Farm Chores

Funny how things don't dawn on you when you are young, at least not me. It never occured to me until after I blogged this week that there was such a clear demarkation in our home on women's work and men's. Even before my brother's comments on my Dreamin of a White Christmas blog, I woke up that morning thinking about how Dad never did ask me to help with barnyard daily chores. I must admit that it never crossed my mind either. My contribution was to wash the milkers, when our herd was small.  Of course, harvest was another story, every one was supposed to pitch in during harvest. Who could ever forget my help driving the stick shift on the hay truck turning those corners or pole vaulting over a bump sending the hay or straw load to the ground? I recall many gentle words of encouragement yelled from the back of the truck bed from my brothers.  Words that my brother Steve could not repeat when he went on a mission.   However, Dad must have thought my speciality was picking potatoes, sorting potatoes, or cutting seed potatoes for planting. Also, I earned my VSW.  I became a Very Special Weeder, pulling weeds that took two hands and all my body weight to get out. You know, the ones that got the most water at the end of the rows. I can't recall why some got so big, but my guess is that Dad started to tell me to get out there and get weeding those potatoes, but I had better things to do at the time. I do remember hoeing, but the memorable ones were the big pig weeds. I do not recall hearing the word allergy until I moved to this dry southern area, but do I remember having it during weeding assignments! I just did not know what to call it. I would be so red itchey eyed and spoltch swollen, I thought I could not take another minute and the row had seemed to grow to at least a mile long.   Of course, it did not help that I wore shorts and something sleeveless, so I could get a tan. A "Penny tan" where my freckles on my naturally pale skin would blend closer to one another.   There was dumb and then there was dumber.  Now I am an adult, I call it learning "line upon line, precept upon precept".  If I am allergic, I don't go out in the stuff.  If the sun is baking, it had better not be my cancer- prone skin.