Back to the land

Today, a snowstorm. Yesterday, so sunny I wanted to take my shirt off while i sat on the deck having a cigarette and listening to the cows bellow.

The days are passing slow and disappearing quickly so that suddenly after 3 weeks of nothing but satellite detective programs and magazines proselytizing the inner peace that comes from organizing your cupboards properly, I am bored, want something to do but feel sunk too deep in the fluffy cushions to get started.

My main accomplishments so far have been washing the walls so the painters could come, and washing fly shit off the windows so the neighbours can come for the wedding shower. Even better, my brother has been letting me take turns at being a farmer. The day after Thanksgiving, he let my cousin and I seal the gap around the bottom of the new granary with tar. Then last week we went out to fix fences together. The barbed wire is coiled around a giant spool and, propped against a couple of bits of wood, balances on the edges of the truck box. When you find a rotten or broken bit of wire, you make a loop in it and then loop the new bit through like links in a chain. Then take a staple and nail the bit of wire to the fence.

Yesterday i got to help my brother fix the combine. I undid all the bolts on the front bit with teeth that cuts up the straw and then helped put the belt back on the pulley. I had to stand on a giant spool to be tall enough to see the bolts, but i still remembered the age-old rule, 'tighty-righty, lefty-loosey'. I broke my nail tightening a bolt and said, 'Goddamn,' just like a real farmer.

Chad, the hunter, came by while we were fixing it to ask permission to go hunting on my brother's land. He wore a ballcap, hockey hair and a company jacket. Said he might be out the first few days of November in his company truck.

'Oh, the same company my friend works at,' I said. He only grunted at me, not very interested in who my friend might be or in making conversation. I'm clearly only a girl without the authority to grant hunting permission. After awhile Chad, the hunter, went away.

We finished tightening all the bolts that were going to stay and putting all the extras in the arm of the tractor for next year, hopefully when he'll remember which ones went where. I suggested painting different coloured dots on the bolts and the matching holes with nail polish so you could match them up better. My brother said that was a really good idea, but really not possible, because other farmers or mechanics might see it.