Northern Farmer

Mud season continues around here with cool temps, but at least the sun is shining today and the wind cut down from yesterday. Made a much more agreeable day. As I have been mentioning, a farmer gets itchy to get out and start getting some jobs done, but there’s not all that much a feller can do, especially with the jobs he wants to do. So today I took the old Honda four wheeler out of the shed and hooked up the trailer behind it and figured I’d put up an electric fence so the cow herd could go to the neighbor’s corn stubble without going all over the pasture in the process and tearing it all up because its so greasy. Never made too much fence before walking through snow but it worked out OK. Just some electric fence rod posts, not any wood posts or studded Ts. And any place that was bare ground was extremely greasy and I almost slipped and fell dozens of times. Was wearing knee high rubber boots and I needed every inch of em today. Then in the process of putting up the little one wire electric I found that the main electric fence out there, a two wire jobby, was all down from the heavy snows over winter. So, work on that too, which I really enjoyed by the way, just to get out of the yard and do something was a treat. Of course one time I got stuck! Not with the four wheeler, but with me! Durn, whats a feller to do?? That black river bottom mud sucked me in lickidy split! Strange thoughts came into my head like, “I wonder if anyone will ever miss me if I end up staying here for a few hours, or days, or weeks??” A half mile behind the place, calm and peaceful, but stuck! Geese honking, killdeers killdeering, ducks quacking, really peaceful and I wasn’t going anywhere soon. But after a bit of struggling this way and that I finally got unstuck, first one foot, then the other. Of course I could’a just pulled my feet out of the knee highs, but that’s only when its life or death! And I figured I didn’t see anything resembling a grim reaper around so those feet of mine were going to stay dry and clean if I could help it. Then back to work doing what I was doing out there. Noticed after a bit the neighbor was making an attempt to get out into our back woods. Three neighbors share the middle of the section’s woods. And I know that they were running a tad bit low on firewood, just as we are this time of the year, and he was making a try at getting out there. In a bit I seen his Bobcat way out there in the field not moving. I get a funny feeling that Bobcat might be a permanent fixture in his field for a while too. Of course we were a quarter mile apart so I couldn’t just ramble over there and see what was wrong or offer to help. To help with what I don’t know in mud season. Why bury all the surrounding farm’s equipment I figure. At least its only one out there now. Maybe he can drive er out early some morning if its freezes enough to hold it up. Such is life in the country!

Anyway, I’ll finish up the fence tomorrow maybe, get it electrified and all and then as soon as it firms up send those cows out into the corn stubble in order to save some precious hay around this place, and pray for the pastures to start greening up, quick! What a week or two of warm temps would do! Tis the season, that season of anticipation! The season that makes no sense to the regular world, or what I call the regular world nowadays. How year after year a farmer can get beat down to the ground with multiple droughts, or floods, or hail, and come another spring he’s just biting at the bit to do it all again! Strange! There is absolutely no security such as what the “normal” people believe security to be. And just when you think you’ve “arrived” it all comes tumbling down! A few years ago I made out so good one year I figured one more year like this and I’d have it made. Well, three drought years later I’m pretty late arriving by the looks of it. Drained resources, everything going just to keep the place going have put a heavy dent in things here. Cow herd twenty percent smaller than what it used to be. Am I down and out?? Not in the least!

Working on that fence today just put a new vigor in me! A new season, a season of hope! That privilege of tending the soil, planting the seeds. Tending the crops and waiting for that harvest later summer and fall! That waiting for the official calving to start. We had us five un-wed mothers that calved earlier, all doing well, but the main herd should be starting soon! Taking care of those little calves, checking them and seeing if all is well between mother and young’un. Ear tagging them, or at least attempting to as they outrun anybody even when they are less than a full day old. And as they try outrunning you the mother cow wanting to grind the happy farmer into the ground! Ah yes, spring tranquility!

A strange breed out in the flyover lands of this country! No bailouts in the year after year droughts from some government program. I guess we weren’t in as bad a shape as some muti millionaire CEO that truly needs help for himself and those poor kids that might starve without a few more million to tide em over. Just keep going and give er all you got come a new year! Work hard, play hard and worship our Lord with everything you got! This is old school! Work till you can hardly stand anymore and the prospect of going to church for an evening wakes a person right back up! There’s sacrifice in making it to church services when your on a farm, that’s for sure, but it refuels a person to go hit er again and again working on the farm! Old school for sure! After a day’s work on the farm instead of sitting on a person’s butt watching TV, (or as I call it, hellivision), you prepare for a teaching or speaking in church. A person spends those last few minutes of the day working for the Kingdom, not for the world. Different, a different sort of life.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 6:36 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.