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The Education of a New Farmer: Part V
by Raven OKeefe
The Perils of Farming
Farming is a dangerous business, no doubt about that. I've learned a lot of the dangers in the past almost-year, including but not limited to:
| Terminal exhaustion, both personal and financial | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Webbed feet (applies primarily to Oregon farmers)|
Inability to speak with humans without interspersing the conversation with
sharp commands like "That'll do now!" or soothing baaaas | Picking up hay bales
that have been out in the field awhile and finding a spider the size of a Volvo
waiting to pounce on you | Trying to take an egg away from a hen who's not quite
through with it yet | Tripping over a rock while running to head off a runaway
ram | Doing battle with the Nile (our irrigation ditch) | Spending 10 minutes
looking in the fridge for orange juice among all the various critter medicines
and vaccines | Falling in love with tiny little new barn kitties whose life
expectancy is all too short | Falling in love with lambs, ditto | Developing a
permanent squint from peering at cloud cover looking for a sun break | Finding
out that your bank's assurances that your property taxes were included in your
mortgage were incorrect | Having scratchy hay in all your shoes and boots | Forgetting to take the baling twine, fencepost staples and/or odd bits of wire
out of your jeans pockets before you do laundry | Having 17 pairs of work
gloves, each with one glove missing | Being unable to put your Halloween
jack-o-lanterns on the back porch because they'll be knocked into the next
county by the morning rush of five Border Collies roaring out the door at warp
speed | Thinking seriously of having your gift preferences for your coming
wedding registered with Coastal and Home Depot | Knowing the owner of the feed
store better than you know anyone else in town | Scrounging around in obscure
and unsavory dark corners to try to find where the damn hens are hiding their
eggs THIS time | Ending each day too tired to read, write, draw, or communicate
| and Being totally unable to imagine wanting to live any other way.
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Scio OR, October 2002
