I Had To Slowly Acclimatize To Farming

 Me, in the pasture, hugging a heifer named Marshmallow

 

 "And God said, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind and it was so." genesis 1:24.

God designed cattle and they are exactly what He desired for a meat and milk producing critter. Praise the Lord.

God created me, too, just the way He wanted me to be. Praise the Lord.

But when I came along, these so many years after His original creation, I had no desire for farming. Growing up my farming experiences amounted to rabbits, chickens, and raising worms. At times, even that was too much work for an active tomboy. 

Personally, I was terrified of cows.

So how did I adapt to being a farmer's wife? It started when my mother rented a house from a Dairy Farmer. It just followed that I would gravitate to it. 

I did say I was a tomboy.

I wandered to the farm next door and met my landlord. Because I kept wandering to the farm and doing odd jobs, like spreading hay, fetching tools, raking, and sweeping hay around the floor. It wasn't long until my frequent involvement graduated to assistant milker.

I still wasn't ready to trust the cows up close. Nothing I had done so far had me and cows in close proximity--yet. 

Assistant milker didn’t milk, which meant I didn’t have to do anything with those Holsteins the size of small vehicles, but with brains. A black and white, half ton of power with primitive reasoning. One end has horns, the other powerful legs; it's dangerous coming and going.

Where I began my introduction to dairy farming, there was no automated system on this farm; no pump whisked the milk to the tank. Milk was poured into two 16-quart pails, which had to be immediately taken to the milk tank. That was my job, lugging up to 64 pounds of milk. From production to tank less was than 100 feet. In all that walking up and down the cement floor, I covered over five miles. To dump the pails, I stood on a cement block, while lifting the pail about head high. I lifted up to 32 pounds of milk to dump it into a strainer that drained into the 600-gallon milk tank. Try that without spilling any!

 The more I was there the more my fears abated, until I progressed into managing the whole milking process of washing udders, strapping the machine on, setting the teat cups, stripping, (hand milking the last drop), the 40 to 45 cows. I was now doing the entire three hours of the morning milking alone.

But that wasn't the extent of the jobs I adapted to.

Other chores included feeding, watering, repairs, mending fences, shoveling silage, shoveling you-know-what, treating feet, treating injured cows, inoculating, medicating, castrating, deworming, dehorning, assisting calving, haying. I’ve participated in breeding, chasing, catching, shipping, trailering and leading cows, calves and bulls.

Once in a while, I even drove a piece equipment.

 Buffalo, an Angus/cross bull calf I raised.

Mother rented the house for five years and in those years, I continued to work at the farm. But, there was a consequence none of us realized. Somewhere in those years, the Farmer and I had fallen in love. I went off to other places, but often I returned to the farm and sometimes the Farmer would come to where I was.

It wasn't until both of us came to know Jesus as our Savior did we figure out we needed to be married.

When that happened, God showered blessing on us so much we wondered why we hadn't married sooner.

God made me just the way He wanted me designed. And part of that design had me growing into be on a farm. Praise the Lord.

 

 The Farm Buildings

 The Barn was 150 feet long.

The Blue HARVESTORE Silo is 65 feet tall and 25 feet in diameter.