Recently, Jim Massey, Editor of The Country Today, wrote to comment on my story about Dad that ran in their Father’s Day issue.
It sounds like our fathers were made from the same mold, both in age and how they looked at life. Jim’s father died on April 9, 2000 at 87 years of age, and Dad died on May 27, 2000 at the age of 86. It’s hard to believe they’ve been gone for nine years already. Where did the time go?
Jim’s comments got me thinking about Dad and what he would think about us living on a corner of the back forty of the farm. I also wonder what he would think about my writing a weekly column, especially in the Westby Times, his hometown paper? Uff da, he’d probably be worried every week that I was going to say something I should keep my pen and mouth silent about. It was bad enough that I was an artist. His philosophy was, if you didn’t do physical work, it wasn’t really work. Sometimes I think he was right, although it would be hard to convince me of that some days when I get home from work and I’m totally worn out, at least mentally. It makes it hard to write this column at times like that and the blank sheet of paper stays blank for a long time. But, as I said in the story about him, he had a tremendous influence on me, my work ethic, and how I look at life.
I thought of all that when I went for a walk in the back forty below our house over the weekend. I wanted to check the pond and see if there was any water left in it. It was dry as a bone.
It used to hold water year ‘round and we kept heifers in the forty all summer. That was their water supply. The pond was a natural depression in the ground. This spring the pond was full to overflowing. Now it’s empty. The water disappears quickly. I suspect it’s an old sinkhole where the underground layers have been eroding and the hole is getting closer to the surface. I walked down in the bottom of the pond, but was careful. I could imagine the ground giving out under my weight and finding myself at the bottom of a deep shaft. That would have given me an exciting story to write about, but it’s a little more excitement than I need!
Sinkholes, and disappearing water in them, makes me wonder what affect this could have on our underground water supply if they build that 3,200 cow CAFO near us, and liquid manure begins draining into it with the spring runoffs. The corporation that wants to build it, owns land bordering our forty. Any runoff would come right down our little valley and into the pond/sinkhole. I’m no scientist, but I can’t believe that would be good for the water supply for everyone around here. I don’t think my father would have been very happy about this possibility either. He was a family farmer and very conscious of how the land was used, not only on his farm, but neighboring farms.
I left the pond and continued down what used to be the cow lane. As I was walking along an old fencerow that Dad had put in, I took some photos of the rotting posts with the electric wire on the insulators. I thought of Dad with his large hands, digging the holes with a posthole digger that you turned by hand and lifted the dirt out of the hole. It was hard work. I remembered how he swung the heavy sledgehammer and slammed it down on top of the wood post until he had pounded it into the ground. I could almost see him as he stretched the wire from post to post and then bent down on one knee as he fastened the wire to the insulator. He would wind another piece of wire around it, often twisting it with his bare, calloused hands. There’s something special about wire fences when you think about all the work that went into building them.
That’s back when every family farm had fences. Today I see huge fields with the fences torn out so they can plant crops, unhindered by posts and wire. There are fewer pastures with cows grazing in them too. You needed fences to keep the cows out of the corn, tobacco, and the neighbor’s fields. When only crops are planted, fences aren’t needed. The corn isn’t going to cross the line and trample the soybeans. However, the weeds still invade any field they can. Fences can’t stop them.
Now people who don’t even live in the area, own many of those fields. I don’t call them family farms. Family farms, big or small, are owned and operated by local people who care about the land and how it might affect their neighbors. I think of all these things as I walk and observe the land around me. Fences, or I should say, the lack of fences, remind me that much has changed since the days when my father drove those posts and strung that wire. My father and Jim Massey’s father are now gone. Soon the fences they built will also be gone. Life keeps changing… and moving on.
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