My Papa Leo was a dairy farmer, so I grew up around a farm. As
a kid I watched my fair share of sheep shearing, cow milking, field plowing,
and chicken scratching. I can still remember the smell of the milk barn – a
mixture of wet concrete, feed, manure, and bovine. Even now, when I hear
Waylon, Willie, and Dolly on the radio I am immediately transported back to
that old barn where I’d sit on an overturned feed bucket in the corner and
watch Papa with fascination. Some of my fondest, most vivid memories involve
Papa’s farm. And while I’m a country girl, I am not a farm girl by any stretch.
My sister married a farmer a year and a half ago and because
we’re a family that likes to do stuff together, we help them when they work
cows. I didn’t really know what it meant to “work” a cow before she met Nick. I
guess I had seen Papa work his when I was a kid, but I had never heard anyone
call it that. To me if you say you’re going to “work” something, you are either
going to put a hard hat on it or hand it a briefcase and send it to its job. I
have since found out that cows aren’t keen to wear hard hats well and they
certainly don’t carry briefcases.
Ever since my sister and I started having kids, I have been
the designated babysitter. Everyone would get together to paint someone’s house
or move someone and I was the one who volunteered to watch all the kids and
cook for the folks who were working. The first time we worked cows it occurred
to me that we only had teenagers and my childcare job had been made obsolete. I
actually had to go work with the grownups for the first time in nearly two
decades. And while I was a part of the farmhand crew, I did not come dressed
for the job. I wore shorts and flip flops. Yeah, stop laughing at me. I really
didn’t know what we were going to do. My sister who was five months pregnant at
the time, was in her jeans and boots, wielding a cattle prod like a pro and
yelling things like “GEHONOUTTAHEEYAH” and “HEY, BOSSY! GET GET GO ON!” (The
first time she yelled “Bossy” I thought she was yelling at me.) So because of
my inadequate attire, I got to stand behind my brother in law and hold a
gun-looking contraption that he used to apply some goop to the cows’ backs. I
got sunburned to a crisp. It was super fun.
The next time they worked cows I got my babysitting job back
because I had a super squishy two-month-old nephew to love on in the house. But
this go’round last weekend, my 16 year old niece took on the babysitting of her
baby brother while I – in my tennis shoes this time – went to work with the
other adults. My husband and son jumped in the corral with my Pops, sister, and
brother-in-law while I just stood there shaking my head. That was not gonna
happen. So Mom, bedecked with rubber gloves, handed me some syringes and some
bottles of stuff and said, “I’ll get the ear tags ready, you fill syringes.”
Whew. I was in a relatively poop-free zone and behind a table a good six feet
from any large, scary bovine creature. Crisis averted.
I spent that day drawing up wormer, antibiotics, something
for Black Leg (that sounds simply awful, glad there’s a shot for it), and even
got to where I could predict how much wormer to draw up by the size of the cow
in the chute. It was not altogether a bad experience. Well, at least, until the
vet got there. Preg-checking and emasculating are not for the faint of heart. Holy
cow.
Yeah, pun totally intended – those three soon-to-be-momma
cows and that one very unfortunate steer deserve bovine sainthood. And a steak
dinner. Oh wait. Nevermind.
No comments:
Post a Comment