Out Behind The BarnAs I listen to pandemic program managers spouting COVID-19 bromides and watch their efforts to rush people into getting vaccinated, I’m transported back to the little mixed farm in Alberta, Canada, where I grew up. I saw the COVID-19 playbook in action over sixty years ago in barns and fields, but particularly the corrals, out behind the barn.
In retrospect, it was a proverbial subsistence farm. Dad milked a small herd of dairy cows and sold raw milk in eight-gallon cans to the Dairy Pool. That bought groceries. He raised hogs to market size, generating farm revenue. The three-hundred twenty acres of fields were used to grow hay for cattle feed, barley to be ground into pig “chop†and oats to be rolled (crushed) for dairy cows. Hens laid eggs before graduating to a featured spot on the dinner table.
It took me a lot of years to realize that ours was indeed a “subsistence†farm, and more years to openly accept it. The term “subsistence farm†has a whiff of back-woodsiness to it. Now late in life, I’m proud of the heritage received in that time and place. I wouldn’t trade the priceless life principles I was learned there for a graduate program in the toniest university or college, nor would I trade the gift of having a father with work-thickened fingers, a generous heart, and wisdom far, far beyond his schooling. I’m a fortunate man.
Each fall we brought the cows — thirty-five or so — and their calves from the summer pasture, to the “home place: where they would be fed and wintered.
excerpt, rest at link above
