Simple pleasures

Doing some field work today I was thinking about a story my mom used to tell me about chicken.

Growing up, we raised chickens and my mom would often cut the whole chickens apart on nice days and grill them. More often than not, she would end up with the “back” of the chicken as her piece. Not because there weren’t other pieces available but because it was what she chose.

I asked her once why she chose the hardest piece of chicken to eat. She told me it was the piece that was left when she was a kid and she’d grown to enjoy it over the years.

That is exactly how I feel about the field work I was doing today.

About a third of our farm is still rill irrigated and part of making rill irrigation work involves extending the ditches with an auger attached to a three-point on a tractor. We call it “headlanding” and it effectively digs the ditch longer so we don't have to do it by hand. Though, there is still a great deal of hand shoveling to do be done.
It is tedious work, even on a tractor. Every six feet or so, the auger gets set down in line with the ditch for a few seconds, then picked up, and on to the next ditch, times as many acres as we have in rill irrigation for the year.

It is the “chicken back” of field work. No one volunteers to do it.

Except me.

I find it peaceful. And it gives me a sense of being extremely useful doing something everyone else hates but that I have come to enjoy. I get off the tractor with aching knees from keeping pressure on the clutch and brakes; a tight back and shoulders from being twisted in the seat to see both the rear of the tractor and drive at the same time; and a full heart knowing I’m doing something to contribute that no one else wants to do.