Let’s Call It Character

The television was turned on the other day as I was preparing dinner. I happened to look up because Baxter Black (the cowboy poet) was waxing on about the sense and stupidity of cattle. This segment of the program had Baxter out on the farm. Yes, it was the cowboy channel, yes, it was rodeo highlights from the last thirty years (we do not get around to movies or serials much, watching competitions from way back seem to dominate our dwindling attention span these days).

Anyway, back to Baxter, he was saying something about intelligence of bovine and describing how a hole in the fence could draw the herd right to the spot over and over to escape until that one spot was fixed and fortified to the nth degree. As he said this, I looked at the screen and he was talking while sitting on a horse next to what I think was a fence line. The fence line had to have been a hundred years old if it was a day. I could not even see an actual fence with posts and wire, it was more like a pile of intertwined boards, rope, wire, farm equipment and baling twine. There were parts of wooden pallets and twisted hunks of tin roof material and I think I saw a blade from a plow stuck in there.

I used to think a farm as orderly and tidy. Its the way I was raised. We (the kids) were not exposed to the idea that a piece of equipment was left out to rust along the edge of a field. Shovels were put away after each use so they could be located again, tools had a designated spot to be returned to in the shop.  It stands to reason that I would expect barns with floors that are level, roofs without any leaks, driveways and paths without potholes, tools and equipment kept picked up and put away.

Although I strive to have things this way, my farm is not a showcase. There is a pile of twisted metal that was the old chest freezer sitting in my yard. At sixty years old, it broke beyond repair last year and Mike has been dismantling it to take the bits to recycling. It has been sitting in the yard for a year, apparently it is a long process. My pile of tires that I use in the garden did not get picked up last fall sat woefully in clumps where I harvested my potatoes and instead of stacking them neatly, got shoved out of the way beneath the old apple tree so I could get the area tilled. And there are many, many (MANY) other half-completed projects that are part of my farm.

Seeing Baxter’s fence made me think about my own fences. Since there is no level plain anyplace on the property, there is no line that is straight, true or even anywhere on the farm, and yes we have spots that have baling wire, twine, criss-crossed wires and uneven posts. We have metal t-posts and old cedar posts intermixed and I doubt if there are two in a row that are perpendicular to the ones around it. The theory behind the cobbled fence line is to make it visible to the deer and the elk so they clear the fence rather than plow through, keeping it untidy for a reason so to speak.

Taking a step back to look at my farm, things are relatively neat and tidy. I am not embarrassed when someone motors up the driveway. The projects we are working on will eventually get cleaned up. The fences are keeping the herd contained. Things are not perfect, but they are OK.

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