Northern Farmer

It’s a Sunday evening out here, just came into the house, legs are tired right along with the rest of me. I stayed out of the fields today, Sunday you know, but have been tending to the cow herd today after church and also putzing in the garden. Just got the peas in this evening. The last few days we’ve gotten the spuds in, also the onion sets, some kohlorabi, and some rutabagas. We’ll be adding to the garden daily when time allows, gradually working our way into the warmer season crops. There’s some more cold season crops to plant and they’ll get planted quick. Not tonight though, there just comes a time where a person gotta just sit on down. Next Monday the first 150 chicks arrive from Hoover’s Hatchery. By the time they’re three weeks old we should be well into grass season and more stable warm temperatures in this neck of the wood. After last years wipe out of a hundred chickens from our friends from the weasel family I do believe we have that problem solved. It takes a bit extra work, but what’s the use even working if all the chickens are going to get their throats slashed. I was down by the creek a few hours ago and a natural thing for me to do is check for tracks in the bank mud, a throw back from my younger years trapping. And there’s plenty of mink tracks and other critters working the river. One thing about this area, we’ve a heavy predator population and they sure do like to kill.

This last week besides being busy has been one of tragedy in this area with a local girl, a junior in the local high school, getting killed in a head on crash last Wednesday. A few days after the yearly prom at school. I don’t know, it just makes a person feel bad. Every so often there’s a tragedy in the area like that and it never gets any easier. I just pray for all the family and friends, my heart goes out to them all.

A person thinks about all this when working the dirt and taking care of the cows. That little time we have here on this earth and how it can end in a flash. It can be an accident or just working like every day and falling over from a heart attack or a massive stroke, very little warning and it’s all over in this world. It doesn’t have to be a slow process, although sometimes it is. But I think about this when I’m listening to the old gospel songs, I’m starting to get myself quite a collection around here too. I’m talking the songs that came out of the country, out of the hills and hollers, from the little family farms and from mining camps and the like. That old fashion faith where the folks knew we were just pilgrims in this world, not of it. That mountain moving faith, that simple bible believing faith that dominated the rural areas in days gone by. The days when folks worked hard and had that hope of a better life to come! It seems like nowadays most want everything perfect here in this world, which is impossible and will do a person more damage then good.

No, them folks working the field, tending the cows and all the other farm critters had faith in the blessed hope. They knew when it was time to die they were going to a better place. Takes the fear out of it, the fear the world has of death. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I think them old songs were as close as any ever got to describing how we should live life. And I know for myself, when I keep that old faith in me for the day it don’t matter what’s thrown at a person on the farm, the job will get done one way or another. The evenings are a time for reading the Word, studying about it and general family time. Insomnia is not a problem in this way of life. Crawling to bed or should I say getting into bed before crashing for the night is the priority. Waking up is sometimes very hard to do, but get up we do. The huge difference between working out years ago and farming now is that there is no dread of starting the day, no wishing I could be doing something else. Well, sometimes I wish the job I’m doing would be done, but wishing never got a job done, just some good old fashion work.

Going to church once or twice a week is very special when living this way of life, just as it was for the families of old who tended the land. Church is not something that interferes with our recreation activities. It is an important part of living, in fact one of the most important parts. And thinking about it, besides all the faith matters to do with church, after working everyday, all the time basically, church is a welcome break for the mind and body. It is the one time when a person can socialize with other local folks. Get renewed that way too, a very important fact of life. This is the way it used to be in days gone by. When church was over there wasn’t the mad dash to get the heck out of there and race on to something to fulfill the modern worldly desires. Nope, church was the meeting place years ago, in more ways than one. It was the place the folks got together to talk faith, to talk farming, gardening, critter care and problems. The kids would scamper off and be having some grand adventures with the other kids. It was a time greatly looked forward to in the old dirt farming way of life. The center of all outside farm activities. Back then the schools weren’t the center of life or any other thing for that matter, it was the little country churches.

In our life as of late, these last couple of years we’ve rediscovered this fact. Rediscovering the old honest ways of living and being blessed mightily by it all. The desire has always been there, sometimes almost forgotten, but still there buried away, waiting to be reawakened. If this post sounds like I’m happy, well I am! I don’t know any other way of life where a person works so much and so hard, where a person can work till they drop and just praise the Lord for it all. It took me around fifty years to finally know that I’m truly happy, and I know that I am. Them old songs from the common folks ring true as much now as they did back then.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 29th, 2007 at 8:16 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.