In previous columns I shared some stories from my friend, Jimmie Ray “Jiggs” Newsom of Sikes. This week, Jiggs tells us more “tales of yesteryear.”

If you lived in eastern Winn or its neighboring parishes in the early years, the early years being to me the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, open range is something that you took for granted. All farmers had cows and hogs that grazed up to five or six miles from home. In the summer and fall, the farmer needed all his fenced property to grow plant crops. After all, the crops provided canned goods, winter food for all the animals, and usually a money crop like cotton, which provided money to buy clothing, coffee, sugar, salt, and flour.

The animals provided meat, milk, and lard. Usually in the spring we would sell 10 or 12 cows at $10 to $20 each, and a few hogs, to buy seeds and fertilizer to start the crop process over. After we got a tractor in 1950. that money also had to provide gas and oil.

The woods, unlike today, were wide open, with very little underbrush, except at the scattered thickets at the head of some of the sprig branches. The hogs usually stayed in the swamp, where acorns were plentiful, and the cows liked the piney woods and the roadsides where grass was more abundant. To assure grass in the piney woods, a farmer or two would burn the woods in the winter. This kept down the build-up of pine straw and allowed new grass to come up in the spring.

In winter, the farmers became ranchers and tended their animals. A cow pen, a small shed, and feed troughs were put up in winter on company land near where the cows roamed. The cow pen was disassembled at the end of winter. Almost everyone fed cotton seed meal and hulls. These feedings were not to fatten the cows, but just to allow them to survive the winter.

The hogs were a different story. They could survive anything except disease. They were fed shelled corn, but the primary purpose of that was to keep them tame and to know where they were located, since people hunted their hogs. When a new litter of pigs arrived, they had to be earmarked to identify ownership.

I’d say 99% of the farmers were totally honest. Banner Abram tells the story of his grandfather killing one of my great grandfather’s hogs by mistake. He loaded it up and carried it to my great grandfather’s. They heated water and dressed the hog, and each took half.

The 1% who were a little less honest usually weren’t farmers at all. They were just lazy people living on a farm. Once George Hatten, one of the more generous farmers around Hinton Camp, caught one of these 1% in the act of killing one of his hogs. The man, who didn’t work and had about 12 kids, explained, “out of necessity, Mr. Hatten, out of necessity.” George helped him dress the hog and gave him a stern warning not to do that again.

Farmers took pride in their hog dogs. Hog dogs were used to find hogs and help drive them to the pens. They did the same for the cattle. Everyone liked to brag about the qualities of their dogs, and were not above exaggerating them.

The first sign of a stock law came to Sikes in the early 50s. The town council put cattle guards and fences at all the road entrances into town. That controversy alone destroyed lifelong friendships.

I was living in Houston, where you couldn’t walk your dog, unless he was on a leash, when the parish wide stock law came about and don’t know the details. I do know that my family had to dispose of 75 head of cattle at cut rate prices. The hogs were allowed to go wild and be trapped by trappers. My family didn’t care, because the ranching end of farming had become expensive.

Can you imagine open range now? Can you imagine coming around a curve at 60 MPH in a Toyota and running into a herd of cows sleeping in the road. It would be the number one killer in Sikes. The open range was fine in another time, when people lived at a slower pace.