In Praise of Farm Work
This is in praise of farm work.
When I was little in school, I was smart. REALLY smart. Far too smart. I read ten years above my age. I had general knowledge way above most adults in primary. I spoke english. I was SMART.
I never had to work for a thing in my life. Ever.
In order to shut me up, my teacher gave me books and allowed me to read in class. I essentially had dispensation from education. Because I already knew it. This did wonders for my ego, and wrecked my self-discipline.
If it hadn’t been for farm-work. I was raised on a farm that had grain, two large houses on it, and my best friend was a son of a farmer. I was taken to farms to see where milk came from. Before I was 10, I could identify inflamed teats from the milk produced, knew how to clean the milkingmachine, and knew how you bred animals to get a better cow.
Farmwork you cannot get out of just be being clever. The cows need feeding, every morning. The Hay needs to get in before the rain comes. If you ever wanted to feel the chill to your bones, the fear for your own life, work on a farm when the feed is to be taken in, and remember that your ancestors lived to have you because they survived a winter. Many winters.
Reading Hamsun’s Growth of the soil makes you get a vague idea. But only when your hands are bleeding from lifting hayballs onto a tractor after dark.. Because it might rain tomorrow… Because without hay there is no lifestock through winter… Without living things, you will starve…
Farmwork taught me to work. I painted houses, I mowed lawns, I kept chickens and sold their eggs, me and my pal had projects making us fairly rich, as I recall.
It was honest work. It was life-important work. It was work you could not avoid, not be too smart to do, not skive away from. And without it throughout my upbringing, I would have ended up in a bad place.
This is to honest work. A day of labour. The reward of cold water at the end of it. The five minute break between planting trees where tea happens. The realisation that you are working for something greater than yourself, for food or the forest, or animals. The exhaustion that makes sleep so welcoming at nine in the evening. Real work. Honest work.
Blood, sweat, and laughter.