Tripping the chickens

Following is an excerpt from Marilyn’s autobiography, Splashes of Rainbows and Feathers.

The milking barn had been built many years before my parents bought our place. I loved the old barn, and spent many hours exploring the hayloft. The barn smelled of hay and milk, a smell I came to love.

In the summertime, the big door to the barn was left open. Mom’s setting hens would wander in there and make nests in the straw. Being a curious and sometimes-mischievous farm girl, I would wander in there, looking to see what fun I could stir up. When I saw those old hens sitting on their nests, I’d get ideas!

One particular day, Tim and I devised what we thought was a fun game with those hens!

Tim and I strung baling twine up and down the sides of the open door to the barn, one layer over another. When we were finished, the only way to get in or out of the door was to crawl under or over our twine trap!

I gave Tim an old broom and told him to go behind the hens and chase them off their nests! Tim went in slowly and the hens saw him. They hunkered down in their nests of straw and began to cluck softly. Tim pounded the straw behind them with the broom. They clucked and squawked and flew off their nests. Straw and dirt flew everywhere! The more the hens squawked and flew around, the harder Tim hit the straw. He soon had all the hens off their nests and tried to “herd” them toward the open barn door.

I stood outside the door and watched as the hens tried to fly over the twine we’d strung up! The air was filled with feathers, dirt and straw. The hens tried their hardest to fly over the layers of twine. The hens made an unbelievable racket when they either got hung up in the layers of twine or escaped, fleeing for their lives!

I laughed so hard I could hardly stand upright! Tim was laughing hysterically back in the barn! I can only imagine how this must have sounded from the house.

Of course our mother did not miss all this commotion and racket. She ran across the yard, yelling the entire time! Mom did not find our antics at all funny because these were her laying hens. She gave us quite a stern speech and threatened to have Dad tan our hides when he came home. After getting such a fright, the hens didn’t lay one solitary egg for days!

That radiant glow

Until I used this photo in an illustration, I did not notice that the leaves glow. I swear that I did not do some special tricks in Photoshop to make that happen. I don’t know that much about Photoshop! And even if I did, I doubt I’d have the patience to draw glowing areas around each leaf.

The glow is just some natural lighting effect, God’s gift to this photographer.

Or maybe the sunflower is radioactive and I’ve received some as yet undiscovered supernatural powers from exposure to this thing?

Frou-frou lamp sunflower

Sunflower at left reminds me of a fringed lamp. Can you tell that I have never lacked for imagination?

The head turning downward has a practical purpose. A sunflower head parallel to the ground makes life harder for birds trying to eat the seeds.

This particular sunflower field is a confectionery sunflower crop. Sunflowers grown for oil would have smaller heads. This head is full of sunflower seeds; therefore, it’s a prime target for birds.

Sunflower rising

I was trying to get this picture when I included my cap. I love the interplay of light and shadow across the flower and the variations in the petals.

Where cheese comes from

Some years ago, we visited Sweet Home Farm in Elberta, Ala. The proprietors had free-range chickens roaming about and their Guernsey cattle were pastured within sight of their cheese store.

To us, rural folks that we are, the chickens and cattle were comforting signs of authenticity. We could tell that we would be buying — and eating — artisanal cheese, not some “cheese food” cranked out of some soulless factory.

The cheese we bought was all we hoped it would be: Absolutely delicious. Too bad proprietors don’t ship their cheese. We would love to eat Bayside Blue Cheese again.

However, not everyone found the animals’ presence comforting.

Some city folks had come in one day. They asked what the cattle were doing there.

Proprietors told them the cattle produced the milk that proprietors made into cheese.

City folks turned green and left. Apparently, they thought milk and cheese just magically appeared in the store.

That is an udderly ridiculous notion.

So I leave you with today’s lesson in food production. Cows produce milk which can be made into cheese. And, just in case you need a review, chickens produce eggs.

Class dismissed.

Where eggs come from

Our oldest niece (obscured by our youngest niece) has developed a distaste for eggs. She visited a friend who raises chickens and found out where eggs come from.

When I said that I had greatly enjoyed gathering eggs, she said, “I don’t mind gathering eggs. But I don’t want to eat them! Eggs come from chickens’ butts! That’s gross!”

