Life Wisdom From the Farm

Spring is in the air folks!  Woot woot!  My favourite season has begun!  I don't know about you but when spring is in the air it makes me want to clean!  All of that warm weather got me on a tear to start my spring cleaning.  So "The Great Clean and Purge of 2024" has begun!

While I was cleaning I came across an old book of idioms.
A few years back our son Grady wrote and presented a 4-H speech on idioms.  I always think it's amazing how many idioms are related to agriculture but I guess it's not THAT surprising considering a short 50 years ago there were many more people involved in ag than there are today and 50 years before that just about everyone was!

Anyway, idioms often represent the hard won lessons of life. They are a colourful way of encapsulating a thought into a memorable phrase and passing it along to the next generation.  I thought I'd share some farm related ones here with you today ...

One of the most common idioms around is:
kicked the bucket...
Arguably this idiom has numerous claims on its origin,
but if you've ever spent any time hand-milking a cow
(I know - not the most common of experiences these days 😆) but if you had, you would know exactly how this one applies.  Oh sure, it's not nice to infer that dear Ole Bossy Cow should meet her end for such an act but you might feel a little less generous towards her if you've ever found yourself just finishing up milking a full pail of beautiful, creamy, frothy, white gold only to have Bossy choose exactly this moment to kick the bucket, stomp her foot in the bucket, or equally as bad, relieve herself without warning. 😖
But whaddya do?
Nothing!
Absolutely nothing you can do about it and there ain't
no use crying over spilt milk.
That would just be a further waste of time and energy and us farm folk are much too busy and practical to waste time worrying about what was
- just be done with it and move on -
life's too short and Lord willing there'll be more tomorrow.
When I first started milking I would keep two buckets handy and regularly dump the one into the other that I'd set just out of Bossy's leg's reach because it's never a good idea to ...
keep all your eggs in one basket. 
One of my earliest memories in life is walking back from the barn swinging a basket of eggs round and round in a sweeping windmill motion.  I couldn't have been much more than 3 or 4 at the time and I'm sure that wasn't my job for long because when you've got all your eggs in one basket and that basket goes flying ... well ... it might be a great lesson about the power of centrifugal force and the limiting effects of gravity but it's a sad day for breakfast. 😣 
Plus you'll be waiting ...
 til the cows come home
before those chickens will lay you any more golden butt nuggets of nutrition!
If you think carrying the eggs back from the barn was a bit above my pay grade at 4 years old then you'll never believe this ...
When my Dad was just an elementary kid it was his job to climb the 60 foot wind charger each day after school and scour the prairie looking for the free ranging cow herd.  Once he located them he would then climb back down the tower and ride his pony out and go bring them home before supper.  I'm sure that was often a 
hard row to hoe
for a young boy and there were probably times he had to dig down deep to find his courage and get those varmints on the move!  I bet he had to
man up
and
take the bull by the horns
so to speak in order to get the job done in just
two shakes of a lambs tail
'cause on the farm nothing waits and
daylight's burning
so you gotta
make hay while the sun shines.
'Cause if you're
messin' around
or you miss your opportunity it'll just cause untold amounts of frustration and loss in the hours and days ahead and before you know it you might have lost your whole ...
nest egg
just because you didn't have the gumption to do what needed doin' when ...
the time was ripe.
and if you haven't got what it takes to ...
bring home the bacon
then you'll just find you've been moved down the ...
pecking order
to give someone else a go at it.
...
Well there you go, now you've heard it all ...
straight from the horse's mouth,
and I promise you it ain't no...
cock & bull story.
If you think I'm full of baloney, you just ...
hold your horses
with the name callin' and come on over and
walk a mile in my shoes.

😆

Oh and don't forget ...
no need to go on a wild goose chase,
 just get your ducks in a row and
head on over to the 6S Online Store
where we've got everything but the kitchen sink and
you can cover all your bases and
go whole hog securing your
nutrient-dense, pasture raised provisions!