It’s been many years now – at least 10, maybe more – since I’ve done any work on a farm. And in particular, in a barn.
One day in the early ’70s, after a lot of years of hard labour on my parents’ beef farm near Bornholm, I kicked off my rubber boots and sat down at a typewriter to learn to be a reporter. Now, on a bad day, I daydream about being back again by myself on a tractor, plowing up a field of corn stubble, breathing in the fresh country air and belting out songs to the birds, mice and the cows in the neighbour’s field. But destiny won’t be denied it seems and in light of how difficult farming is these days, I’m glad to be where I am.
Looking back, it occurs to me that of all the tasks my father could find for my brothers and me to do, the barn chores were the ones that had the most potential to drive a young man nuts on occasion. It seemed, in the winter, regardless of how many clothes I’d put on, I’d still end up freezing various parts of my body before I could get the cattle fed and bedded with straw. Combine frozen corporal extremities and the pangs of hunger that would wrack my insides as I hurried to finish up so I could get into the house for supper, and you have the makings of one discontented young lad. Add on top of that the fact that it wouldn’t be a complete night until I’d banged my head on a low beam at least once or been chased around the barn by two or three 700-pound steers who always found fresh straw reason enough for a full-speed frolic complete with rear legs kicked high in the air, and you can see why, at times, I envied my TV-watching schoolmates from town.
But no sooner was my suitcase unpacked upon my arrival in the city than I was remembering the good old days on the farm and especially those winter nights in the barn with the cattle lowing as they waited near the manger for their supper and the lights from my mother’s kitchen twinkling out across the snow between the house and the barn.
[the_ad_placement id=”top-of-page”]
So when fellow reporter Bob Reid invited me out to help with the chores at his farm near New Hamburg last Friday night, I jumped at the chance to recapture a happy part of my early life. I stopped off at the house, threw on some old clothes and a light jacket but passed up my usual afternoon snack of biscuits, cheese and milk so I could get to Bob’s place sooner.
I entered the Reid barn about 4:30 p.m., eager to go to work. Breathing in a fine whiff of a smell forever pleasantly etched in my memory and now reawakened for the first time in years, I knew I was home at last. For all of farming’s changes in the past 20 years, a barn is still a barn. Two colourful, affectionate cats wound themselves around my legs and straw dust wafted through the dim light beams from the bare bulbs in the pens as Bob forked down bedding from upstairs for his cattle to lie in.
“This is just great, Bob,” I said to my farmer-reporter friend. “I never realized until now how much I missed all this.”
By about 6:30 p.m., the night had taken a cold, cold turn and my light little coat wasn’t offering much protection. I kept moving around to keep warm. And it was then or a little while later that I also noticed a growing gap in the pit of my stomach where a plateful of supper should have been. But these were minor complaints and I sure wasn’t about to let them diminish my great joy at being a fish finally thrown back into the water.
“Come on up to the house for a while and I’ll show you around the place,” said Bob and as I followed him through the low doorway onto the barn bank, I heard, then felt, the loud “clunk!” of wood hitting forehead. Bob’s wood. My head.
“You okay?” enquired Bob.
“Who me?” I asked. “No problem. Hardly felt it.”
Back in the barn, more hungry and cold than before, I jumped into a pen to help Bob round up some of his stock.
“Hey look! A city slicker! Let’s get him!” I thought I heard a young bull moo to his companions and I scrambled for the gate as a half dozen, heel-kicking, 700-pound burgers on legs came running for me like teenagers at a Michael Jackson concert. I escaped the pen with my life though my pride had been dented and bruised.
“Could you help me carry that water barrel in from the driving shed?” Bob asked and as I followed him through the low doorway onto the barn bank, I heard, then felt again, the loud “clunk” of wood hitting forehead. Bob’s wood. Guess whose head. More enquiries about injuries from Bob. More denials of pain from me.
I’d have spent more time thinking about how cold and hungry I’d become, the time getting on to about 8:30 p.m. as it was, but a throbbing headache I’d developed had sort of concentrated my thoughts on other things.
Back in the barn, Bob asked me to drag a water trough across the floor to the other side of the pen where he was waiting to fill it. Halfway across, as I threaded my way carefully through a maze of heavy, playful, stepdancing cattle beasts, all of them figurin’ on doing The Fiddle Player’s Waltz on my chest, the now-familiar sound of “CLUNK” resonated through the barn as one of its low-lying beams met up with a cold and hungry forehead. Then there was silence. Then the sound of Bob laughing heartily and long. Then silence. Then more laughing. Even the cattle stopped and stared in wonder.
Eventually, I got warm and then I got fed. Thanks to two pills, I got rid of my headache.
And I think I just might have gotten barn chores out of my system for a while.
©1987 Jim Hagarty
[the_ad_placement id=”top-of-page”]