A person is better off not knowing what goes into sausage, but that’s the first time I’ve heard that it’s better not knowing where eggs originate.

Ignorance can truly be bliss.

Oh, and by the way, make mine over easy, please.

Hot wired

My bike was red, but you get the general picture of what it looked like.

Grandpa had several roads to his cattle pens. One had a low spot that often filled with water. I loved to ride my bike through that low spot. Water often reached almost to my knees. Especially on a hot day, the water felt great.

One day, I rode through that spot and nearly fell off my bike. I couldn’t figure out what had happened. I backed up and tried again. Boom! I felt as if something had hit me. I was completely baffled. I had ridden through this puddle before; why couldn’t I get through now?

I backed up to try once more. Then I noticed an electrical insulator on a pole to the side of the puddle. The light began to dawn. I looked at the water more closely. I saw a thin line enter the puddle, then disappear underneath the water.

I turned around and stayed away from that dip ever afterward. I wanted to avoid another shocking experience.

Farm-fresh eggs from free-range chickens

I visited a farm on Friday. Residents were feeding their chickens when I arrived, so I went to the chicken coop. The smell of the coop took me right back to my grandparents’ farm.

Grandma kept chickens throughout most of my childhood. I thought the chickens were hilarious. I laughed at the way they walked, how they stuck out their necks with each step. I laughed when they tried to fly. They were busy things, always chasing after bugs. Grandma didn’t have many bugs; the chickens ate them all.

When I visited, my “chore” was to gather eggs. That was hardly a chore. I thought gathering eggs was a privilege. I loved the smell of the coop and the taste of farm-fresh eggs. The yolks were a deeper yellow and the flavor was much more intense than anything bought in the store.

I didn’t think their beaks were funny, though. Grandma said that I could take eggs from underneath the setting hens. I tried that once. Hen didn’t appreciate my actions and pecked me. I stayed away from occupied nests after that. That beak was sharp!

Grandma finally dispensed with her chickens about the time I went to college. Grandpa tore down the chicken house. Three years later, Grandma dug the soil underneath the chicken house and put it on her garden. The plants came up, then died. That soil was too hot even after three years. Grandma didn’t have much garden that year. The only veggies she harvested were in corners where the “chickenized” soil hadn’t reached. The next year made up for it. She had never had such bountiful crops in decades of gardening.

The farm was never quite the same post-chickens. I missed their soft clucking and their funny strut. And I sure missed fresh eggs and Grandma’s fried chicken. Store-bought chicken just does not compare to free-range, bug-eating chicken. The flavor just is not there.

Now I’m getting hungry!

How I lost my fingertip

I came by my interest in gardening very naturally. Grandma’s flowers are in the foreground. I haven’t found any pictures of her vegetable garden, but she had a big one.

House, yard and garden were my grandmother’s world. Her world smelled of flowers, grass and food.

Grandpa’s world began beyond that fence. Shop, barn and cattle pens, corn, hay and alfalfa fields, were my grandfather’s world.

Shop smelled like dirt and grease and oil. It smelled like solder and acetylene and gasoline. When I go into someone else’s shop and inhale that fragrance, I am instantly transported into Grandpa’s shop.

I hate(d) shoes and insisted on going barefoot even in the shop. My feet were always covered with a tarry substance when I came out, but I didn’t care. I was fascinated by his tools, especially the drill press, the hoist and anything to do with welding. I loved to watch him work and I must have gotten underfoot.

One day when I was about 8, he was welding while I watched. He said, “Do you know how to cut wood?”

I lied and said that I did. I had never used a hatchet or ax in my life. But I was not going to tell Grandpa that I didn’t know how to do something.

Grandpa wasn’t fond of the word “can’t”. He would say, “‘Can’t’ never did anything but fail.”

He pointed out a pile of lath or something like that, gave me a hatchet and told me to chop away.

I did. All was well for a few minutes until I chopped off the tip of my left index finger. I left his shop and went to the house.

I showed my mother and grandmother what had happened. Instead of treating my finger, they scrubbed my tarry feet! Only when my feet were clean did they treat my throbbing, bleeding finger.

I was watching TV in the living room, holding up my injured digit, when Grandpa came in.

“Where did Roxie go?”

“She cut off her fingertip,”, Grandma said.

“Why, she didn’t even cry or say anything about it,” he said.

