Real Neighbors
October 22nd, 2007 by Northern FarmerIt’s trying to dry out today, had us a bit of a breeze and some sunshine for once. Got a little plowing done today and fenced in around ten acres to let some cows graze. I’m using the reserves this year so the hunters aren’t going to have many places to hunt, but first things first I say. Besides, the hunters didn’t buy the place and they don’t pay the sky high real estate taxes either. So let the cattle in! Tomorrow, depending on how much it dries out, I’ll go to the neighbors place and chop corn stalks. The neighbor gave me sixty acres of corn fields to bale up in round bales and if I could just get a couple hundred bales that would go a long way helping out here till May feeding the main cowherd. Besides, he doesn’t plant GMO corn so I’m happy. Beggers can’t be choosy so I’ll try and get as much as I can off them fields. The neighbors around here are saving me thousands of dollars in feed costs this fall just being neighbors.
I can tell you, when you got some good neighbors out here in the country they’re worth allot! The last six weeks I’ve had seventy five cows grazing the neighbor’s regrowth oats fields. By regrowth I mean the crop was harvested, combined, back in July or early August. The combines have a blower fan in them that blows out chaff, lite weed seed and lite oats. Well, that oats starts to grow pretty good when moister comes like we got this September and freezing doesn’t really hurt it. It turns a beautiful dark green and can get really thick, and doesn’t seem to head out. This afternoon I was driving the Honda four wheeler through one and it was as high as the handle bars to give a reader an idea how lush it can get. And the cows just love it! In fact they can get fattened up in order to take a cold Minnesota winter with that stuff. I might lose the green manure for the year in the field but it gets replaced by real manure.
What would a person do without real country neighbors. Now remember this isn’t some area where folks are all the same, of one mind and all that. Everyone is pretty independent, but there’s a remnant of the old ways of helping each other out. These last two months of emergency grazing that we’ve been doing since the calves got wean has mostly been on neighborhood field. The amazing thing is that I never asked one person for any of these fields. The neighbors all mentioned it to me, telling me to throw some cows out on the fields so I wouldn’t have to buy so much hay. Can almost bring a tear to one’s eyes, knowing there’s still folks like that around. Of coarse I’m talking about the farmers because some of these city slick suburbanites that moved out here don’t even know how to give a farmer’s wave or any kind of wave as far as that goes. Maybe their mind is to occupied trying to figure out how to make the next mortgage payment, or else the realization that they gotta pay more, allot more on the shack than it’s currently worth. But I won’t get into that.
We got a couple of the new, modern neighbors that have yet to wave the first time. Now when I drive by them, let’s say they’re on their riding lawnmower right by the road and I’m driving by on the tractor they’ll look the other way, even if we’re only twenty feet apart. I don’t know what it is but these folks don’t fit in, and they won’t fit in. Is that the way the rest of the world acts, never even noticing their neighbors? Because if that’s the way society says we’re supposed to act out here then they can shove it! My kinda ways are when the farm pickups are parked on the road and there’s a big bull session going on, sometimes for hours, talking about everything and everybody, generally solving all the world’s problems. Nobody in any rush to go anywhere. Laughing till your guts hurt. That’s what I’m used to! That’s how we live. And most folks that have come here know that the bull can get pretty deep sometimes, thus it’s only natural to blog, eh!
Now I’m not talking for any other region in this here country of ours, but that’s the way we operate around here. Southerners might think they’re pretty laid back but they ain’t seen some of us farmers around here! There’s hardly a thing in the world that can get them to rush if there’s a good bull session taking place! I was searching something on the internet this past weekend about hillbillies of all things and came across a thing about Minnesota and it said that rural Minnesota, especially as you get further north of the Twin Cities is about as hillbilly as it gets. Of coarse we figure we’re pretty sophisticated here, but somebody doesn’t think so. I know sometimes I meet folks from other parts of the country and I soon realize they’re snickering at some of our ways here. But the jokes on them cause the way I figure it, we’re happy and how do you put a price tag on that. Then when they’re leaving I can see that look in their eyes that says, ” well, time to get back to the “real” world”. That world where everything is perfectly politically correct, everything is in order with today’s society, where life is a credit card. They take off in their fancy cars, snickering at us with our rusted out pickups, clothes with holes in some of the most interesting places, “believe me”, and beat up work boots and Sunday boots that ain’t a whole lot better.
