Digging holes in this caliche soil of ours requires a fair amount of upper body strength, which I do not have, at least not in abundance. I can walk up and down hills for days collecting produce from our property, spend long hours juicing pomegranates and making preserves, hang wash and such, but I'm not good at the heavier types of manual farm labor.
But when one half of the team goes down, the other has to fill in, and this is nowhere more true than on a farm. You just can't pile everything on the absent co-worker's desk until he/she returns. These bare-root berry bushes and trees we got won't wait until Big Ag is well, any more than the chickens can wait to be fed, watered and cleaned out when I'm down with a cold or flu. More than quarterly sales reports or weekly staff meetings, there would be dire consequences to blowing off or postponing what needs to be done here. So we each have to be able to do the other's tasks, in a pinch.
We do have Groceries, our middle son, living with us, so it's possible for him to help, too. But since Groceries attends college and works when he's not in class, the weekends are about all I can count on him for. I guess if Big Ag and I ever went down with the same bug at the same time, Groceries would be doing our chores in the darkness of evening, after he returns home. One thing's for sure: With a farm you have to always be sure there's someone around to cover the chores, or lives (animal and plant) will be lost.
The good news is that it's supposed to be 70 degrees and sunny today, so I at least will have pleasant weather to go out and be a manly farmer in. Now excuse me while I belch and fart and get my masculine side going here.
No comments:
Post a Comment