He never asked me to cut wood again.

Horn and doggie door

My grandparents installed a horn above the garage door on the right. When Grandma flipped a switch inside, the horn sounded to call Grandpa from his shop across the driveway. This horn was quite loud.

One night they had quite a few people visiting, many of whom were outside. When dinner was ready, Grandma flipped the switch. I happened to be standing right underneath it. I was so startled that I dropped to the ground, curled up into a fetal position and covered my ears. “Duck and cover” drills were a thing of the past by then, but that’s pretty much what I must have looked like. Dad howled with laughter, which I didn’t understand or appreciate at the time.

The gate had a doggie door in it. Fence existed to keep out her chickens and whatever other herbivores might try to spoil her yard and garden. The dog, however, was welcome. I never remember a dog at the farm, but the doggie door still existed. I thought crawling through the doggie door was great fun, even though opening the gate would have been much easier.

It was fun until I nearly got stuck. My head and shoulders went through, but my arms were pinioned to my sides. Grandma was inside and Grandpa was in his shop, so no one could help me. Not that I would have wanted help in such an embarrassing predicament. I wiggled and strained and pushed, but did not budge. Finally, after some time and nasty bruises, I popped free. That ended the doggie door for me. Becoming a “big girl” definitely had its price.

Going home but only in memory

Grandpa in front of his new house in 1954.

Sometimes memory triggers are unpredictable. Mimi of “French Kitchen in America” started a post with a recipe, then ended with a wonderful evocation of the neighborhood in which she grew up.

She and her husband sold her grandmother’s house to a young family. “My heart tightens when I pass the house,” she said.

I understand the feeling. I can never, ever drive past my grandparents’ farmstead without my throat tightening, without longing to “go home”. Home to the “home place”.

My grandparents built their house on that land in 1954.

I cried when my grandmother sold it in the late 1980s.

In memory, I can walk through every room in the house and outbuildings, but I will never walk in the real buildings again. That thought saddens me. However, they are probably so changed by now that I wouldn’t want to walk there.

After I read Mimi’s post, I looked through a stack of old family photos, searching for pictures of the farmstead. I thought I would write one post about the place, but too many memories popped up to write just one.

Reality check: FICA and FUTA

Grandma’s collage of their cornfield south of their house. I did not detassel here. My grandparents would not have appreciated the gesture.

No one detassels for fun. Well, maybe the crew leaders do, but not the worker bees. (I didn’t stick around long enough to be a crew leader.) The only incentive is pay, which came as a lump sum at season’s end.

I was so excited when my first paycheck came in the mail. I was primed to shop for school clothes.

Then I saw the big chunk Uncle Sam had bitten out of my check. I was shocked at the size of my tax bill. Then I comforted myself by saying, “Oh, well, I’ll get it all back when I file my tax return.”

Mother said, “See those lines for FICA and FUTA? You won’t get those back. FICA is Social Security, which you won’t see until you’re 65.”

At 14, 65 seems forever away. (And now I must reach 67 before I qualify — if Social Security still exists!)

“What does FUTA mean?” I asked.

“That’s unemployment insurance. You don’t qualify for it, either.”

Welcome to the real world.

Lost in the long corn rows

I have no sense of direction. None. Zippo. Zilch. Most of the time, this handicap is no big deal, but at times my lack has caused me major difficulties.

Detasselers work in whatever conditions Mother Nature dishes out, except lightning storms. Standing in a cornfield during lightning makes a person into a target.

Toward the end of one brutally hot and humid day, a thunderstorm brewed up. Boss decided that we’d best quit for the day. Crew leader told me to “dig out” those who weren’t finished with their rows and tell them that we were leaving. I did this, then walked toward the bus.

Except that I ended up on another side of the cornfield. Helplessly, I watched the bus pull away without me. Eventually, they realized that I had been left. They drove around looking for me, but I could never catch up to the bus.

We were about 15 miles from home and cell phones were not available yet. I walked at least a mile to the nearest farmhouse and called my mother.

Mother had a compass in her head. She could not understand how I could have gotten turned around in a cornfield.

But her confusion was nothing to the scorn I received from my crew mates. They all gave me dirty looks the next day. “How could you get lost in a cornfield?” they asked. And they kept on scornfully asking that question throughout whatever remained of the season.

