Killing the Fairy Tale: Conversations with City Folk

This post has been written over time, and not in one sitting as my other posts are.  It is based on real conversations I have had about agriculture with various city folk.  I have had plenty of these conversations that were very positive.  However, sometimes I hear comments that make me cringe.  These are not cruel comments.  They are just woefully uninformed.  I try to explain why these ideas are wrong, but sometimes I'm afraid I'll do more harm than good by killing the fairy tale that is a city dweller's idea of farming.  Allow me to give you, my readers, some examples.

At the end of April I attended a Bible Study retreat for a week.  There I got to talk with a number of people who didn't know much about agriculture, but were interested to learn more.  As usual, all of these conversations were positive, but one still has me shaking my head.  I was talking with two sisters from Grande Prairie during a break one day.  For some reason, I went into the discussion thinking they were at least slightly familiar with farm life.  I launched into an explanation of how I manage my small herd of cows, making the decision to either keep back heifers to build up the herd or to sell the heifer calves for immediate cash to help pay for school each year.  When I had finished the explanation one of the sisters said, "Oh, cool!  It's like a board game!"   I was speechless.  How could I possibly refute that without being harsh?  I was far too angry to give a respectful, reasonable reply.  But I had to say something.  The girls were looking at me, waiting for a reply.  So, I turned to sarcastic humour.  I said, "Oh, yeah.  It's great fun.  Except that sometimes you draw a card that says, 'The bottom just fell out of the beef market because someone got mad cow disease on their farm.'"  It was the best I could do in that moment.  Fortunately, the girls seemed to get the point without getting offended and I managed to calm down.  I should clarify that I wasn't angry at the girl who asked the question.  I was angry that agriculture is taken so lightly and that the general public doesn't seem to understand that agriculture is a dangerous, risky industry.  I'm not angry anymore.  Now I'm just disappointed and frustrated.

In May I went to the dentist.  My dentist is in Edmonton and I've been going to her since before I can remember.  During my check-up, she was asking me about farming.  She asked why I like farming so much.  I couldn't really answer.  I just said that I enjoy the work.  So, the dentist started chalking up all the good things about farming as a career: "It's good because you get lots of exercise from the manual labour.  And it's a nice clean job."  Wait.  What?  Is she serious right now?  The hygienist and I gave the dentist questioning looks before I said, "Well...actually, I get pretty dirty by the end of a day..."  I really couldn't understand why this highly intelligent person would think that farming is a clean job.  "Oh, of course you probably get pretty filthy working in pig poop and whatnot, but at least it's a clean sort of dirty.  I mean, it's natural, not with all these chemicals we have in the city."  We don't have pigs, but I chose to overlook that mistake.  I was too busy trying to figure out if I should kill the dentist's fairy tale and inform her that farmers actually do use a lot of chemicals and we have to protect ourselves accordingly.  I didn't want to turn her into one of those people that will only eat organic, though, and since I had only a short amount of time to talk, I let it go with a vague, "Not really..."  I'm still kicking myself for not thinking and answering faster.

Every summer I attend a Bible Study in town while I'm home.  A few of us are farmers or have grown up in the country, but most of the young adults there grew up in town and have only a vague understanding of what goes on at the farm.  I generally have to filter what comes out of my mouth when people ask, "So what's new on the farm this week, Valerie?" (because you just can't talk about castrating at Bible Study).  One evening I was chatting with my friend and her younger brother after Bible Study was finished and the brother asked, "So now that you're done planting, do you just wait until harvest and not have to work for the rest of the summer?"  Since I know this family fairly well, and because I was overtired, I forgot to filter my response.  Instead, I laughed at the poor guy and started listing all the things my Dad and I will have to do between now and harvest.  When I paused for breath, the young man said, "So, basically, if you didn't have cows you'd have a lot more free time." Momentarily speechless, I stared at him and mentally ran through my to do list again.  It was true.  Everything I said, except for one major project and spraying, wouldn't exist without our cows.  We've got some pretty insightful town kids out here in Barrhead.

