February 18, 2008

• …it’s a holiday? What holiday? And for whom?

  It’s one of the facts of farm life with which I’ve had to come to terms, and it has taken me 38 years to do so. There really is no such thing as a holiday when you operate a farm, no sure-nuf, all-day, 24-hour, don’t-do-any-work, forget-your-deadlines holiday. They just don’t happen. Why? Because livestock are like children: they must be fed and tended every day.  They could NOT care less that most Americans see Thanksgiving as a day to spend with family. That Christmas and the 4th of July are automatic don’t-think-about-responsibilities days. That Americans still celebrate the man who centuries ago happened to discover America or the one who dared to have a dream. And New Year’s Day? Why in the world would someone think that just because the calendar says January 1, it’s an automatic sleep-in, laze-around, kick-back-and-watch-a-parade day?

  Why, cattle don’t even recognize Sunday as being different from Thursday! They are hungry every morning, get sick on any old day they feel like it, and still must be able to get a drink, even with 8 inches of ice on the pond. They take particular pleasure in giving birth in the middle of the winter’s worst blizzard, especially the heifers who tend to need assistance of the physical kind.

  Here’s a mystery to contemplate: cattle have some innate sense that tells them it’s the biggest THRILL of all to break down the fence and everyone run out on the road just at dark, just when the farmer finally sits down for the nice meal his wife has spent hours slaving over…”Let’s let him have his shower, and then just when he begins to warm up, just as he finally sits down to eat, let’s make him get all bundled up in four layers again, drive all the way over here, and we’ll mysteriously get back inside the fence and act all innocent, like ‘Who, us? Do we look like we’re out there on the road? Must have been some other steers.’ ” Yeah, right. Wife holds flashlight while husband stretches and fastens wire, the wind blows a veritable gale through them and coyotes howl hungrily in the near woods…and back home, dinner congeals on the kitchen table. 

  There’s also this thing about machinery. There must be some means of communication between tractors, trucks and other motorized things: they gang up on us and all break down at the same time. If one silo unloader breaks, then another one, three miles down the road, wants to be in on the fun. If one well pump decides to go on strike, there’s usually another one feeling lazy, too. Multiple batteries eerily give up the ghost on the very same morning, and just don’t even get me started on all that can happen to trucks. Brakes, water pumps, head gaskets….misery loves company, they say. It must never feel lonely around here.

  Which brings me to the telephone. Sometimes you just don’t want it to ring, such as when you coughed all last night, have near-pneumonia and have taken a big dose of Nyquil and want only to sleep, uninterrupted, for as long as it is dark outside and the medicine works. This is PRECISELY the night everyone who has ever known you or even wanted to know you calls. There’s some guy you met at the sale barn last year and mentioned that you might be looking for a horse, the neighbor who might be interested in sharing the cost of building a fence if you’ll do all the work and pay for half the supplies, the woman who hopes you’ll support the politician you decidedly detest, the kid who might want to help haul hay this summer if it isn’t too hot, and the cake-taker of them all: ”this isn’t a sales call, we just need a few minutes of your time.” Nope, no sales, not to us, not now, not EVER! The phone rings incessantly, idle barely long enough to allow you to hang up between calls. They say a watched phone never rings…HA! You can give it the evil eye all you want…on this night, no offense is being taken. Somehow, the jingle of the bell sounds annoyingly merrier and jauntier than ever.

  Can a telephone take pleasure in driving someone crazy? Yes, I believe it can. Just like the cattle smirk behind their cud-chewing facade when they bring us out into the cold winter’s night, the truck lurches purposefully onto the sharp stob and releases all air from the front passenger tire, rendering us afoot on the very backside of the place, and the silo smiles as its unloader belches one last time and then pauses, precisely one hour before Sunday school starts, with a hundred calves standing there bawling, starving, pitiful…

  No, there is no such thing as a true holiday for farmers. Your Presidents’ Day is, for us, like any other, full of its worries and stresses and headaches. Thank goodness for homemade chicken noodle soup that warms back up in a jiffy, cold medicine which quiets the common cough…and a wife who will spend an hour posting silliness on her xanga site. Said wife may not have any control over calendar designations, silos, cattle or mechanized equipment, but she knows there is one little thing she can do. That guy who MIGHT want to trade his 4WD tractor for your old one can just hit redial all he wants…this line is BUSY!!!

  edit: For anyone who cares, it is Husband with near-pneumonia…wife just kept the phone line busy to allow him to sleep!

   

    

  • 9:17 pm
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