Even years later, I still heard those taunts. Yes, this was definitely my most embarrassing moment.

Children of the corn

Putting a group of relatively unsupervised teenagers in a cornfield will lead to pranks and hijinks. Guaranteed.

Irrigation gate

The worst prank I know of was perpetuated by another crew. “Prank” is not strong enough. Their case was sheer vandalism. They were angry at the farmer for irrigating the night before they showed up to detassel. This farmer had gated irrigation. They reopened every one of his gates, then left. No one noticed what they had done until much later. By that time, the field was badly flooded.

That crew and its leader were summarily and deservedly fired. We hated them. Our crew had to go in afterward and detassel in very deep mud. Most of us gave up on our shoes and went barefoot. The mud sucked off our shoes at every step. We should have received extra pay for working this field, but of course we didn’t.

Hybrid corn must also be purged of volunteer corn plants or “rogues”. This process is called “roguing”. A roguer walks through the rows with a rogue knife, a kind of sharpened hook on a long pole. She cuts down or digs up the offending plant. Volunteers are generally cut before the corn reaches the tasseling stage. Volunteers get an earlier start so are taller than the surrounding hybrid plants. In this case, it is definitely beneficial not to stand out in a crowd.

The male rows were sometimes rogued later.

While we were detasseling, an all-female crew came to rogue the male corn rows. One was foolish enough to take off her shirt. One male crew member, well known for his pranks and his roaming hands, was assigned to detassel the row next to hers. He jumped out and grabbed her. She screamed, of course, and nearly fainted from fear. Other crew members pulled him away before anything else could happen. He was fired on the spot and banned from detasseling on any other crew.

A favorite prank was to come behind and to the side of another detasseler and push them over while shouting “Corn bore!” Caught off guard, the victim would go crashing into several corn rows, knocking down corn stalks.

Another one was less destructive. The perpetrator would collect tassels as he went along, then would bomb the victim with them.

Tempers often ran high in the heat, humidity and misery, leading to fights. Most of them weren’t serious (who had the energy?), but I remember one that ended in a broken nose. Both fighters were fired.

Teenagers thrown together will also “fall in love.”

Some hothouse romances sprung up, but wise crew leaders kept the “puppy lovers” from working adjacent rows. Crew members making out instead of pulling tassels were not very productive.

I never could understand how anyone could have energy for romance, but some people did. For me, as well as most detasselers, detasseling season was about survival, not romance.

We were the “children of the corn”.

Walking the long corn rows

When the corn starts to tassel, and the smell of corn pollen fills the air, my memory returns to my days as a detasseler.

A fellow blogger calls detasseling “the worst job I ever had.”

I completely concur. I hated every second of the two summers I pulled tassels. Pulling tassels was a gigantic hassle! Detasseling is a hot, miserable experience, but it’s a rite of passage for teenagers growing up in corn country. Even though it’s a nasty job, teenagers line up each summer to do it. Why? For the money. Detasseling is the best money available to teens under 16.

What is detasseling?

Seed companies need to force corn to cross-pollinate in order to produce hybrid seed corn. Corn generally self-pollinates. Pollen falls off the tassel onto the ear’s silk. Therefore, the tassel must be removed to prevent self-pollination. When I walked the rows, farmers planted 10(?) rows of female corn to two rows of male corn. The female corn was deeper green, bigger and stronger than the male corn. We pulled tassels out of the female corn and left the male corn alone. Standards were exacting. Only two female corn tassels per mile-square field could be left in the field. If more were left, the crew would have to go back into the field and redo it. Or, worse humiliation, the seed corn company would have another crew redo the job.

What was the experience like?

I got up at 4:30 each morning. Mother fixed me a good breakfast, then took me to the biology teacher’s house to meet the bus. He ran a detasseling crew as his summer job. We all wore the oldest clothes we possessed. Dawn usually broke just before we arrived at the field. Corn was wet with dew that early in the morning.

We each brought a black garbage bag and ripped holes for our heads and arms. We wore them to keep somewhat dry. Note the “somewhat”. Keeping completely dry was impossible. Once wearing the bags became intolerable, we ripped them off and discarded them in the field.

The damp or downright wet leaves cut anyone who did not wear gloves. I could never wear gloves since I lost the touch necessary to pull the tassels. By season’s end, I generally had a enough band-aids on my hands to make a glove.