I generally know just enough about stuff to get into trouble.  There is very little that I'm an expert in.  Unfortunately, many city folks assume that farmers know all there is to know about all forms of agriculture.  This can present us with some opportunities for a bit of fun when people come to us for advice.  For example, one of my mom's friends who has lived on an acreage for the past few years recently got some sheep.  My parents and I went over there one day and I showed her how to tip a sheep and shared some fun facts that I had learned from one lecture on sheep in my livestock class.  Several weeks later, we were having supper with this same family friend.  She was telling us the gory details of docking the lambs' tails and was wondering if there was a better way of doing it.  She asked, "Have you done that, Valerie?"  I was tired and was tempted to rudely sigh and growl, "No, I only had one class on sheep.  I'm not an expert on sheep and don't care to be."  Instead, I saw an opportunity to have some fun, so as seriously and nonchalantly as possible I said, "Naw, we don't do that to our cows."  There was dead silence at the table for just a second before my parents burst into laughter, while Mom's friend shook her head at me.  Oh but it's fun to mess with people sometimes!

This blog post is getting long enough.  I may do a sequel someday.  I'm sure there are plenty of interesting conversations in my future.  For now, thanks for reading.  And if you're a city person wanting to ask a farmer something, don't be afraid to ask questions.  We'll try to be nice if you say something weird.

"Uh oh"

I took my calf, Dopey, to the vet today.  He had broken his leg three weeks ago and today was the day he got his cast off.  

Dad drove the truck up to the shiny new vet clinic and we sat and waited for the vet to finish castrating a bull over at the old clinic.  This was not the same vet who had put the cast on. He's a young guy, just a couple of years older than me.  In fact, I went to high school with his brother.  

When the vet finally arrived, he took a look at Dopey in the trailer and decided to just do the procedure on the trailer.  He went inside to get the anaesthetic ready and Dad told me to get in the trailer and calm Dopey down.  Dopey was not impressed at being cooped up in the trailer and was borderline panicked by that point.  So, I climbed in and talked to Dopey.  Once he calmed down a bit, I got closer and petted him until the vet came to give him the sedative.  I stayed in the trailer then and watched Dopey as he slowly got woozy.  He fought the sedative as long as he could, and finally stumbled, then collapsed on the floor.

Once Dopey was incapacitated, the vet cut the cast off.  I could smell something slightly putrid as the cast came off.  Once it was off, the vet examined the leg.  As he lifted it up, I could see a spot on the back of the leg that did not look healthy.  The vet saw it at the same time I did and uttered the phrase you never want to hear, especially when you've already lost a few calves: "Uh oh."  He informed us that there was a break in the skin, which had probably been too small to see when the cast was first put on, and that the bone was infected.  

As the vet examined the wound and cleaned the pus out, the smell got worse.  There isn't much that grosses me out, but that smell...that was disgusting.  I had to turn my face away and get some fresh air a couple times.  It was hours before the lingering smell finally left my nose.

There are a few options for Dopey.  We decided to have the vet put the cast back on as a splint, leaving room for some air to get to the wound.  We'll also treat him with antibiotics for a few days.  If the leg doesn't get better in a couple weeks, we'll have the vet amputate it and Dopey can hobble about on three legs.

I'm thinking that Dopey will be okay.  When I was unloading him from the trailer back at home, there was a gap between the trailer and the barn.  Dopey still seemed a bit woozy, so I left him standing by the trailer door and went in search of a piece of plywood to make a bridge.  I had finally located a sturdy piece and dragged it over to the trailer when I saw Dopey, cast and all, take a flying leap from the trailer into the barn.  All that was left for me to do was drag the plywood back to the shed, take the truck out of the corral and bring in Dopey's mom.  He's going to be okay.

Uncle Ludwig

My uncle passed away today.  Uncle Ludwig was my dad's oldest brother.  He used to farm just a few miles north of us until dementia took away his ability to do the things he'd done for some 50 odd years.  He stayed on the farm, with his sister looking after him and Dad farming the land for a while after he couldn't farm, but eventually it got to be too much for my aunt, and Uncle Ludwig was moved to the senior's care center in town.

Uncle Ludwig was amazing at building, fixing, and restoring stuff.  The things I saw as we cleaned out his sheds last spring for a farm sale were beautiful.  There was old farm equipment, fixed up and painted bright colours.  There was stuff he had made, just thought up and built, like his metal press.  And all of his machinery and tools were kept in such nice condition.  

