Northern Farmer

We got an inch and a half of fairly warm rain this weekend, fairly warm compared to the snow and below zero wind chills of a couple of weeks ago! Calving is starting to pick up steam here somewhat with the main hit coming the next couple of weeks or so. So far I’m satisfied with how many cows are showing close up. This was a bit of a concern since the massive drought we had last year can normally knock the heck out of breeding. It’s sometimes hard to get cows breed when there ain’t a blade of grass to be had and they’re losing condition daily. But thank the Lord all looks pretty good! With this rain the grass is really greening up so I’m hoping that in a couple weeks I can finally wake up in the morning and not have to feed cattle. Been doing that job since July and I’m tired of it, very tired of it. I know there’s allot of worse things in this world than feeding cattle year around so I don’t want to sound like a complainer, but Glory Be when them things hit grass! This will have been a year to remember with last summer’s sickening feeling of watching everything that was being raised die right before my very eyes. The blasting heat and never any rain to more than wet the sidewalk. Wondering how we’d make the winter without losing bigtime. I tell you, if anyone thinks this is all a bed of roses, well, whatever.

But the thing is, we made it! Through family sickness, disasters, overwork, we made it! Right up to the end I was wondering if we would. Now in the evenings the yearly calf dance is starting to take place. It’s one of my favorite things in this whole wide world! The calves that are on the ground now are forming a gang and in the evening near sundown they go running and bucking all around the seven acre calving lot. The mamma’s just watch from the sidelines as them little critters go running as a gang so fast it would amaze many a folk. I know I never get tired of the spectacle. New life bursting in joy, running, almost dancing in joy! I don’t know if I’ve ever read about the calf dance anywhere in my life, so I’ll jot it down so it’s recorded in this world. And if you think a young calf is running around kinda slow and clumsy I’ll tell you that’s not the way it is. One of our four wheelers has a speedometer and we clocked one at exactly forty miles an hour. No kidding! Thus it seems to justify a four wheeler cause I have a hard time running forty miles per hour, at least for extended periods of time.

Gonna try and get the spuds in this week along with the onions, peas, and a few other early crops. I figure by tomorrow night the ground should be firmed up enough to get back to work out there. I couldn’t even imagine living without the family gardens. I get a strange feeling if I have to eat boughten veggies, who knows how they were raise, where they’re from or what is the genetic make up of the thing a person is eating. Enough to put some fear into a person. Same with meats, walk by a meat counter and get a queasy feeling. But with three freezers full right now I’m not to concerned about buying any meat of any kind for quite some time.

Fish are running in the creek behind the place as I type, of course it’s illegal to spear them before May 1st. And seeing how I always follow every law ever made right to the letter, uh, well, anyone for some fresh fish the last week of April! But I’d better get off them illegal subjects cause I always get in trouble here when I do. You just never know when a person’s going to turn you in for something that we consider normal. Oh my, now how did I get on this subject cause believe me it wasn’t planned. But this might be shocker to many that read, in fact I know it is from past experiences here. A funny thing happens in blogdom, of course I could care less, or I’da been gone along time ago. But when you live out here, doing things the way they were always done it can upset some folks who want the country life, love reading about the simple life, but will hang on to the culture of death with everything they have. They can’t understand the realities out here. It’s different I tell you. Almost every one I know that has lived here from before the times of the suburbanite invasion, is a registered outlaw. Really! I’m shooting straight here!

If you’ve ever been at the counter at the co-op and got into a conversation with the locals here, it’d take about a minute to get deep into a conversation about something that’s totally illegal and everyone just ignores it. I mean we ignore the laws. Oh man, I wonder how this will go over, I don’t read about this fact of country life hardly anywhere either, oh well. Everything from active moonshiners, to ignoring every law that county, state and the feds can come up with. It’s somewhat like the Joel Salatin saying, “everything I want to do is illegal”! And as he says, sometimes just hush up, and do it. Nobody the wiser, no government person getting involved. There’s allot more freedom loving people out here than most would ever imagine. Mostly like I said, it’s the oldtimers who haven’t totally fell on their knees and gave all their worship to the economic society. It’s folks like this that go unnoticed by the rest in their busy every spiraling downward rush to materialism. Blinded by keeping up with everyone else. Yes, there’s folks that are living like the majority can’t imagine, living free. Sure they’re still in the “system”, but they’ve learned how to thrive in it. Plus it’s a heck of a lot more fun than being a mindless cog in the machine. Oh, I could really tell some stories, I really could, but even I draw back from that a bit, cause I know when to draw the line somewhat. But maybe I’ll drop a few here and there as time goes by. I do like writing about the real life of the backroads. No theories here, or speculation, or dissecting something to see how it all fits, nope, just the real thing. The one thing I’ve noticed, and I’ll stand by it, is that folks that really live here are happy, happy in a way no “thinker” could ever figure out. People that live for real, people that believe in heaven and hell.

I’d better get, gotta million things to do yet around here, finished my cup of coffee. Funny, I wouldn’t dare drink a coffee on a winter evening writing cause it would be keeping me up all night, now as the workload increases that cup or two in the evening means nothing as far as keeping me from sleeping. Sleep like a rock, no dreaming, no nothing. Wake up and hit the new day tomorrow, Lord willing. I got more things on my agenda than any normal person should have, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Things are a changing here, new adventures, new doors opening. Things I wouldn’t have even imagined two years ago are falling into our laps. Funny how that all works. The one thing I will say is that when one is following our Lord, It’s never boring! I don’t even know how to write it all. But life here is just beginning!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 8:19 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.