The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
Geese are trumpeting their retreat as the cold northwest winds from Canada push them southward. We're digging through drawers looking for stocking hats to keep the winds from whistling through our ears. I've even had to pull up the totes of farm coats from the basement storage. I wonder if there is one more year left in Mark's coat? It is a coat that is well conditioned. The pocket corners are packed with last year's straw chafe and feed. The ends of the sleeves are sealed with dried milk. The zipper doesn't work, but the snaps will still close up the front. I'm afraid if I wash it, the coat will fall apart. Despite its humble appearance it doeas a great job of keeping the cold winds at bay. Maybe Mark will get at least half a season of wear out of it and then he can start to break in a new farm coat. We have many coats waiting to be put to work, but they're just "too good" to wear in the barn. Give them a couple of days of work and you'll soon forget they were ever "too good" to wear.
The cold winds, falling temperatures and shorter days mean only one thing. We are running on borrowed time. The clock is ticking to the close of another season. There are only so many minutes left until the ground freezes and the field work comes to a grinding halt. There will be no extra five minutes to get one more job done.
The change in weather means we can close out another year in the barn. The flies are moving at an arthritic pace and the spiders have stopped spinning their webs. It is now cold enough to wash the barn.
We wash the cow barn every fall just before the winter weather arrives. When I first helped Mark's family wash the barn, I ended up with kinks in my neck and a nasty cold that both lasted two weeks. We would use the garden hose to spray cold water on the ceiling and walls. Once the water softened up the dirt and fly specks, we started scrubbing with long handle brushes. The walls were easy. The white tin ceiling was torture. Freezing water trickled past our sleeves and down our arms to our arm pits. It was a type of self-induced water boarding.
Washing the barn was a full day job. We would start as soon as we could kick the cows out the door in the morning and finish just in time to start the evening feeding and milking chores. It was a long, cold, wet day that everyone dreaded but still did because it had to be done. The reward of our hard work was a shiny white barn for at least one evening.
A few years later, we started hiring a guy to power wash the barn with heated water. What a difference. We still scrub the stubborn spots and scrape down the walks, but we have time to eat lunch and clean up before we have to start chores for the evening. It works great when we have enough hands around to help. Our problem now is finding a weekend when the boys can come home to help. It's a good thing the Gopher football team is not bowl bound this year.
As the to-do-list grows by leaps and bounds, time is running out to finish the year's projects. This is the time of year when all jobs will take only "five minutes". Linda and I were talking the other day around her kitchen table about famous five minute jobs. We both laughed at the image of our farmer's sticking their heads in the door and saying that familiar line…."can you help me? It'll only take five minutes." We have found very few jobs that take only five minutes. As we head out the door to help, we turn off the stove or turn down the oven temperature because we have burnt enough potatoes and cakes over the years to take precautions for a job that may take a bit more than five minutes. I think five minutes in farmer's time equals 20 minutes in real time.
Of course I'm just as guilty. I under estimate how long it will take to get a job done too. It may seem like it should take only five minutes, yet my version of five minutes and the actual time vary widely. The reason we think it should only take five minutes is because we only have five minutes to mark one more job off of the to-do-list before we have to head in the house to get ready for church or an appointment in town. By then, we're already ten minutes late.
Speaking of which, my five minute job to finish this article has already put me 30 minutes late for chores. Time keeps marching on.
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As their four children pursue dairy careers off the family farm, Natalie and Mark are starting a new adventure of milking registered Holsteins just because they like good cows on their farm north of Rice, Minnesota.
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