Once, when I was about ten or twelve years old, I somehow obtained an antique tractor seat.  It was all rusty and dented, but I took it to Uncle Ludwig and he sandblasted it and painted it for me.  All he wanted for his work was a cat, a good mouser, so we gave him one of our barn cats, named Elvis.  Every time we'd go over for a visit, Uncle Ludwig would have a story of Elvis' latest exploits for us.

We didn't know Uncle Ludwig wasn't well until his wife died.  Auntie Marlene died with little warning when I was in high school.  After that, Dad and his other siblings would check up on Uncle Ludwig, to make sure he was doing okay.  They started to notice that something wasn't right.  After Uncle Helmut had to show Uncle Ludwig how to cut hay, something he'd been doing for decades, the family sought medical advice.  We eventually learned that Uncle Ludwig had dementia.  He still loved to farm, but he couldn't do everything anymore, so Dad agreed to sharecrop the land.  For some reason, I guess I didn't understand that this wasn't a temporary thing.  I figured it would eventually all go back to normal.

The day I realized that Uncle Ludwig wasn't going to get better, I was at home, relaxing during my summer break.  Dad was baling hay at Uncle Ludwig's place.  He called Mom and asked her to bring me to the field.  When we got there, Dad asked me to rake the hay.  The briefest of glances at the field told me that the hay had already been raked and that Dad had already started baling.  Why was he asking me to rake hay that had already been raked?  Dad saw me glance at the field and offered an explanation.  Uncle Ludwig had already raked the hay, but he had gotten confused and Dad couldn't bale the hay as it was.  I took a closer look at the field then.  The hay had, indeed, been raked, but the rows were...non-existent, curving all over the place, joining together, and generally looking chaotic.  I had to redo the entire field.  Some parts were impossible to fix and I was close to tears several times trying to get through.  Dad told me to just fix it so he could bale it.  It didn't have to be perfect.  That's the day I realized Uncle Ludwig would never be the same again.  I was also the last time Uncle Ludwig got to do field work.

Even with the dementia stealing his memories, Uncle Ludwig was still the sweetest man.  When he could still live on the farm, he'd always have a dog around.  No matter which dog it was, he always called it "Pooch".  I didn't always know how to relate to Uncle Ludwig when he was confused, but I loved him.  He'll be missed.

Faces of My Farm

I talk about working on the farm a lot, so I thought I'd share some of the faces that I see on a regular basis.  Here are the faces of my farm:

Name: Dopey
Story: This is one of my calves.  He is the first calf I ever rubber ringed (definition: "castrated"). He got stepped on a few days ago, so the vet had to put a cast on his leg.  It comes off in three weeks.  His name is Dopey because he may be cute, but he's got to be the dumbest calf I've ever had the pleasure of owning.

Name: Squirt
Story: Squirt is one of my Dad's calves.  He isn't growing right because he only sucks out of one quarter of his mom's udder and won't touch the other three unless we lock his mom up and force him to drink out of all four quarters.  Dad generally only names the problem calves, hence "Squirt".

Name: Whitey
Story: Whitey is the oldest bull on our farm.  He is actually Whitey II, named after Whitey I, who was a bull on our farm when I was a child.  He's a purebred white Charlais.  He is nearing retirement.

Name: Frenchie
Story: Frenchie used to be a show bull, back before we bought him.  He's possibly the tamest of our bulls, although all of them are pretty tame and calm.  He nearly ran a small stampede over me the other day when we were sorting cows after Hot Rod and one of the other bulls ganged up on him.  Like Whitey, Frenchie is a purebred white Charlais.

Name: Hot Rod
Story: This is really the best picture I could get of Hot Rod.  He's a character. Hot Rod doesn't walk; he struts.  He's a purebred red Charlais.

Name: Angus
Story: Angus is our only purebred Red Angus bull, hence the name.

Name: Unknown
Story: This guy does have a name, but we can't remember it right now.  He's Dad's newest bull, another purebred red Charlais.

Name: Bandit
Story: Bandit is our farm dog.  We got him as an eight-week-old puppy about a year ago.  He's pretty smart, but also a bit mischievous.  His hobbies include chasing everything that moves, playing fetch, and generally being adorable.

