Having grown up on the farm, I still have a farmer’s instincts.  A couple times I went out to help a farmer friend harvest.  It brought back fond memories.

I kept a few goats for some time and raised our children on goat’s milk.  Becky’s dad preferred cows.  And he knew horses.  We had some horses for awhile and he helped our boys learn how to train and ride them.

We always had chickens for eggs and meat.  One of my daughters liked sheep so we had sheep for awhile.  And we had a few ducks, and dogs, and lots of cats.  One of my daughters is deathly afraid of chickens.  One of our boys broke an arm when he fell off of the old gray mare.

One of our farmer friends taught me how to make wine out of chokecherries.  One time I had not skimmed the wine properly and it went sour.  This was in the fall of the year.  I had a buck goat staked out in the garden area, cleaning up the leavings.  I put the sour wine (approximately 2 gallons) in a bucket and placed it in the garden area within reach of the buck.

The buck stuck his nose in it up to his eyes and drank steady till he had drank every drop without stopping.  He lifted his head just enough to clear the bucket and stood there; spraddle-legged, not making a sound.  I took the empty bucket and went back in the house.

I came out two hours later and there he stood just as when I left him.  I don’t think he waggled an ear.  That was one happy buck.

I have seen a female goat drop a kid in a snow bank when it was below zero and the kid survived.  Goats are survivors.

Eventually the old gray mare we had died.  I did like any farmer would do.  I dug a hole in the garden and dropped her in it, feet up.  I hadn’t dug the hole deep enough.  Rigor mortis had set in, so I had to get down in the hole with her and bend her legs at the knee so we wouldn’t have four hooves sticking out of the ground in the middle of the garden.

You know what happens to old farmers?  They get old and bent and lame and shaky and weak.  There came the day my Dr. said I wasn’t to lift over forty pounds, so I had to get rid of my animals.  That wasn’t an easy job.

Being an electrician is much easier work.