Dead For A Good Cause

A few posts back I had made a statement about how we try to keep the farm as neat and tidy as possible by cleaning up and storing everything from hand tools to heavy equipment to recycling. I like to think we have a well kept place, but many times I am wrong.

A dear family friend is a fanatic about his tools. His shop is organized and clean, always. Not a clamp out of place, no piles of trash about, all shovels are cleaned after each use and hung on the wall in their designated spots. Thirty years ago when he married a hard working local girl, she remarked that the neighborhood would know the marriage was over if a dirty shovel was left sticking in the ground in front of the house.

I am not that #1. determined #2. fanatic #3. careful #4. willing to work that hard—pick a number, any number or all numbers. Oh I try, but if you see a dirty shovel or any other piece of equipment out in the front yard, it only means that there was a project that I was working on and it doesn’t mean that I was JUST working on it, it could have been sometime in the fairly recently.

Which brings me to the reason for this post.

I found one of my work shirts piled up in the barn the other day. I chided myself for not picking up and cleaning up as I worked around the area. I had to look back at my paperwork and to my astonishment, I found that I had taken off this  jacket/shirt to dry off a newborn calf that was all muddy. The little calf Respect was born 3/25, more than a month from the time I remembered to pick up after myself.

This very old, very tattered work shirt has finally been retired. It is not worth washing another time. But finding it just laying around for such a long time makes me think that maybe I’m not as tidy as I think or claim to be.