As I turned out of town tonight on my way home from work I met the first in a long line of campers headed out for the long weekend. There was a time when I would have felt anger and frustration at the sight. Why did everyone else get to take a weekend off? Farming ties us down for every holiday all summer long. In May we're still seeding, the 1st of July we're spraying, August it's either swathing or combining, and September it's harvest for sure. I would feel cheated for myself and the kids, but the farm always came first.
I guess I've mellowed with age because when I saw the campers tonight it was with no emotion at all - they were just the type of traffic that was going past. In fact, it took me a minute to remember that it was a holiday weekend. Those people heading off to campgrounds were welcome to them - I was quite content to keep the home fires burning instead. I wonder when my attitude changed?
We hope to get some seeding done in the next day or two but rain threatens again. It's not real late yet, but it sure would be nice to get the crop in the ground. My garden is nothing but swamp and I think I may just not plant one this year. I put the seeds into mud last year and it was a total disaster.
We've had a young city girl from Quebec staying with us this past week. She is a participant in the Katimavik program and is spending nine months discovering different parts of Canada. It's been a great learning experience for both of us - to view our country through another person's eyes. By the time her billet ends on Monday she will have bottle fed a calf, hunted for baby kittens in a hay stack, toasted marshmallows over a fire in our front yard, feasted on chicken wings at a local bar, and been treated to a day in the city to visit a Wallmart (because she hasn't seen one in SOOO long) to name a few of her experiences. So far she has been most pleased to have avoided woodticks - for which she is very thankful.
I'd love, someday, to go visit her in her home town. It would take more than a long weekend for that, but it would be more the kind of holiday I would want to take at this stage of my life. Maybe that's why the campers didn't bother me today - I have developed a different taste in holidays.
2 comments:
Jocelyn;
I have to say that a cross-country exchange like the one you described would go a long way in dispelling the misunderstandings and misconceptions that exist between people from the major cities and those from what we call the "heartland" here in the U.S.
We don't really have the "English-French" chasm here, rather our great division is "Northeast and West Coast vs. Rest of America." Even I have to admit to having sour feelings about folks from New York City and L.A. These feelings became solidified as I talked to and met folks from overseas and their ideas about America were based on things they had seen in New York or Boston or California...it was hard to explain to many of them that "America" wasn't really the monolith that they had seen, and the people weren't all like the ones they had met.
On the other hand, I don't think we understand New Yorkers or West Coast people very well either...and I don't think they understand us. Perhaps we can take a cue from Canada here, and ship a few of them out to Southern Ohio, or Kansas, or Nebraska, or Mississippi, or Salt Lick, Kentucky, and a few of us run off to New York and Boston and Los Angeles...it might go a long way in coming to understand one another.
Looks like my wife and I may be doing a bit of moving ourselves, soon. She'll soon be finished with her degree, and she wants to go home to Tennessee. Considering that I can't afford the taxes around here, and the cost of land is so high that we can barely afford to buy a home. I am rather looking forward to it...Tennessee has no income tax and property taxes there are a fraction of what they are here, we can actually afford to buy some land.
Nicole is an experienced horsewoman, and she wants to raise and show horses, following in the footsteps of several members of her family. I support her in it, and I'll help her wherever I can...but as much as I love animals, I know horses are a real chore...and since no ethical person around here would ever sell a horse for meat, if you want to make money on horses, you have to invest the money to breed and show them. Since Nicole wants to do this, I've also been thinking of something I could do...
I thought seriously of starting a meat rabbit operation once we get settled in. I've raised rabbits, but never for profit, so this would be a first (although an experienced first) for me. Farm-raised rabbit meat is rather popular around here, so I thought it might be a good way to supliment Nicole's equine activities while I work in town also...
Any other suggestions?
Dave: Canada deffinitely has the French/English split, but we are very much aware of the urban/rural and the east/west split as well. In both our countries the distances are so great and the population is so diverse that these things are inevitable. I agree that the best thing to do is to have programs like Katimavik in place so that we can visit other region and learn about our own country.
The best of luck in your return to the land. There is no life like it. I know nothing about raising rabbits, but there are endless possibilities out there - with a kinder climate than what we have here you could try anything from flowers for the florist market to raising goats for a grazing weed and brush management operation.
Jocelyn
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