenectady. Pullets 7.

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