But I come to the conclusion that we are rich! And I mean it! Don’t have to worry one bit about the farmer neighbors. They won’t even turn a person in when we’re on the shady side of the law. Just like we’d never turn in a neighbor, ever, for slipping into the lawless area a bit. It’s the old unwritten code here. Because if you’d turn in your neighbor, you’d better watch out, cause there’s a very likely possibility that you’d be turned in for everything the rest of your life. So that doesn’t happen all too often, it’s not because of that though, it’s almost everyone around here has moonshiner blood in them and there is that unwritten code to always help your neighbor and never and I mean never turn anyone in. Of coarse that doesn’t count for evil deeds like wife or family abuse, or husband abuse as far as that goes. Then they’ve crossed the line. I’m just talking about living free, disregarding regulations and all of that.
As I wrote, I’m not speaking for other parts of the country because I do know for a fact it’s not like that everywhere. But that’s the way we live. That might be why I’m the housing disasters biggest fan. Start cutting out these mongrels that are moving out here with their suburban ways and as far as I’m concerned those ways are as good as disease and death. You take away all our fun, our very life blood and some say it’s good? Take away our way of treating neighbors and get us modernized where everyone is for themselves. I don’t want it and I won’t have it. Nope, this is our life, it ain’t perfect but it’s not boring. I think that’s why some of our farm customers from the cities and places like that love coming here. Where else can they get entertainment like that! And most of them timidly slide into the conversations and pretty soon they’re having the time of their lives! No show or anything like that, just a healthy dose of real living!
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Ah, Hillbillies. I remember growing up and getting made fun of a bit by kids at school for using words and phrases like “Ya’ll”, “Cotton Picken”, pronouncing words like “wash” With a RRR sound “Warsh”, etc. I came home complaining about it, and my mother said just tell em “We educated Hicks” Seemed pretty accurate description. So I did. And I still will, if someone pushes the point. I’d say 90 percent of American history was created by “Educated Hicks” Shoot, many settlers couldn’t even read or write. But their spirit, and can-do abilities, changed the world. Frankly, more mischief has been caused by the “Educated” in history, than all the ordinary people in the world combined. I’m with you, if the housing bubble bursting keeps those infernal city suburbanites and the sprawl, and “Educated” ways they bring far away from here, I wouldn’t mind a bit. They might try “educating” folks around here and ruin everything. No wonder God skipped the “educated”, and sent Jesus to the Hicks. They were the only people who would listen to him.
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:31 am
Good Comments about neoghbors. I don’t know what I’d do without mine. About half my hay this year came from neighbors fields…… All free!! Yep, good neighbors are a Godsend……. Even in the sophisticated hills of Alabama……..
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:52 am
Mark,
I’ve come to the conclusion that sophisticated and educated mean that a person has to be in debt up to their eye balls and have a yard that looks like Toys-R-Us with every kind of recreation toy imaginable laying around, all on payments. And us hicks are looked upon as some sort of inconvenience to them, all. That is except during hunting season when all of a sudden they realize that them dumb country hicks own all the land that has wildlife on it. Pretty hard to have a habitat on a perfectly mowed lawn, not even a garden on it, just toys.
I agree about the hicks being the ones to forge ahead and change history for the good while the others are just causing more and more trouble. Them educated ones sit around figuring maybe they can make abortion good, maybe being a homosexual is good, maybe anything that’s called sin is good. I don’t know but the way it looks, them educated idiots are digging a hole that they’ll never get out of.
Hey Brad,
Long time no see, (ok, I just got done commenting to you on HW blog). I know you always wrote about all the things your neighbors were doing for you and they must be some good folks! Even if you folks are a tad bit sophisticated down there
I sure do hope you all wouldn’t look down to much at a poor Minnesota dirt farmer cause I really admire you all!
