BROOKS – It’s not hard to find Don Nickerson’s farm: Cross the railroad tracks, head through the woods, and watch for the white farmhouse on the hill.

The tricky part is shaking the feeling that somewhere along the way, you slipped backward in time.

There are plenty of places in Maine where schedules rule, children are hypnotized in front of computers or televisions, where families are so busy with individual pursuits that they barely see one another.

But not on Nickerson’s Riverside Farm, where horses still are hitched to hay wagons, eggs are gathered fresh each morning, and the three grandchildren Nickerson is raising are spending their summer on chores, swimming, gardening and learning responsibility.

On a brilliant sunny morning this week, Nickerson’s two barefoot granddaughters worked the ground in the pumpkin patch they are growing to pay for school clothes. Jewel-colored bantam chickens announced themselves regularly, while a gaggle of gray geese puffed themselves out in the sun. A black and white dog supervised everything, while a black and white cat lounged in the shade of a barn doorway.

In a nearby field dotted with emerald-green squash plants, Nickerson was passing on the ancient tradition of working with oxen to his 12-year-old grandson Caleb Higgins.

At only 94 pounds, just one-tenth of each ox’s weight, Caleb walked in front, holding a small rope halter and using a thin switch to tap the oxen as he directed them.

“Gee!” he shouted, the command to turn right. “Haw!” he quickly added, telling the oxen to move left. The boy made kissing sounds to move the oxen forward.

Nickerson pulled up the rear, leaning forward with his hand on the cultivator. If Caleb missed a command, Nickerson shouted it out.

Stepping aside to catch his breath and watching his grandson work the oxen by himself, Nickerson smiled. “Oh, I enjoy this. If I could just turn it into money,” he joked.

For as long as Maine has existed, teams of oxen have been an integral part of farm life. Some of today’s oxen are descendants of the Devon blood lines brought to America by the Pilgrims from England. Historians maintain that America couldn’t have been settled and expanded as it was without trained oxen.

Although most oxen owners today keep them mainly for competitions at the state’s agricultural fairs, the Nickersons’ oxen – oxen are castrated male cattle used for work – are as important to the farm’s management as the tractor and the fences and have been for generations.

“This was my grandfather’s great-grandfather’s farm,” Nickerson said. “He was a boy before the Civil War. I found his pattern for the ox yoke hanging in the barn.”

The red ox, Cinnamon, and the black and white, Pepper, wear yokes hand-carved by Nickerson from oak, cherry and poplar. Caleb made his own switch.

“The switch is just used to tap them to get their attention,” the boy said. “Mostly it’s something to lean on like a walking stick.”

It is hard, intense work. The oxen, twin brothers that are mixed Holstein and Shorthorn, are just 2 years old and along with Caleb are still learning the art of pulling.

When they were only a week and a half old, Nickerson began showing Caleb how to hide the calves’ bottle and to use commands to help them find it. “After a while, they’ll follow you anywhere for that bottle,” the grandfather said.

“This is hard to learn, and it takes a lot of practice,” the boy said, wiping sweat from his face and leaving dirt streaks on his cheeks.

“You need to know what to expect,” he said. “I’ve been horned and stepped on. You never want them to know they are stronger than you.

“When I didn’t pay attention, when I didn’t make them believe I was the boss, that’s when they stepped on me,” Caleb said. “The hardest thing is teaching them the commands, but that goes two ways – I’m teaching them, but I’m learning at the same time.

“I’ve gotten to know their personalities, and I’m starting to be able to predict their movements. Oxen are nice and slow. Horses get the work done faster, but oxen have a better personality.”

Nickerson said he often thinks of his own childhood while watching his grandson work the oxen.

“My father preferred horses. Having oxen was my idea more than his,” Nickerson recalled. “He told me that if I was going to ruin something, it wasn’t going to be his good horses. If I ruined the oxen, we could at least eat them.”

Nickerson said he began teaching Caleb the art of oxen training because the boy was impatient.

“I thought that by teaching him to train and lead the oxen, he would gain some patience,” Nickerson said, taking a break while the oxen sucked water from a nearby puddle. “Children need some guidance like this growing up. As a child, I never got to play much, but I was always with my dad doing the chores, working the land. I learned so much about life and living.”

Caleb, who is going into seventh grade this fall, is the only boy in his class who works oxen, and this distinction makes him proud.

“This is something I can talk about with my grandfather, something special I share with him,” Caleb said.

Although the sight of grandfather and boy working in the field may be romantic and satisfying, no one on this farm ever forgets that the oxen are for working. If they fail to do their job, they could become hamburger.

“I can’t treat them like a pet,” Caleb said. “I love them, but all along I know they eventually will be meat. I can’t let myself get too attached.

“The oxen get a lot of work done and save a lot of time,” he said. “We can haul manure that would have to be done with a wheelbarrow. They cultivate, and we would have had to do that by hand. In the winter, they bring in all the firewood, and in the summer they bring in the hay.”

Done for the day, the boy tied the oxen to a willow tree, removed the yoke and bow and walked the 1,000-pound beasts, one at a time, into the shade of the barn. The grandfather hooked two workhorses up to rusted equipment and headed off to cut hay.

“I like this way of life,” the boy said. “But farms don’t make a lot of money. If I am able to have a pair of steers when I grow up, I will most certainly teach this to my children.”

And just as quickly, Caleb snapped back into the 21st century.

“Now I have to take out the trash, feed the cat and clean my room,” he said, scrunching up his tanned face. “After, I might get to go swimming.”