Wash Your Woolens Delicately…

When I was three years old, my father's father passed away and bequeathed us the old homestead in a small village called Bareneed, Newfoundland. When my father was a boy, Bareneed had been a fair sized fishing village, but over the years the population dwindled away, until today no more than a few dozen or so homes remain.

The fishery was still going strong in my Father's youth, so the small fishing villages thrived. As people became more educated the city called to them to look for "better jobs" (or to further their education, if they were "money people" and could afford it).

I have since found out, through my genealogy research, that my father was at least the seventh generation of his family to be born in Bareneed.

The old family home was what we call a salt-box; white clapboard, square, two-storey. It was built about half way up the hillside road that ran from the cove (where the community wharf was located) on down the isthmus towards the much bigger fishing settlement of Port-de-Grave. There was, of course, no indoor plumbing, so behind the house was a red barn and, tucked around the corner of the barn (for discretion's sake, I suppose), was the outhouse. Several hundred yards across a meadow was a well that my father had dug and that was our source of fresh water. We would walk across the meadow with two water buckets, take the lid off the well, use the bucket attached to the well head with a small rope and haul up a pail of crystal clear water that came directly from a mountain spring. I remember my mother telling me to skim the bucket over the top of the well water to dip up the bits of floating twigs and grass that may have blown in and to throw this away before dipping deep down a second time to get the coolest and freshest water. There was no talk of pollution from fertilizer run-off then. We knew nothing about contaminated water supplies. We trusted that Dad knew enough to choose a site for a well wisely, that he would dig deeply enough to hit a spring that would constantly bring fresh water into the well. He walled it with rock so as to keep it clean and prevent the walls of the well from washing in and filling the hole back up again.

I remember the day Dad started the walling process. He seconded two of my older brothers and some of the local boys who chummed around with them. They used huge, flat pieces of shale that had sloughed off from the erosion of the rock face of a nearby hill. They carried these rocks, one by one, to my father. He stood on an old wooden ladder, down the well shaft and he began the slow process of walling the sides. He started at the bottom, of course, and had to stop every hour or so and bail out the water that had bubbled up, before continuing on with the chore. It took two full days of work to complete.

At the end of the first night, the well was left as an open pit, with just some wooden "rails" set across to keep someone from falling in should they happen to wander near. My father would build a proper well head out of wood later.

Well, during the night some stray sheep that had been put out to pasture for the summer had roamed over to that part of the meadow. The inevitable happened and one nosey sheep fell in. We were awakened early the next morning with the loud bleating of the creature. My poor father, who loved animals, was distraught! He was determined to get the sheep out before the well filled enough, and the sheep tired enough, that it would drown. The big problem was that the sheep had not been sheared since the year before and when all of that wool got wet, the thing must have weighed more than two full grown humans.

It took my Dad and the boys the whole morning to try the get some of the wooden railings under the sheep to use as a lever to prop the animal up until a block and tackle could be erected to hoist it out. They couldn't get down the well beside it as it would panic and squirm and kick! Of course, they couldn't get close enough to wrap the hoisting rope, for the block and tackle, around its middle either; the thing was so scared and skittish. They tried different methods and I'm not sure what finally worked. I think they hoisted the beast on the rails long enough for some of the water to drip out of its wool. As it became lighter it was probably able to scramble the rest of the way out of the pit.

Looking back, it was the funniest thing to see; a grown man and five or six strapping boys all trying to get this one poor, frightened, sopping sheep out of a hole in the ground.

My mother was having a hard time trying to keep a serious face as she made her frequent trips over the way to see how things were progressing.

When the rescue was finally completed, the sheep could barely waddle away as it was so water logged. I'm sure it didn't dry out for the rest of the summer. The owner probably wondered why the wool was so damp when he sheared it that fall.

Every time I see an ad saying you should wash your woolens delicately, in cold water, I wonder if that sheep would agree.

© Newfie June




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