Northern Farmer

As the rest of the country is so geared up for shopping today and it’s the main topic on the news while I’m feeding cows out in the hayfield on the back forty I have to just smile. Boy, I must really be missing the boat. It didn’t even cross my mind that I should be waiting for the stores to open at five AM. And then maybe I should have headed for the electronics department and got in a good fight with somebody over some gadget. At least if I did these things I could sit down in my rocking chair this evening and know I was “normal”. Oh well, try as I might I just don’t fit in.

But instead it was just another day here on the farm. It was snowing lightly with minimal wind so it was kinda pretty. My darn lower back went out today, and I can’t figure out what job did it, don’t really matter I guess, but it hurts like the dickens sometimes. Feels good at this moment sitting here but you never know when it’ll knock me right to the ground. Fell out of the kitchen chair at noon, that’s always good for a laugh, and fell down, or should I say collapsed, in the cattle yard this morning. I could just see the concern in all the cow’s eyes. Then when I seen the eyes of one of our bulls with them that’s about a ton in weight I had a quick recovery and somehow got up with all them clothes on and meandered away quick. I’ll take pain in the back anyday compared to getting turned into people burger by a bull.

Just another day out here, working no matter what kind of shape your in. Beats the heck out of working with full blown pneumonia, that’s always a rough one. Done that a few times and the great beyond looks pretty good while I’m doing it. The times a person has to get out there and work sick or injured, sometimes pretty seriously, happen more often then I want, but it gotta be done. Broken bones don’t even stop a person sometimes. One time I had pneumonia pretty bad during calving season in spring and “had” to go to the doctor or else, well he told me to take these pills and lay in bed for a week. I had to just snort at what that quack said. Told him, “Doc, you’d better give me something that knocks this crap out of me because when I get home I’m heading right back out into the rain and sleet and mud all day and probably all night too, with luck I can catch a wink in the pickup.” Well, I’ve gotta give the doc credit, after giving me some mighty strange looks he changed the prescription and gave me some barn burning stuff. Might be the same as people give to a half dead cow, but it sure burned the pneumonia out of me quick, that’s for sure. I wonder what else they have hidden in their medicine chest?

So, with a little luck this condition will be history in a couple of days, sure do hope so. But at least this time it didn’t hit during a busy spell. That’s one of the things about farming with animals, no matter what, a person works, period. But then in true farming tradition we have another war story to tell, another notch on the gun. A strange folk we are.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 25th, 2005 at 9:48 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.