A Little Cow Poop Never Hurt Anyone

I wrote yesterday about the farmer’s plight with milk prices and the current unstable market. That just reminded me more and more about my love of the farm I have had since I was a child.

My siblings and I grew up on a farm that had been in our family for over a century. My younger sisters didn’t get to enjoy the “large” farm life as much as my older brother and I did. Family farm life has sort of gone by the wayside. There isn’t as much of a “whole” family on the farm any more as it used to be. Most farm wives/mothers have to work off the farm in order to supplement either income or health insurance.

Growing up on a farm has many pluses but it also means you learn a strong work ethic from the time you are little. My brother and I had to help hay from a young age and learned how to cut wood. We learned how to help milk, do chores, feed the farm animals and found out about the dangers of the farm, too. Our family was probably more over cautious than some, though. My dad was a Type I diabetic (since age 14) so everyone kept watch over him for diabetic reactions (“lows”). We called them sweats because, as I have now learned from my own experiences in being a Type I diabetic, that he would begin to sweat sometimes in more unusual places (arms, legs). That was a tell-tale sign along with slurring of words when the low got more advanced. My brother, Gary, and I would usually be asked to run and check on Daddy just to be sure everything was okay. That would sometimes mean jumping on our bikes to run out into the field. Safety on the farm is a must because of all the potential hidden dangers but when you add in another factor there becomes more of a heightened awareness.

Things on the farm, though, were not all work and no play. From a young age, Gary and I would ride our tricycles and, later on, bicycles in the barn, more so in the summer when the cows weren’t in the barn all the time. We always had one calf pen that was clean that we would play in. That pen would later be used as a “day care” pen of sorts when my sisters came along. Riding your bike in a barn is fun. You can zip up and down the barn alleyways and the driveway, but you always had to be mindful that there might be manure in the gutter and the trick is to play Evil Knievel and still avoid a tumble into there. Sometimes that doesn’t necessarily always work out.

When you are young, there is always a birthday party. For my 6th birthday, I had a party. I was all dressed up and while we were waiting for relatives and my friends to arrive, my brother and I decided to take our bikes for a ride on our “motocross” race track – the barn. We ran over our course a few times gaining speed as we went, zipping here and there. Then all of the sudden off the track I went, plunging into the gutter – and it wasn’t empty! I dove in headfirst and came out head-to-toe covered with manure and in my new birthday clothes, too!! Gary, in between fits of laughter, ran to get my mom. She came out of the house in time to see me waddling toward the house crying my heart out, all the while blaming my brother (whether he was guilty or not, we always blamed each other, just to make ourselves feel better!!).

This was the end of May and, luckily, the weather was nice because my mom saw only one way to handle the situation – the garden hose. She hosed me down and put me in the little shanty we had by the house. The shanty was where we stored our bikes, outside toys, gardening tools, etc., and sometimes it was our hideout and playroom. Today it was my changing room. I undressed in there and, after carefully searching my body for any stray gobs of manure, Mother wrapped me in a towel to take me into the house for a bubble bath and good cleansing. My dad had the duty of going to the barn to rescue my bike which was also covered with a little cow poop. He hosed that down in the milkhouse and it was good as new. By this time friends and relatives had begun to arrive to start my party without me.

After a thorough scrubbing, I was good to go again; to play, rump around the yard and get dirty again. It took awhile before the smell of manure was completely cleared from my smell, but then again, when you live on a farm you are used to that smell all the time.

There was a good lesson to be learned that day -- you need to be careful on the farm. But then again, if you are kid on a farm and you don’t get hurt doing something -- only a little dirty -- sometimes that lesson has to be learned a few times over and over. That would not be my last fall in the gutter, because racing in the barn on our bikes is a fun thing to do. When you are a kid and it is fun and, yes, even if you end up a little dirty, you will keep doing it again and again. You just learn to make sure that if you take that dip again, you keep your mouth shut!