first post after a long pause

Dear reader, my apologies if I have left you sitting these past weeks wondering when, pray tell, you would get to read a new post from your favourite blogger.

Take heart, I have returned.

The fact of the matter is that now that my summer holiday has begun my free time has dwindled. Considerably dwindled. This is possibly the first moment I have spent not driving, driving tractor, bagpiping, fencing, moving cattle, branding, feeding cattle, etc. since school let out several weeks ago. Free time, for the time being, has exited my vocabulary.

Which isn't to say that I've not enjoyed myself. I'm finally getting back into shape; I've so far had a successful summer bagpiping; I've nearly perfected the rain dance (I think I'm close - clouds are building to the west and I at least know it wasn't a cataclysmic-fire-dance).

This is the pattern that has marked my summers since I was old enough to work on the farm – a pattern that has marked life for farmers over generations.

I'll admit, for a long time I hated it. In high school it was frustrating to be tied to a hay field while my non-farming friends spent much of their summer working mindless jobs with free evenings. In college it drove me batty, working myself to exhaustion while some of my friends spent their day lying on picnic tables, tanning, at what were amusingly called 'jobs'.

I think that I can say I'm a little older and wiser now. Hindsight shows I was pretty lucky to spend my days working a job with real responsibility attached. I was fortunate to be doing work that left me with a tangible outcome I could point to and feel pride in.

“Stu,” you say, “we get the whole 'lessons learned' thing, but would you please get to the point?”

Ah, dear reader, patience. I will come to the point presently.

I wax nostalgic about the farm work of years past because the normal pattern has been disrupted.

Whereas July and August normally mean, for me at least, making hay and eating cherries, continuing drought conditions mean hay-making has been canceled.

Eating cherries doesn't hold the same pleasure without the smell of hay.

I thus feel lost this summer. My purpose has been disrupted. I know not my place in the world.

So I keep myself busy by whatever means are available.

Today a dug a hole. Big hole, too. About eight by twenty feet. Ostensibly it will hold the foundation for my chicken house. I'll believe it when it happens.

Soon I'll go check the cattle.

Not that I think anything has gone wrong with them. Only that I need something to make me feel useful.

So, my friend, I take my leave. If you need me, I'll be out in the pasture.

And if you have hay to make, I'm your man.