LJ Idol Season 8, Week 12, Some Assembly Required
I had heard talk of barn raisings, in the old days, where if someone’s barn burned to the ground everyone in the community would help them build a new one. The same thing applied to new families in town when they needed a barn or a home. It sounded so nice that a group of people would lend a hand like that. Imagine my surprise when, upon renting a small farm in Colorado, at our first event of outdoor activity, which was to put up a fence for my guide dog, the neighbors came to help. My mom and I were banging tee posts into the ground when they just showed up, started a conversation, and picked up the post hole tool. It was my first introduction to the small town of Wellington, Colorado.
While living on the farm there were many things needing assembly from time to time. There was always fence to mend, because you had to keep everything patched up to keep the livestock in. There was the milking stand my mother and I built for the goats. We never did finish the front half so ours consisted only of a platform where the goat stood, her head tied to the wall by her collar, instead of a proper stanchion which would have held her head in place. A stanchion was beyond our carpentry skills, but the version we made worked if you could milk fast, and I could. You needed to finish before the goat got bored, walked forward, threw her grain feeder on the ground, and started to dance back and forth, thus risking a foot in the milk pail. I could milk any of them dry in five minutes or less though, so I was fine with the contraption we had rigged up. Sometime later someone was giving away a proper milking stanchion, which we did take advantage of, but I kept the old one, and still used it, bringing in two of our girls to be milked at once. It really saved on time.
Probably our biggest assembly project was the day we set out to wall in the shed in the main pasture. We wanted the goats to have a warmer, drier, sleeping area. Of course we were poor so our wood supply consisted of scrap wood, and maybe even an old door if my memory is not mistaken. I was there to hold things in place while my mother nailed. We worked on that wall for quite a while. Every now and then I’d tell my mother that I didn’t think the planned execution was going to work. She assured me that everything would be fine. After we were good and sweaty, and I had consumed most of a travel mug of Gatorade, she pronounced that it was time to let go and see how the new wall faired.
I let go and stepped back and the wall fell over.
My mother was surprised. I was not. Who ever thought a blind person never exposed to construction in her life, would be any good at it? With a few alterations we got the wall to stay in place, and it lasted from that time forward.
I miss living on the farm. It was full of lessons and challenges you just didn’t get other places. I am sometimes heard to say that I grew up on a farm. People are later confused to know that in my childhood years I lived in the city, and kept my animals either in the backyard or at a community barn. It wasn’t until I moved away to college that I lived on a farm. Going to college meant moving across the country and taking six goats with me. I brought my mother along too, and we spent many happy years there. I think I say that I grew up on the farm, because those really were my growing up years. I learned what it was like to be an adult, to work hard in school and on the farm, to take responsibility, to bring animals into the world, and to watch them leave it. I had my hands in the soil every year working a huge garden. I was growing food, meat, milk, eggs, and vegetables, and it felt liberating. I guess in some respects I grew up late, and in others I was wise beyond my years, but the farm was my growing place more than anywhere else I lived.
So whether it’s building fences, or building a foundation for the future, there’s a whole lot of assembly required. It’s not anything easy, like a new gadget that comes with a construction manual. This is the kind of work where you use a little elbow grease, a clever mind, and a lot of heart to get the result you need. At the end of the day you can be proud that you did something good. It’s the kind of building where you take things one day at a time, a little patch up here, some new construction there. You feel yourself grow, built up just like the farm is, and you know you’re headed in the right direction.
While living on the farm there were many things needing assembly from time to time. There was always fence to mend, because you had to keep everything patched up to keep the livestock in. There was the milking stand my mother and I built for the goats. We never did finish the front half so ours consisted only of a platform where the goat stood, her head tied to the wall by her collar, instead of a proper stanchion which would have held her head in place. A stanchion was beyond our carpentry skills, but the version we made worked if you could milk fast, and I could. You needed to finish before the goat got bored, walked forward, threw her grain feeder on the ground, and started to dance back and forth, thus risking a foot in the milk pail. I could milk any of them dry in five minutes or less though, so I was fine with the contraption we had rigged up. Sometime later someone was giving away a proper milking stanchion, which we did take advantage of, but I kept the old one, and still used it, bringing in two of our girls to be milked at once. It really saved on time.
Probably our biggest assembly project was the day we set out to wall in the shed in the main pasture. We wanted the goats to have a warmer, drier, sleeping area. Of course we were poor so our wood supply consisted of scrap wood, and maybe even an old door if my memory is not mistaken. I was there to hold things in place while my mother nailed. We worked on that wall for quite a while. Every now and then I’d tell my mother that I didn’t think the planned execution was going to work. She assured me that everything would be fine. After we were good and sweaty, and I had consumed most of a travel mug of Gatorade, she pronounced that it was time to let go and see how the new wall faired.
I let go and stepped back and the wall fell over.
My mother was surprised. I was not. Who ever thought a blind person never exposed to construction in her life, would be any good at it? With a few alterations we got the wall to stay in place, and it lasted from that time forward.
I miss living on the farm. It was full of lessons and challenges you just didn’t get other places. I am sometimes heard to say that I grew up on a farm. People are later confused to know that in my childhood years I lived in the city, and kept my animals either in the backyard or at a community barn. It wasn’t until I moved away to college that I lived on a farm. Going to college meant moving across the country and taking six goats with me. I brought my mother along too, and we spent many happy years there. I think I say that I grew up on the farm, because those really were my growing up years. I learned what it was like to be an adult, to work hard in school and on the farm, to take responsibility, to bring animals into the world, and to watch them leave it. I had my hands in the soil every year working a huge garden. I was growing food, meat, milk, eggs, and vegetables, and it felt liberating. I guess in some respects I grew up late, and in others I was wise beyond my years, but the farm was my growing place more than anywhere else I lived.
So whether it’s building fences, or building a foundation for the future, there’s a whole lot of assembly required. It’s not anything easy, like a new gadget that comes with a construction manual. This is the kind of work where you use a little elbow grease, a clever mind, and a lot of heart to get the result you need. At the end of the day you can be proud that you did something good. It’s the kind of building where you take things one day at a time, a little patch up here, some new construction there. You feel yourself grow, built up just like the farm is, and you know you’re headed in the right direction.