Ever live on a farm? Milking, plowing. The Eddie Albert Experience? Up at dawn, feeding the chickens. Fresh air, the open country. The Rural Life. Pigs, Steers, Roosters. Not on your life or all the time?
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Put me in the “not on your life” category. Way too much hard work. All possible praise to those who undertake this most vital of professions, but better them than me.
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I remember going to a friend’s house who lived on the farm and staying the night and in the morning, we had to get the eggs out of the chicken coop and he just thrust his hand under each chicken and grabbed the eggs, but I saw those beaks and said “no way.”
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As a “very much not a morning person” (like I have a note from the doctor and everything!) farming is not for me. But by husband’s mother grew up on a dairy farm in Minnesota, and I did get to visit it, though after its farming days.
The barn
The farmhouse
when the farm was eventually sold (and turned into a office park), a professor in the same town bought the farm house and had the whole thing relocated into town. And painted. They had to remove the chimney so it could be transported underneath the utility wires.
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Did it belong to her uncle Jim?
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heh, no, it belonged to her parents. Her mother lived there into her 90’s before selling the whole shebang.
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At least the house made it! The Family Farm is Americana and a part of our cultural fabric. Those pictures do convey the spirit.
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Literally every summer “vacation” before going to college was staying at various farms of aunts and uncles in North Dakota. We ate good, but they worked us pretty hard for two weeks a year. I always had a deep appreciation of how tough their lives were and how happy I was to get back home. All my friends went to the beach or Disney or whatever… totally different experience!
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It’s not for most.
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Nope, not for me. Every farmer and family-of-farmer I’ve known has said how awful it is.
Although I suppose I have spent quite a lot of time working on farms, since quite a few of my excavations were on farmland. Mostly that just involved trudging across ploughed fields.
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My mother-in-law who grew up on the dairy farm is mystified by the popularity of urban/suburban chickens. Growing up, one of her chores was to retrieve the eggs from the henhouse. She HATES chickens.
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I have a friend who absolutely loves it. She has a whole brood of chickens and she used to have a turkey that followed her around all day while she was outside.
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I’ve known a few people who keep chickens (one even breeds fancy chickens), and most of them are really into it. They do tend to grumble a bit about caring for them, but generally in a good way. They’re definitely not for everyone, though.
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Yeah, I have a friend who used to keep chickens, but they kept getting eaten by bobcats. So now they have ducks, which I guess are big enough for the bobcats to look elsewhere? They seem to be less prone to getting eaten, anyway.
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My dad’s brother explained it pretty accurately “You always go broke when you buy retail and sell wholesale”
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