Under the black garbage bag, we wore pants, long-sleeved shirt, T-shirt and a cap or hat. The long-sleeved shirt was discarded early because of the heat, but it did protect against cuts and rashes. I once wore a tank top for a couple days. I was so badly sunburned on top of my shoulders that I had scars for years. I’ve not been fond of tank tops ever since. Those who didn’t wear head coverings were more likely to get sunstroke.

We wore sturdy shoes, but we didn’t want to pay too much for them. They would be ruined by — or even before — season’s end.

Corn sheds pollen from about 9-11 a.m. and we’d be covered with it. Most of us got a rash from the pollen and from corn scratches.

We were one of the last seasons before the advent of detasseling machines, so we walked every bit of every row, pulling every tassel.

Steam starts to rise from the fields around 10 and the temperature is downright hot by 11. Heat worsened throughout the afternoon. We generally knocked off around 2 or 3 and were completely exhausted by then.

Corn was often over our heads. Yes, that canopy provided shade, but it also prevented any cooling breezes, making the air stuffy and detasseler drowsy. However, some corn would be below our knees. A detasseler had to look both overhead at the canopy and down to take care of each corn plant. And each row contains a lot of corn plants, 3,000 to 4,000 in a half-mile row. Some of those fields are a mile long.

Fields were often muddy, sometimes so muddy that we lost our shoes in the muck. Mud slowed you down and that was a bad thing. At least on our crew, everyone would be assigned a row at the same time. Those who finished early got to rest more than those who finished later. After finishing the row, we got to sit on the ground or whatever place we could find, get a drink and maybe eat a snack.

Mud generally came from irrigation. My first year, we drank from the irrigation gates, wonderful, refreshing cold water. Drinking from the gates was some compensation for the exhausting task of trudging through that mud. Water bottles are far away in the middle of a field. But in my second year, chemigation started. The farmer would add fertilizer, herbicide and/or insecticide to the water, making it unsafe to drink.

Listening to water that we couldn’t drink was aggravating.

The worst field I remember was a mile long. Its terrain was V-shaped. The further we got into the V, the hotter and stuffier it became. By the time we were at V’s bottom, the heat and humidity in the cornfield was stifling. Every time I descended deep into the V, I felt as if I could not breathe.

When I got home, I had to go to the back door where Mother would spray me down before entering the house. After I showered, I’d take a nap. She’d wake me for supper, then I’d go straight back to bed.

Season lasted for about 20 days. Twenty days of hell.

Detasseling supposedly built character. I suppose that’s true. Knowing the misery I’d face yet still going to work daily was good life training. But I don’t want to do it again!

Those were the harvesting days

In the dead of summer when the sun beats down hard before mid-morning, when that hot south High Plains wind blows up dust that swirls from every angle, my [Marilyn’s] mind returns to my younger days. Those long, scorching summer days that were spent helping my parents in the fields harvesting their crops of wheat. Those days started early and ran late. Yet now I look back on them longingly and cherish those memories deep within my soul.

My parents started those long-ago harvest days before sunrise! They would be out in the hay fields to greet the sun, changing the water rows, moving the irrigation socks from one set of long ditched rows to the next set. My parents always did this job before sunrise during harvest. Once the harvest day began, there was no time to do anything else!

Mom served breakfast when she returned from the irrigation fields, and my brother and I would be rousted from a nice quiet sleep. As soon as we downed breakfast, we each had to help Dad get the combine and trucks ready for the day.

My brother’s job was to round up the water jugs, clean them, and fill them with ice and fresh water, then put them in the combine and each truck. I was an outdoorsy girl, so my job was to help Dad grease the combine! How I loved searching for each grease zerk and pumping grease into them until it ran out the other side!

As the day grew hotter and the sun beat down ever harder, Dad would say that it was time to head out to the wheat fields. Mom usually drove “her” truck, while I’d drive another one, following Dad. Brother usually rode in the combine with Dad until he got old enough to drive the pickup.

Even though I was allowed to drive a truck TO the wheat field, I was never allowed to drive it FROM the field to the elevator when it was full of wheat. Dad never trusted me with a huge load of wheat on one of his trucks on those many miles of graveled road. I realized many years later that he was looking out for me and for his equipment. We had a long route to haul our wheat, with several hills and curves, as well as other hectic truck traffic sharing the same graveled roads.