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Hey Tom, you got a special pair of boots for Sunday? You are eatin high on the hog. : - ).
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Guy,
Yup, they’re special alright. Bought them about ten years ago at the fleet store for thirty bucks. Never wore them in manure, well not to much anyhow so they look half way presentable yet. Each one has a hole in it, but not all too bad. I figure they should get ten more years out of them before they have to retire to the barnyard. So in reality my good shoe expense averages about a dollar fifty a year. I know that’s pretty spendy but hey, what can I say, I’m surrounded by this modern spend spend culture and some must have rubbed off on me
October 24th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Man oh man, you guys are speaking the truth.
I tell you I have been living in that politicaly correct city life for the past 25 years and I’ve had about all I can take. I would give anything to be a farmer now. I have the the college degrees and so I have had to endure all the elite snobs.
The life they live is all about obtaining more influence stuff. They live for their retirement portfolios. They live for their vacation plans. They live for status, entertainment, wealth and leisure. Then they die and it’s gone. All the nice stuff eventually ends up in flea market, Goodwill store or garage sale as junk nobody wants or in a landfill. Their name is forgotten by most and those few that do remember them have their own agenda.
They think their college degrees make them wise and that God is just a figment of the uneducated imagination. They call fur cruel but abortion freedom. To them tobacco is evil but narcotics are medicinal. They say Christians are right wing extreamists but Muslims are just misunderstood. The say homosexuality is natural but traditional marriage oppressive.
When I was in college I was running a trap line out of my dorm room. Some people would tell me how cruel it was. Then they would walk away in their leather shoes with their nose held high. One lady wearing some very nice expensive clothes and jewlery accused me of “the crime of vanity”.
I knew a person who went arround collecting money for the Humane Society. People were giving her all kinds of money. Ten dollars, twenty dollars, anything to help feed stray cats in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Then she tried to collect money for missions to help poor kids in third world countries. The same people wouldn’t give her a nickle.
Oh well, if I can ever manage to pay off everyone and save up some money, I’ll leave this place buy some land and start a self sufficient farm. I don’t need all the crap the pop culture sells. I can get by with almost nothing. I am now, might as well do it on a farm with sane neighbors.
October 24th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Hey Don!
All I can say to your comment is “YEE HAW!” Talk about hitting some nails on their heads! Right on down the list I have to agree with it all! And i’ve seen so much of it myself. That’s the mentality that’s starting to come into the countryside. This modern way of thinking and all. I’ve said many times and will say it again, it’s the “Culture of Death”. When a person just takes a good look at the normal way of thinking today all it leads to is self destruction, self destruction of self and the future generations. The family unit is scoffed at and ridiculed. The person with the most toys and debt wins. I tell you, it just gets me the shear stupidity of it. I remember in my younger days when I figured there must be some pretty smart people in the world to keep things running. I don’t think like that anymore at all. All I see is rapidly escalating race to self destruction.
But that’s what the Bible says is gonna happen and that’s what I believe is gonna happen. And we’re seeing it right in front of our own noses. And how easy it is to get sucked into those ways. So deceptive.
I agree, you might as well farm or homestead, I figure you got what it takes just from a comment like that! I tell you a little secret, it’s not as hard as society lets on. You can farm! It more than likely would be a small start, but a start none the less. I can’t even imagine any other way nowadays for myself. And as it gets simpler it gets better. Oh there’s work till you drop all the time, but it’s your work, not a cog in a worthless society thats on a tailspin to death. It might take a while to really get on your feet farming, but the end result is worth it.
Thanks for the comment! I appreciate comments more than most people figure. It kinda fuels this place in cyberspace.
October 29th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Tom,
We have a neighbor who will turn her back when you drive by. She doesn’t even want to look at you. We try to keep our distance from her. Other neighbors we have are worth their weight in gold.
The bull sessions that farmers have are great. I find out all sorts of things. Last week, after we loaded up a bull and a young heifer, I found out about someone seeing a cougar in the woods adjacent to my pasture. And I can go to the local feed mill and hear the latest installment of the real “soap operas” going on around us.
Jim V