Remember records? Not like a record for underwater pogo jumps but records…music…needles. Skip, repeat, skip, repeat. I have a nice copy of Led Zeppelin 4 in my attic on LP. Somewhere a twenty-something is looking this up on Wikipedia. Next they will look up Led Zeppelin.
The repeating theme I know you have read before is: This farming stuff is hard.
It’s hard.
No, like, really hard.
No. I still don’t think you get it. I’ll say it in teenspeak. It is like literally hard to even. Literally.
Near as I can tell, May (dairy cow #2) is cycling right now so her udder may be a little…sensitive (all the lady readers say “Hey!”). I attached a cup, she kicked it off. I attached it again, she kicked it off again. I attached to the rear first, she kicked me (not intentionally but literally. Like even). Sigh.
And so it goes.
Dream that dream. Go ahead. It’s awesome when that calf is born or that chicken you didn’t know was missing returns with a hatch of chicks trailing behind her.
But there are not awesome days too. Days when you forget to put the milk away and there is no chicken feed in your warehouse and that project you’ve been working on gets delayed and your spouse gets sick and the house is a mess and the cow like literally kicks your butt. Try not to smile as the cow’s tail hits your face (happened). Don’t inhale a bug when you laugh your way through the pasture (happened). Be polite to the internet company when they say it will take 4 days to fix their service (but you’ll be billed for the whole month). Even if you didn’t have the cows things would go wrong. That’s life.
Fairy tales end with “…and they lived happily ever after.” I call BS. They moved into a cold, drafty old house, the roof leaked and they literally had some bad days and some good days ever after. But it required a lot of sacrifice and it turns out Prince Charming snores. OMG!
So. Pick your poison. Do you want the bad things in life to happen in suburbia or do you want to take them out in the stix? I think we are literally better off out here in the stix. But it’s literally hard to even. You know?
Chism Heritage Farm 
Like for real dude. You totally called it. Freaky that you like read my mind. Like. Totally having these kind of days, like. Yeah. Literally. 🙂
Well for heaven’s sake if you have LZ4 in the attic – run up your staircase and bring it down and let’s break it in again! (intentional play on their hit Staircase to Heaven) You had 5” of rain yesterday so cue up “When the Levvy Breaks” on the turntable. A song about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 that evacuated 13,000 people, destroyed homes and devastated the agricultural economy… yeah I missed that story line back in the day too. Bottom line is stuff happens no matter who you are, what you do or where you live and I would pick the sticks any day! Some days you step in it, some days you don’t – it’s an all inclusive pkg deal!
More food for thought with another song that also mentions the Mississippi River – check out a Country Boy Can Survive and you will likely conclude you have picked the right local to take your licks. Yup the song is a little redneck but the message of self sufficiency rings true lol!
The original by Hank Williams Jr. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96vEhzuDElU
Or same thing in a Kid Rock version, which may be a little less extreme, going from Led to country lol! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iFCACmUtEw
Another couple of inches the next day. The levees are 20-25 miles to the west and all downhill. Somebody drove the Chevy there and saw it was dry.
Even though you don’t get to eat the scenery, it’s still better to be outside of suburbia to get swatted by life. Thanks for the reminder.