This is my third winter without steers to feed. I can’t say I miss going out in the snow and mud, running water in freezing weather or worrying about dry places for the calves to bed down.
But, I do miss the cattle, and perhaps just as much, the sweet fragrance of good hay. Something about it as you pull apart flakes of grass and clover or lespedeza that warms the senses on the coldest of days. And then there’s the contagious excitement of hungry calves as you walk among them, watching them toss and scatter the flakes as fast as they hit the ground.
It can even be a bit risky; but that just gets the heart pumping and keeps the mind alert.
I am reminded, as I recall my former days on the family farm and my mere 5 acres, that the most sublime joys of farming are often the least dramatic.
I think of winter evenings in the barn when I was a boy, of the warmth of a Jersey cow’s flank as I leaned in to get the last few drops of milk in the bucket, and the mingled aromas of cow, manure, and lespedeza hay in the loft overhead. Long after I was grown and the cows gone, I could still walk in that barn, close my eyes and smell the hay, grain and cows. With the only sound the buzzing of Dad’s Wizard electric fence charger, I could take a deep breath and again be that farm boy of 1965.
Farm life has been romanticized in many ways, depicted in motion pictures as idyllic and free from the worries of the rest of the world. Little is said of the frantic labor of putting up hay with storm clouds approaching or dusty pastures blowing away in drought. Maverick calves to chase down are made light of and temperamental tractors given cute names, rather than what we actually call them.
Farming is a seven-day-a-week job with no holidays. It’s hard to see why people in their right minds would ever undertake it. On the other hand, most farmers can’t understand why anyone would take a job in town.
I know. I decided years ago to become a newspaperman. When I could have chosen an ag major in college, I picked writing (what I really wanted wasn’t offered – ag journalism).
Time and time again I wondered what I was thinking to put ag on the shelf. But, in time I came to the realization I wasn’t doing the thinking. God was.
He opened all the doors to my writing and newspaper jobs, and just to keep me at it, put me close to home and among farmers.
As icing on the cake, in these later years He’s given me plenty or opportunity to visit feed stores, where the sweet aroma of stock feed ever reminds me who I am.
And if I ever need them, I know where to buy a few bales of sweet-smelling hay.
A former feature writer for Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, Jim Hamilton is a retired newspaper editor/publisher. Hamilton was reared on a small dairy farm in Dallas County, Mo. Contact Jim at [email protected].