I was Mom’s passenger for years while she was Dad’s truck driver. Mom and I spent countless hours waiting in lines at the elevator. At times, these lines seemed to run for miles. Theses lines inched forward so slowly! Flies would attack us, the hot Plains winds blew dirt and chaff all around, and no, our trucks did NOT have modern air conditioning! We always had magazines and newspapers to read. Once I discovered how much I loved writing, I also made sure I never left home without my notebook! While we waited, we gathered around the other trucks and visited with neighbors or custom harvesters.

As I grew into my teenage years, I told my dad that I wanted to work at the elevator during harvest. I wanted to be the girl who went out and jabbed the moisture meter into the load of wheat, then go in and write it down. What that ALSO meant was that I’d get to meet all the cute truck drivers!

Guess what Dad’s response was. I never did get to work that job!

After we unloaded, Mom and I would drive back to the field. Our other truck, now full of wheat, would be waiting for us. We’d switch trucks and repeat the process.

Somewhere in each day, we made meals and rested. My dad was not one to overload his family with constant heat without rest. At lunch, he would stop the combine and we’d eat at the kitchen table, even if the meal was a simple sandwich and some watermelon. After lunch, he’d usually let us kids take a nap or at least have some down time. He’d lie down for a power nap, then get right back up and get to work.

Even though the lines at the elevator were long and time slowly crept past, memories were made there. The smell of that harvested grain permeated my soul. Now when I smell harvested grain, my heart is drawn back in time.

Every now and then, Dad would invite me to ride in the combine with him. Oh, how I loved watching the header catch those waving heads of wheat, grabbing them, pulling them into the combine, then coming out of the auger into the bin.

As I got older, Dad began to let me move the truck closer to where he was combining, so he’d not have to travel across the field to unload the grain. Once I nearly started the wheat field on fire! I was driving along when I saw Dad standing on the outside of the combine, waving at me. I thought he wanted me to get there faster, so I sped up! For some reason, the truck just didn’t seem to want to move much faster. I didn’t want Dad mad at me, so I pushed it harder.

Well, this seemed to upset Dad, because now he was no longer standing on the combine; he was RUNNING towards me with his hands waving! I stopped the truck. As he got close to me, he was shouting!

I got out to see what the commotion was about. Smoke was coming out from underneath the truck! Dad asked if I’d taken off the emergency brake before driving the truck across the field. No, I hadn’t.

I told Dad I didn’t know the emergency brake was on! Wow, did I get a scolding! He told me NEVER to drive the truck across a dry wheat field without making sure the emergency brake was off!

Ever afterward, even when I drove wheat truck for my cousin many years later, I was careful to make sure the emergency brake was not engaged.

Those days of Dad driving our old combine, Mom hauling the wheat to the elevator, and me tagging along are long gone. Modern technology has changed many aspects of harvest time.

Brother has moved into the new age of farm equipment and he no longer does his own harvesting. He now hires a Canadian crew that has powerful, huge machines that are complete with all the computerized gadgets a person could want. I was amazed when I rode along at how quiet and tight the cab felt. I was also amazed at all the computerized gadgets that the driver barely touched when he wanted the machine to do what needed to be done. And it was air conditioned! What a change from the older combines Dad used!

I no longer get to ride along in the truck or the combine for any length of time. The crew cuts the wheat so quickly that in no time at all, they’re done with our fields and are anxious to move onto the next customer’s fields.

Yes, times have changed, even in the world of the little farmer. But one thing has not changed: “You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl.”

Oh, doesn’t that wheat smell good!

Grandma's wit

One summer I painted my grandmother’s barn. Cattle pens were attached to the back side of the barn. After my grandfather died, Grandma no longer had livestock, so the pens were overgrown with weeds.

Marijuana was the most prolific weed. (Although prolific, wild marijuana is not very potent.) Some of it grew more than waist high and I am a tall woman. One day I thought I’d have a little fun with Grandma. I pulled up one of the marijuana stalks and took it into the house when she called me to supper.

“Grandma,” I said, “I can’t believe you would grow marijuana in your cattle pens!”

She looked at me, looked at the plant, then said, “Well, you picked it.”

