Days you wanna tell em to f*^# off, grab your shit, and leave

We’re finally set to knock down all the hay today. If we get through this hay season without me blowing up at Dad again, it’ll be a miracle. Don’t get me wrong, I have a great dad, but as any farm kids out there know, sometimes getting along and running a business and living together aren’t easy combinations. It’s not like we can leave our beefs at the office. We still come home and have to live together. We’ve got old age an treachery versus youth and vigor. And my dad is over sixty, so it’s all the more apparent. How he wants to do and manage things is not how I do, and vice versa. Making it work is a daily challenge, one I’m coming to dread more and more, since coming from a very closed-mouthed generation and being less than forthcoming to emotions and new ideas, my dad is getting increasingly hard to communicate with as he grows older. It’s a scary thing, not just from a business standpoint, but also as a daughter, to realize that you’re grown and suddenly a parent is failing, either mentally or physically or both. If anyone else has tips for dealing with this, I’d love to hear from you. I don’t want to spend the last years of my dad’s life fighting with him and being pissed off over everything. How do you deal with someone who doesn’t operate on the same level of reality as the rest of the world, either from personal choice or from failing mental faculties? Especially in a farm setting where if I were a son, I could have had an easier time taking over the business.

On a cheerier note, the cows are fat, black, and sassy with baby bellies and I get to see my honey tonight. =D

Why Farmers Often Doubt Their Sanity

Picture this: Yours truly on an open-sided skidsteer, pushing up feed after milking. It’s dark, it’s raining, it’s a typical Thursday night. It’s also March and I’m out in my shirtsleeves pushing up feed in the wind and rain. Why? It would have been too easy to grab a sweatshirt on my way out of the parlor. And as I round the corner and take a blast of cold rain down my back, I realize that I’m so glad I’m here, right now, doing what I’m doing. Why? Not a freaking clue.

Farmers are a crazy lot. You give us a million dollars and we don’t go on a cruise, we don’t spend lavishly on a nice dinner out, what do we do? That’s right, sink it right back into the farm. Even we sit back and scratch our heads over our sanity once in awhile. But it’s involuntary. Like breathing. I think most farmers don’t really know what to do or feel comfortable doing anything else. Sure we do, often out of necessity, but working with livestock or cropping or agriculture in any capacity is almost a dark inner compulsion. You can’t not do it. Not doing it makes you feel restless and ill-at-ease, an itch you can’t scratch. Maybe that’s why when some old farmers can’t get out to the barn anymore they pass away pretty fast. It’s a connection you can’t get from anything else and the lack of it makes you diminish somehow, fade away.

Meanwhile, back on the skidsteer, cold March rain in my face, I’d like to be warm. I’d like a shower after work to be an option, not a necessity. I’d prefer the cows not kicking, shitting, pissing, bleeding, pussing, or puking (it happens) on me. But you know what? I can say “yeah I run a skidsteer in a t-shirt in the rain in March. What’s it to ya?” I can say I’ve done it.

I’m farming.

I wouldn’t be this damn uncomfortable if I wasn’t.

Random Wednesday

Things a farm girl can find in her bra:
Hay chaff
Mud
Manure of various species’
Pre- and/or post dip
Tomato sauce
Feathers
Grease, oil, and other viscous fluids
Hair, not always her own
Leather
Money
Cell phone
Credit cards
Chicago screws
Nails
File
Pry bar (small size)
Small animals (very small)
And egg yolks.