Monday, May 20, 2024

My Grandfathers Farms


 My grandfather's grew up on farms, farms very much like the one above.  With pigs, and chickens, and ducks, and cows.  One grandfather left the farm as a teenager, to join the manufacturing economy, Ford was paying $5 a day, an 8 hour work day, and a 5 day work week.  The other grandfather stayed on the farm, until health forced him out of farming.  It is hard work (especially they way he did it.)

The grandfather that worked for Ford, returned to the farm in the 1950's, my parents followed, and that is how I came to grow up in a house 1 1/2 miles from the nearest paved road. 

I know how things grow, I can tell a cow from a pig by smell.  An estimated 18% of adults in the United States think that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.  Most can't tell a tomato plant, from a pepper plant.  Having grown both, I can, I know how they grow, how difficult and rewarding it can be.  We need to teach this, we need to expose ourselves to where food comes from. 

An old family story.  Great Uncle John's daughter was an executive with AT&T in Manhattan.  She loved living in the city, AT&T built a new office complex outside of the city, and she was transferred.  She move into her nice new home, and early the next morning she called her father in great distress, she held up the phone and asked her father, "what is that distressing sound???"  Cows, she could hear cows.  She nearly quit her job, because she could hear cows in the early morning silence.  

From April 28th, to about May 12th , I will be on a great adventure and on a digital detox, a couple of weeks without access to the internet. I have been told internet access may be available, but it will be very slow and expensive. So, I am going to try to take a couple of weeks off. I have not been without internet access in a couple of in couple of decades, I hope it goes well.  After that, until about May 30th, I will have intermittent internet access. 


I have scheduled posts to keep you all entertained.  These are not my usual posts, that is either a good thing, or a bad thing, depending on your point of view.  As I have opportunity, I will post updates.  I look forward to reading your comments when I have the opportunity. 


Regular service will resume about the 1st of June, with tales from the adventure.    

14 comments:

  1. Having grown up on a farm, age 4 to 15, I know about farm animals but I guess for a city person, they would not know very much. Chocolate milk from brown cows. It's like someone once said it as a joke and it went 'viral'. The worst farm noise comes from roosters.

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  2. Ha! The terrifying sounds of cows.

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  3. "Regular service will resume about the 1st of June" Okay. But it would have been wise to add a rider such as... "if our cruise ship does not sink". I like the look of that neat farm and that distinctive terracotta colour (American: color) that is also quite common on farms in southern Sweden.

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    1. The ship didn't sink, I am in Provence, certainly you trust British Airways to get us home?

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  4. "An estimated 18% of adults in the United States think that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. "

    And these people vote????? I can't. 😢

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    1. We gave up on intelligence tests for candidates and voters

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  5. Oh no, not COWS, those noisy bastards!

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    1. My first house in Orlando was near a cow pasture, for a year or so until another developer bought it.

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  6. I'd love to be able to hear cows in the morning. I'd even enjoy hearing a rooster.

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  7. There is a myth about a man named Antaeus, who could not be defeated so long as he was able to touch the ground from which he drew strength. He was defeated when someone lifted him off the earth and crushed him. It has been used as a metaphor what happens to people if they lose touch with the earth and all it entails.
    BTW the artwork on Mr. A being crushed is rather erotic.

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  8. I love Farm life, at least in theory. I once fantasized about working on a farm for the summer. I know its harder work than I've ever done, but I really would have liked to have experienced it, at least for a little while.

    Sassybear
    https://idleeyesandadormy.com/

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