What could I answer to that?

Adventures in fence fixing

As my [Marilyn’s] dad grows older, so does his mind. His mind has gradually drifted off the regular straight and narrow path that it once took. Our family has decided to roll with the punches and look at Dad’s mind-drifting as a kind of road trip for us!

My brother has definitely gotten to take Dad’s road trip more than once.

“Didn’tcha see me wave back?”

After long, hard High Plains winters, with our snowfalls, winds and blizzards, each pasture has at least a small portion of fence that needs repairing before we can put our cattle out to pasture for the summer. Tumbleweeds need to be pulled out of the tangled barbed wire and new fence posts put in the ground. This is a hard job, with many miles spent walking behind the pickup, which is loaded with all the tools and equipment needed to fix fences.

One particular spring day, Brother and Dad were in the far south summer pasture, the pickup loaded with fence repairing equipment and their high work boots on. Brother does most of the manual labor these days, and lets Dad drive the pickup.

Their game plan was for Dad to drive about four fence post lengths, then stop and wait for Brother to wave at him. Once he sees Brother wave, Dad can move the pickup to the place where Brother is waiting. For most of the morning, this seems to work fine. Brother walks ahead of the pickup, waves, Dad stops, waits until Brother moves up four more fence post lengths, and repeats the process over and over.

Then Brother waves at Dad and nothing happens. The pickup doesn’t move an inch. Brother waves again. Again, nothing. Brother is straining his eyes to see if Dad has some sort of problem. Since he couldn’t tell, he strode back to where Dad is sitting in the pickup. Brother arrives at the pickup and asks Dad, “Didn’tcha see me waving atcha?”

Dad says, “Yes. Didn’tcha see me wave back?“

Time to call it a day.

Snakes in the grass

The days are warming up, which means that a fence fixer must watch for snakes in the tall pasture grasses.

On this particular day, Brother is walking alongside the pickup as Dad drives beside him. With a hot south wind blowing and the morning growing ever warmer, Dad had rolled up his window to soak in the air conditioning.

As Brother walks the fence line, he realizes that he has stepped on something that is moving. He looks down and sees that he has stepped on a snake’s head. He does not move. He knocks on Dad’s window and says, “Get out and get me the shovel!”

Dad asks, “Why?”

Brother says, “’Cuz I’m standing on a snake! Now get out of the truck and hand me the shovel!”

Dad rolls up his window again. Brother knocks on the window even harder.

Dad rolls it down a tad, saying, “It’s hot out there!”

Exasperated, Brother shouts, “GET ME THE SHOVEL, FOR GOD’S SAKE!”

It’s definitely time to go home.

Getting some exercise

On another day, Brother is riding on the pickup’s tailgate as Dad drives along the fence row. The game plan is that when Brother needs Dad to stop, he will pound on the bed of the truck. Brother will get off and repair the fence. When repair is done, he will pound on the truck bed, signaling to Dad to again move forward.

This process goes on for some time. As the morning stretches into mid-day, Dad’s foot begins to get tired of holding down the clutch as he waits for Brother to do the fence repair. Just as Brother is about to sit on the pickup bed, he sees the ground beneath him begin to move. Instead of sitting on the pickup, he sits on the ground.

The truck continues to move forward. Brother picks himself up and catches up to Dad.

As Dad continues to drive, he says to Brother, “Why are you walking?”

Brother says, “Guess I needed more exercise.”

Home sounds very good right now.

Don't Fence Me In!

Marilyn's post yesterday reminded me of the truck farm my brother and I worked when we were at home. (This picture was taken in 1994, after we were both married. Truck farm was much smaller by then.) We didn't live on a farm, but my mother had grown up on the farm. She was still a farm girl at heart. She could not and would not abide laziness. She had the world's longest to-do list and she intended for it to be completed.

We had plenty of chores, including lots of garden ones. After baking in the hot sun while doing tasks I hated, I decided I would NEVER have a garden when I grew up. No way. Not going to do it.

Never say never.

My mother was very frugal, partly from necessity and partly from preference. She hated waste and unnecessary spending. So she had a huge garden full of all kinds of vegetables. Being hyper organized, she kept a meticulous garden book, noting where she had planted each crop and what varieties she used. I prize that book now, but I don't keep one.

