Dora:
Rain
Swept and scrubbed kitchen A.M.
Went over to Shellys at night.
Ray:
43- Cloudy
Went to Centerville to the mill, cut wood & pitched hay
Dora & I went over to Shellys at night.
Cayla:
Worked in the Neuro office today. Got home early since Tarek had to work late today. We had to call someone out to check out our sump pump as the alarm kept going off. We think the main pump has failed and want to avoid a flooded basement.
I drive almost an hour west to the Neuro office and the patients we see there are largely farmers, paper mill workers, and other blue collar type workers. Really, a pleasant group of people to work with-pleasant to me, perhaps, since this is the type of community in which I grew up.
But as I drive out there, on a road similar to M-60, I drive past fields and fields. Old farm houses. Little towns no longer thriving. Fields of cattle, sheep, and a few llamas. Sometimes I have to slow way down for a tractor changing fields.
The pastures today were a brilliant emerald green. We've had some heavy rain and warm weather in the past week and everything is beginning to glow in that brilliant spring-time green.
Anyway, today as I was admiring those emerald green fields I started thinking about Ray, as I often do on my morning drive out west.
Now I know the fields that my grandfather had were not these huge monster fields that we have today. But the fields that he did have at that time equaled 199 acres. It struck me today what a job it would have been to just simply plow a field with a team of horses. Up and down, over and over, one pass at a time until the field was done. I wonder what it sounded like: the plow turning up the soil, kicking up rocks and in Ray's case, arrowheads. I wonder what it felt like: bone breaking work, sweaty work, work that required balance, stamina, and brute strength.
It was a solitary job, like most farming is today. But instead of a GPS-guided tractor rumbling beneath you, there would be two live animals in front of you. You'd hear them breathing, They'd be used to your handling. Maybe they'd just respond to your voice. Maybe you'd talk to them if you were bored. Maybe they'd begin to feel more like companions than just work horses. You'd hear them breathing, snorting, nickering. You'd hear and feel their tails swishing. You'd have to consider if they needed water or not on a particularly hot day. You'd smell their sweat. And when you finished for the day, you'd take them back to the barn, brush them down, and feed them before you fed yourself.
I don't want to romanticize how hard farming was back then, or how it is today. Next time you look at a field though, think about Ray, 20 years old, with his harness he'd been proudly polishing for four days straight, guiding his horses up and down that field....
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