Fire season

[davefreer]

In the inverse of Australia, we're coming up to fire season. Brakes are being readied. People are nervously burning off trash. We cleared and burned off one of our problem areas yesterday. Hot, smoky, lung-burning, eye-watering hard work. We had a visitor today who said to me how lovely the unworried lazy life in the country was. I look back in

Comments

[brownkitty]

Someone who says "unworried lazy country life" has never lived in the country.

[davefreer]

true, but they dream of doing so. And it does have its positives. I don't spend 2 hours a day commuting like a fair number of people. A traffic jam is three cars (inevitably stopped in the middle of the road to talk to each other.)

[brownkitty]

Or to help retrieve wandering livestock.

[etumukutenyak]

"how lovely the unworried lazy life in the country was"

*dies from overdose of bitter and sardonic laughter*

Let's not tell them about the predators in the bush, shall we? It'll be our little secret.

One of the saddest of James Herriot's stories was the one about Frank Metcalfe, who wanted nothing more than to have a dairy farm of his own. The recipe for disaster starts with "take some naivete, add in a mess of bad luck, stir for 9 months..."

[davefreer]

dairy has always struck me as a recipe for even worse hours than I keep. Perpetually on the list of desired professions for migration to New Zealand "Dairy manager". (sarcasm mode on) I wonder why?

[davefreer]

grin. My walk to fetch milk involves passing the silage pit, and something had died in a gully along the way. The latter was truly unbreathable, instead of just revolting. We had some visitors who thought they'd take a walk for the lovely fresh air... But in reality, barnyard smells and all, the air is relatively unpolluted and fresh. Sometimes fresh from the cattle kraal but fresh. In NY for example I got the feeling that every breath had very recently been shared by a previous set of lungs.

[brownkitty]

Ah yes, the scent of a freshly-manured garden... canning pickles... realizing that wild animals REALLY DON'T use either toilets or signs to mark their territory...

[dr_pretentious]

My father's family used to be lumberjacks and blacksmiths in the Adirondack mountains, and left all that to be schoolteachers the second higher education opened up in America. The branches of the family that got out are always dreaming of going back, and the branches that stayed are frantic to escape. I don't know if the Adirondacks qualify as bush, but bears and lynxes are in charge all winter.

[davefreer]

Grin. I'm not even too sure where Adirondack is, but generally mountain rural life is very beautiful, but you can't eat beauty. My favorite story is of the a survey done of Lesotho peasant farmers - who live in a place of harsh stark breathtaking mountain splendor, where the ground is only ever flat if you make it so. The enviromnetalists asked how the mountains could be improved (thinking of trails, huts, viewsites etc.) The answer was "make them flatter." Look the truth is whaen people say they want to go and live in the country what they actually mean is we want to be priveledged rich landowners and enjoy all the positive side of it (while someone else does the work you don't want to do) without the unremitting hard labour, uncertainty and often poverty that really surrounds most of those who work the land. If, like me, you can earn the bulk of your income elsewhere, or you are one ofthe wealthy landowners with managers or sharecroppers doing most of the real work, it's pretty good most of the time. As a writer, it works for me.

[dr_pretentious]

Eh, the bears hibernate from about late November until thereabouts of late Feb/early March.

::blushingly submits this gaffe as evidence of the overarching point about the ignorance of non-rural people::

[eneit]

for all I complain about the problems involved in living away from town, I know I'd be further still, if I had a chance, and I already know all the hardships involved. *g* Not much romance in growing up with it, but lots of respect for the life.

[davefreer]

Me too. I think everyone should wish that! They don't of course - which is a good thing for the crowding, I suppose. There are many reasons I love living in a rural area - from the fact that you know all your neighbours - and fire-fight and help out together, to the fact that the air(despite the smells, sometimes) isn't full of car exhausts fumes, and the water is cold and mineral, but doesn't have to be chlorinated, and most of the time it really is quiet (there are noises - but not sirens or hooting). The nights are dark and you can see the stars.

There are many reasons to love the place I live, but they're often not the reasons people who live in a city might think of. It's not unworried or lazy...

[eneit]

a mate of mine grew up on a dairy farm in the mountains, he said if one more city folk said to him about how charming the farm looked in winter, he was going to drag them out into the snow at 4am to start milking, and hosing down the milking stalls afterwards. *g*

No, definitely not unworried or lazy. *g*