I have mentioned this before; I am a farm kid and a “home made kid,” too. Our farm was not a huge operation by any stretch of the imagination but we sure as hell had a lot of work operating it! That manure pile that just got higher and higher all winter, now that spring arrived had to shoveled into a spreader and spread on the fields – whew, was that a stinky job! Naw we didn’t do the liquid manure back then, it was just plain ole shit!
Then when it was safe (meaning the snow was gone, the fields were dry) it was plowing time. My father had this tremendous need to “touch, feel and get his hands” on the land and equipment. I mean we had a tractor that you could attach a plow too and have only one person plowing up the fields. Not my Dad, he hooked up a plow that he walked behind, so he could feel the ground breaking up and walk in plowed rows. Us kids got to drive and that was not a quiet tractor, and Dad would yell for us to go in a straight line, aim right for the fence post and don’t go fast.
OMG this was boring as hell and we’d make up songs and sing as we slowly went up and down the field. You just got to imagine what it was like to walk behind that plow as it turned up the ground and hit rocks and jerked you around, this was no weak man’s work, this required considerable muscle and my father loved it! Many a time we never heard Dad yell for us to stop and looked back to see him laying in the dirt and plow dragging along doing nothing!
I won’t share with you the choice words he screamed at us to account for our intelligence and how we needed to look back more often. Suffice to say, his yelling was heard quite a distance and another sibling was soon replacing you on the tractor – thank God. But just because you were not helping with the plowing, you were not off the hook. Oh no, Mother had her own claim to fame when it came to spring-cleaning.
First was the desire to put up new wallpaper and she wasn’t always keen on scraping away the previous year’s paper (I think over the course of time, our rooms actually got smaller). And this was not simple work either, you had to cut the wall paper, slather it with glue (or paste) and carefully put it on the wall and hopefully the right side up and so one could not tell where one panel ended and another started and if you screwed up, well, down it came and more paste was put on and believe me, we had this paste all over us eventually!
Mom was also infamous for wanting every room washed top to bottom and I don’t mean just washed, hell, walls, doors, floors and even windows got scrubbed like they had some horrible disease or something. Plus anything that was not attached to a wall was removed, hauled outside and scrubbed clean as well. The only thing good about this process was you could only do one room per day and man, you found something else to do the next day if you were smart!
Ya, even plowing! But what always got me was once everything was cleaned, shining like a brand new penny, Mom would put down a carpet or area rug and you were hard pressed to see actually floor, so what was the bloody point? Oh the point was it was CLEAN!
Ah the good ole days of our youth – today we hire people to do this heavy-duty cleaning and as for plowing, hell, you'd be hard pressed to see anyone walking behind a plow these days. Plows today make 5 or 6 rows at a time vs. one row and lots of walking and guiding of a plow blade.
Yup times change and advancements happen, so be it. Farming is hard work no matter what generation -- and if you don't think so , become a farmer and find out for yourself!
2 comments:
I just planted a Butterfly Garden Mix of seeds!! The packet is over a year old, so who knows if anything will come of it! IF something does sprout, you are welcome to photograph it!! :0)
Made me feel good to play in the dirt! :0)
I wish you well with your Bufferfly Garden and know you just wanted to play in the dirt.
I played in the dirt on Mother's Day as I planted a few flowers and two tomatoes plants.
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