Name: Boo
Story: Boo is our house cat.  We have barn cats, but they don't like people, so I can't introduce you to them.  Boo's hobbies include randomly tearing around the house, climbing all over everyone, and watching the birds out the window.  She and Bandit are currently negotiating terms of friendship through the screen door.

Name: Rusty the Farm Truck (because every farmer knows that every farm truck has its own personality)

So, those are the faces of my farm.  I hope you enjoyed meeting them.

Breaking In and Breaking Down: Reflections on a Week of Work

I have now completed one week (seven days) of work.  I worked Monday through Saturday last week and then today.  My reflections on these seven days of work (and that one blessed day of rest on Sunday) have led me to find two themes that seem to be awfully prominent in the past few days.

The first theme is that of breaking in.  No, I don't mean that I've turned to a life of crime and have begun burglarizing people's homes.  I'm talking about getting myself broke in to the routine and hard work that is now my everyday normal life.  Just as I break in new boots to fit my feet just right or a new cap to sit just so on my head, I need to break in my body to this life of manual labour.  I've spent the past eight months doing a lot of studying and little else.  Now, as with every summer, it is once again time to get my body accustomed to what it will be doing for the next four months.  The long months of study have reduced my hands to baby smoothness, which is fine if I'm trying to be ladylike, but not so great when there's work to do.  I'll have to rebuild the callouses that have disappeared so that I don't have to wear gloves all the time.  My muscles will also have to adjust and have been doing so as I've been picking rocks and roots in the fields.  I'd forgotten some of those muscles existed!  And of course I'll need to get used to bouncing around in the tractor all day (so much fun, but so hard on the bones by the end of a long day).  The main part of me that needs to be broken in is my mind.  I need to get used to entertaining myself on the tractor without the advantage of having books or other people around.  Sometimes I can listen to a static-filled radio program, but other times it's just me and my mind.  Finally, I'll need to adjust to the pressures and stresses that come along with farm life.  Instead of stressing over due dates for assignments or upcoming quizzes that I know about far in advance, I suddenly have to deal with unexpected difficulties,which brings me to my second theme.

The second theme I've noticed is that things break down.  Three days of the seven that I've worked I have used (or tried to use) the disc to work the fields.  Three times that same disc has broken down.  My dad and I spent a good portion of one day early last week fixing the disc and trying to get the seed drill in working order.  Today we had to borrow the neighbour's truck to get home for supper because the tractor decided to quit and blocked our way out with the grain truck and other tractor (don't worry; we got it going again after supper).  It's not really as if this is unusual either.  Breakdowns, as aggravating as they may be, are just a part of life.  How does that one reality tv show put it?  "Expect the unexpected"?  Yeah, that sounds like farm life.

Unfortunately, when you live in the non-farm world for a while, it's easy to forget about those unexpected difficulties.  Then when you come back, it gets a bit overwhelming.  By the end of last week, I was certainly overwhelmed.  I even went into fullblown panic mode over one situation on Saturday.  I can't remember the last time I panicked.  We were burning some brush piles (yes, we had a permit) and Dad left me to supervise them while he went to town with Mom.  No big deal.  Just after he left though, a spark from the pile I was watching ignited an old truck that we have parked in the back of beyond.  I tried first to put the fire out, but I only succeeded in burning a few holes in my coat and getting a lungful of smoke.  That's when I figured it was time to call Dad.  No one answered the house phone.  Dad's cell went straight to voicemail.  Mom's cell number didn't work.  I wasn't even sure if I had the right one or not.  Well, maybe they hadn't left for town yet and even if they had, Mom's cell number was in the kitchen.  I ran to the trike and rode up to the house at a barely controlled speed, only to find the house abandoned and locked.  That's when I let the panic out in one hard smack against the front door.  I'm surprised I didn't hurt my hand.  Unable to find the spare key, I ended up having the break into the house, at which point I was finally able to get a hold of my parents.  They told me to just let the truck burn, stay back, and don't let the fire spread any more.  Well, expect the unexpected.  By the time I got back to the fire, the truck was just slowly smoldering.  It never did go up in flames.  All that panic was for nothing.

Moral of the story: I'd better get myself broke in to farm life again before I break down.  I think I'll do okay, though.