Farm Girl Skills

I mostly grew up in town, albeit so on the edge of town that there was nothing but pastures behind our house.  There were a few brief years we had a 365 acre farm way, way out in the country, there was every summer and holiday on my grandparents' farm, and my dad was an Ag teacher.   As much as I would love to convince you that I have always been a farm girl, there were, in reality, afternoons spent playing cops and robbers with the kids down the street and riding my bicycle to the local pool in the summer.  I think, though, that I have always been a farm girl at heart.  My best memories were always in the country.

The past few weeks, my mother-in law has remarked more than once that I am a farm girl or that she was glad I was country girl.  I suppose that is partly because I do things she approves of like canning and gardening and trekking down to the water for wild blackberries or rummaging in the wild plum patch next to her house.  Rubilee, who is always spotless, approves of my willingness to get dirty.

The past few weeks, I have been getting better at farm girl skills.  The last time Jack Dear was gone to work, I had an irrigation line coupling that kept coming loose, causing me to wake up to a very wet patch in the peach trees and very dry blackberries down the hill.  In a moment of infinite patience, Jack walked me through the process of taking apart an old coupling on a spare line and putting it on this one.  There were plugs to be stripped out and put in, rings to put on in the right order . . . Sorry, no technical  terms allowed.    Then a few days later, I got to learn how to operate the battery charger on Harold's cantankerous mower and work the lawn sweeper (also via phone).  The battery charger should have been straight forward, but there are electrical issues with the mower and cutoff switches that added to my non-mechanically inclined frustrations.

Saturday, I decided that it was again time to mow, but this time, I was ready to manage the charger and everything.  I walked up to the big house and after a chat with Rubilee, went out to the barn.  As soon as I opened the door, the stench of something long dead hit me.  I first uspected a rat. If only it had been.  Remember my Facebook rant about the orange tom cat who kept visiting us in the night, causing trouble? He is no more.  I will spare you the gory details.  It suffices to point out that it is July and at least a few days had passed since his demise.  I will also point out that although at 2 AM three nights running, I did wish a coyote would eat this cat, I was in no way responsible for his end. A shovel was procured, a rather large (but as it turns out, not quite large enough) hole dug, and cat scraped up and buried.  I ended up having to put cement blocks over the dirt to keep the dogs from digging - not sure how deep that hole should have been, but a few feet was not enough.  The cement barn floor got to be hosed down and bleached, all while Rubilee fretted that I had to do it.  Her only comment was "I am so glad Jack married a country girl.  Some other girl would have been upset, but you just got the hole dug."

After much charging and fighting with the mower and using the push mower while the big mower thought about working, the yard did get mowed and swept.  There were hiccups of course. Jack thought I could probably manage to mow over the irrigation line without pulling it up.  I did . . But only for five passes around the yard.  Then I snagged the line and spent the next twenty minutes untangling it from the mower's undersides.  Good thing I now know which parts to pick up at the farm store and how to splice my line back together with those couplings, right?  At one point the mower quit and had to be charged again, of course as far from the house as possible but still just in reach of all Jack's extension cords put together   (Minus the taped together one that I am afraid of).

It is Monday.  I woke up at five.  A responsible me would have gotten in her workout early.  The real me has sat with her coffee for 2 hours and window shopped for new luggage and seeds for next year's garden.  Today I will see if the weed eater and I are on speaking terms.  I will dig through the jungle of tomatoes - no canning today, but I want to replenish our stock of dried tomatoes for salads, pizza, bread, and pasta.  It is also the week of deep, before the insanity-of-back-to-school, no-husband-around, vacation-is-next-week house cleaning.

That is a thing that requires no farm girl skills, but on the whole, I must say that I like being able to deal with things.  It was very satisfying to walk into that farm store and get my part on my own and then sit on my overturned bucket putting my line back together.  I felt accomplished.