Life on a family farm
in the wilds of
Upstate New York
Monday, December 12, 2005
If you will work really hard to get out of work are you lazy? If so I am. I hate tedious, over and over again jobs with a passion. Thus I will move calves ALL day so I don’t have a bunch to water with buckets EVERY day. In fact I will do almost anything just to make caring for them easier. Even just a little bit easier. It may be a pain to drag them around, but it is such a delight the first time I don’t have to lug a dozen pails of water, or work around kicking critters housed among the milk cows.
Today I didn’t actually move any calves, but instead cleaned out two non-functioning bowls, one of which was frozen as well. After I got them both working and rehung one, which was lying on the floor, I convinced the boss to nail a piece of particle board up over a hole in the wall. With that covered the freezing situation should be solved. Thus I was late for breakfast today and dirtier than I have been in a long while (calves are awful messy critters). However, tonight, tomorrow morning and twice a day from now on, I will have half as many calves to water as I did today. I guess you will just have to color me lazy, but I will love it, I’ll tell you.
We visited the big city, or rather the suburbs thereof, today as well. It was not particularly pleasant for a country girl like me. Besides the swirling ranks of racing cars,drivers chewing on their cell phones while white-knuckling their steering wheels trying to save half a second, there were big diggers and graders clearing brush and trees around a shopping mall. They were preparing to put up two big town house-condominium complexes. Right next to the mall sure seemed like a weird place to locate housing.
I looked at the conceptual drawings on the signs near the muddy construction sites and thought, "Oh, my God, people are actually going to pay to live all jumbled together like that." It seems sick and wrong, existing all crammed in together with nothing green in sight except phony looking grass and sculptured cedar shrubs. Were we meant to live nose to nose and back to back with no room to breath? (Heck there wasn't even any room for air down there in the metropolis.)
Can people really get along without land to work and animals to care for? Can they stand someone watching them every minute of every day? I dunno.
I guess some folks can and do and are happy for it, but I sure hope I never have to join them. I was mighty grateful to get back here to the hill. Sometimes I wish I could roll the driveway up behind me and shut all that craziness right out.
1 comment:
Anonymous
said...
I agree how people can live stacked on top of each other is beyond me. I literally lived that way when I was in the Navy and it was too much. I was glad when I came back home.
1 comment:
I agree how people can live stacked on top of each other is beyond me. I literally lived that way when I was in the Navy and it was too much. I was glad when I came back home.
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