Many of you remember me as the girlie girl who didn't touch dirt, had a brother to deal with anything gross, had long fingernails and even longer hair, and wore skirts and heels on a regular basis. While I still like to have my nails done and get dressed up, I've traded daily business attire for holey jeans and old t-shirts, and I get dirty on a regular basis.
I started the day out today by doing a load of laundry, baking a batch of cookies and getting ready to work outside. I ended the day by putting laundry away, making dinner, baking another batch of cookies (there weren't enough left from the first batch for my meeting), and having a preschool parents' meeting. In between there I did farm work.
First I milked the goats. We have four does milking and they usually do a pretty good job at hopping up on the stanchion and standing still while you milk. Marigold doesn't like the new grain however, so she decided to head for the weeds that she does like. I had to literally drag her back to the stanchion by her horns and practically lift her up to lock her in. Then, because she doesn't like the grain, she doesn't want to hold still. The end result was that my arms were covered in sticky goat milk that was supposed to go into the calf bottles. After getting the rest of the goats milked and our milk strained and in the fridge, my mom and I walked Lilly, Pansy and Magnolia out to a large patch of weeds for them to eat down throughout the day. I picked zucchini, amaranth and strawberries. I pulled two wagon loads of weeds and fed them to the pigs.
While feeding the last wagon load to the pigs we got a call that one of the steers was out and heading down the road. I was already out that way so I turned off the hot wire and my mom came to pick me up in the truck. Stew was on the wrong side of the street and headed for the neighbor's apple trees. I hopped out, grabbed the bucket of grain and tried to entice him over. Usually the steers just come right away when they are called and shown the grain bucket. Stew decided he was a rodeo bull and went bucking across the neighbor's front yard. By now my mom had parked the truck and we were working him back to our side of the road and towards his pasture. He crisscrossed the road several times (luckily never when there were any cars), ran for a piece, wandered over to visit another neighbor's cow, and then decided he was ready to go back home, at which point I lowered the hot wire and he stepped over. We never did find where he got out at.
After driving back home I went into the greenhouse to transplant basil and spinach into larger pots. The dirt was too dry so I added some water. It was while mixing the soil that I thought back to all the times I had made mud pies as a kid. There was a time from about 4-7 years old when mud pies were my specialty. How funny to be playing in the mud again more than 20 years later. While planting I found a worm. I tossed it back into the worm bed. I found a frog friend. I moved him and the plant cups onto the shelf (he was pretending he was a bunch of dirt inside a little plastic plant 6-pack). I got a little dirt on my shirt so I went to brush it off. The only thing was that I had forgotten my gloves were covered with dirt, so I only succeeded in smearing dirt all over the front of my shirt instead of just in one little spot.
I got dirty, hot and sweaty. All the same things farm boys do. (You thought I had forgotten about connecting the points huh?) But I didn't work like a boy, I worked like a girl. Here's what happened this past weekend that made me think about all of this in the first place--I climbed a fence. Now, at my farm climbing a fence is rarely necessary and when it is, it's really a panel that's being climbed over. But this was at a friends farm. At his farm you have to stand on a couple of wires that are strung at an angle and while your foot is sliding you step with your other foot onto the wood at the top of the fence and jump off the other side. At least that's how he did it. I tried. I put one foot on the slippery wires and started sliding of course. And then my clothes just didn't have the same give that his did, plus my legs are shorter, so I couldn't get my foot on top of the fence. I could however, put my knee on there, swing my other leg around, sit on the fence and then hop off. That's what I did (after he had removed the spider and web, after all, there are some things that never change). Then it was while working today that I realized it's okay that I don't climb a fence like a farm boy...I can climb it like a farm girl.
Heels and dirt
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