Her garden rows seemed infinite when we were pulling weeds or other boring tasks under the beating sun. And she could always find weeds that we never saw. I learned to love mulching because it suppressed those horrible weeds.

Late summer and early fall was canning/freezing time. She ran a regular factory in the basement, but putting up our produce was the reward for nasty tasks like weeding. I entered into food preservation whole-heartedly. Looking at neat rows of produce-filled jars was always a pleasurable experience. Eating them was even better!

How I miss eating her frozen corn recipe, which will appear tomorrow, and her very labor-intensive red hot pickle recipe, which will appear the next day.

When I lived in Virginia, a friend from upstate New York invited me to her house for Thanksgiving. I continually longed for farm country and she said we would pass through lots of farm country.

Our ideas of what farm country meant were diametrically opposed. We drove roads that were lined with houses. Their lots were long and narrow. Their houses sat next to the road with large gardens behind them. She said those were farms. What farms?

My idea of a farm is acres of corn, wheat, milo and/or sunflowers. Anything else is a just a repeat of my mother's garden. In my idea of farm country, the neighbors can't look into each other's windows just as they could in suburbia!

I thought of the Roy Rogers song "Don't Fence Me In".

"... Let me ride through the wide open country that I love,
Don't fence me in.
Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees
Send me off forever but I ask you please,
Don't fence me in..."

My little farm

Marilyn is on a roll and adds her second contribution.

As a youngster growing up on the farm 22 miles from any “civilization,” I could hardly wait to leave that all behind me. I had dreams of being a city girl, of living a pampered life, quite opposite of the life I’d been raised in on the farm.

For some reason, those childhood and childish dreams never did come true. And for some reason, I never met a “city guy” whom I could relate to! Believe me; I tried! I made it a rule never to date any farm kids! Nope, I made sure the guys I dated were sophisticated, and knew nothing about hard work and farm life!

Ha! How silly that was! Sophisticated? Hardly! Hard work? Most of them had no clue what hard work meant!

I’d come home from working long, hard hours as a nurse’s aide, only to find my boyfriend still asleep, lounging around the house at 2:30 in the afternoon! He gave the excuse for not showing up for work that day, as “I just didn’t feel like it.” For some reason, that didn’t sit well with me! I found it to be quite disgusting, in fact, and the relationship would soon end. I would end up kicking these deadbeat men out of my home!

Yet I still searched for that dream I had as a child. Did I miss the farm? Oh, some. But my family lived close enough to town that on weekends I still visited them on the farm. But my heart still told me to stay away from dating farm boys.

As I matured, both in wisdom and in years, I discovered what made me so disgusted by boyfriends who had a poor work ethic. Why wouldn’t laziness disgust me? I was raised on a farm by parents who taught me to rise early and work hard all day! I was taught that nothing gets done by sitting around lazily watching the day go past. I was taught that at the end of the day, it was time to rest and play. But not before the work was done!

As I near my 50th year, there are days I long for those long-lost farm days. My heart aches for those times, for those memories to be relived once again! Just because my parents taught me to work long and hard, they also showed me how to enjoy the simple pleasures in life and to sit back and relax.

I have loved working hard forever. Well, at least ever since I was an adult, having to go out and make my own living in this world! I look back on my life as a young adult, setting out on my own in the big old world. Even as young as I was, as immature as I was then, I knew that I must show up for work unless I was truly sick. I knew that even though I may have stayed out too late with my friends partying up a storm, that when the alarm went off, it was time to drag myself out of bed and get to work. I never was one to call in sick for any reason other than if I was truly sick.

That sticks with me even to this day. As I grow ever closer to being half a century old/young, I find myself imitating my parents’ lifestyle. I am up before the alarm goes off, starting my day. In the summer months, there is always something in the garden or yard that needs attention. I like to be out there just as the sun rises, tending to my little piece of farm life, right here in town. Right here in my back yard.

I tell my 80-year-old father that he farmed in the country and I farm in town. He laughs at that and agrees with me! I show him my corn rows, which are skimpy compared to the hundreds of acres he once grew! He and I mow my lawn. I tell him that my farm is puny compared to what he used to farm, but this is the closest thing to a real farm I can get!

Dad agrees with me, smiles, and off we go, each doing our “farm work” as the sun sets lower and lower in the western sky.