Františka Bachanová

“Oh, I milked for forty years. We were there at half past three in the morning. When it was summer, it was fine. But in the winter! We came there, the pipes were frozen, we had to warm everything up, a disaster. Oh, but you get used to anything if you have to. When we had calves, we had to come three times a day. We bustled up at half past three, so as to be home again at half past seven, when the children went to school, so I helped them get ready. Then we had to go back for the midday, that was another two hours. And a third time at half past three again. It was practically the whole day. Then they got rid of the dairy, and they wanted us to have a day off. You can want that, but that’s not something you can just plan out like that. Because the one whose supposed to take turns with you goes to other cows each day, and they [the cows - trans.] are used to your hands and the way you milk them. So it usually ended up with mastitis. Say, because the cow had just calved and didn’t start up. Then they had to treat both the cows and the calves. The milk had to go. It was big trouble. When we used to go every day, we did. But as soon as we had the one day off... ‘Back to work tomorrow!’ It’s best when you don’t have any respite.”

“There was a big drought. And when you have so much cattle in the house and nothing to give them... That’s how dry it was. And because we had a lot of fields up in the top parts, it rained a bit there once, so we threshed somewhat at least. Of course, they came and confiscated what we had in the granary. Except they also wanted us to deliver even... oh, it can’t even be explained. It ruffles me up just to think of it. We took a wagon, I spread out [the crop - trans.], and four reapers reaped it. Then we went to gather it up to dry. We planned to come pick it up in a day or two. Uncle Franta Míšek came by. ‘Jan, no need to go up to the meadows for hay any more, they’ve taken it already.’ The people from Veselí District took it for their own purposes. They were founding a UAC.”