Helping One Another
Folks that live in the country are usually busy. No matter how busy we are we always seem to have time to converse with a neighbor or to help a neighbor in need.
I’ve done a good share of barn raising, hay hauling and taking care of others' live stock while they were out of town. I’ve had the same sort of things done for me when I needed a hand. I don’t like asking for help, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Sometimes my wife and I go out of town and we can’t take the horses and chickens with us. We have to ask for help. When we have a horse die, we don’t have a back hoe, so we have to ask for help. When we have a couple acres that need to be tilled we ask for help.
The arrangements are always reciprocated with in kind services, copious gifts, or some sort of trade. It’s an underground economy and things keep going around and around. In the end the outcome is that we become part of a stronger, closer community of people who have walked in the shoes of their neighbors. Actually we become more than neighbors, we become family.
posted by The Guy Who Writes This at 4:00 AM
5 Comments:
My sister married a rancher back in '69. It is awesome to see how everyone takes care of each other. No explainations are needed. If someone needs help, the rest of the community rallies around them. It restores my soul.
Branding day is a big event to call out for all hands.
It's just something you don't see in the city very often.
Then you have some rich asshole who buys a chunk of former farm land, throws up a multi-million dollar house, surrounds it with 8 ft fencing and never speaks to a single neighbor.
I visited an elderly friend recently who is now almost completely surrounded by these fenced in highly landscaped giganto homes. He has raised, cattle, goats and chickens as well as farmed 20 acres of mixed vegetables since 1956. Now his new neighbors are filing complaints with the county about the smell of his cow pasture, the dust cloud when he plows, the traffic when people come to buy his produce. There's nothing the county can or will do. I asked him what he was going to do about the complaining neighbors. He pointed to one house and said, "See that place, he's the one causing the problem. Him and his kid who lives just next door. I checked with the county man, got my permits and my sons coming out in September to help. I'm buildin' a hog barn exactly 2oft off the property line."
Never mess with an old farmer, they fight dirty.
Not to mention other annoyances city folks bring to the country such as barking dogs and dirt bikes. Hope they are enjoying my roosters at 4:30 every morning.
I'm so thankful that our winters scare off most city types. The economy here is such that in all but a small part of the state in the south & along the coast the 'underground economy' is vital. Unspoken 'pacts' are formed whereby goods and services are exchanged more often than currency, which is very scarce here. The nice thing is the sense of being a 'community' in which all persons are valued.
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