Who We Are

I know I've talked the ag economy crisis to death, but I'm going to do it again because I'm seriously annoyed.

If I see one more Facebook comment or hear one more snide remark to the tune of "farming is just a job, there are more jobs," I am going to stomp somebody stupid.  Because it is NOT just a job.

Farming isn't what we do, it is who we are.

Farmers can't clock out like people with "real" jobs can.  It's a 24/7 commitment.  Because guess what?  When there is a sick animal, farmers get up every hour overnight to give them medicine.  When everyone else is at the Memorial Day picnic, farmers are in the fields.  Farmers live where they work, there is no "leave work at work" for them.  But they will keep doing it against all odds, in the midst of low prices, and in the face of apathy from the rest of the country. 

As someone who grew up on a farm and now has a farm of her own, I can tell you that the farm gets any extra money before we do.  The feed bill is paid before the grocery bill.  The livestock bedding is bought before new clothes are bought.  Every cent that is for the farm is viewed as an investment, while every cent that is spent on family living is viewed as luxury.  It's how we think. 

Why?

Because farming isn't just a job.  It's a way of life.  Farming is a generational profession.  Grandfathers hand it over to fathers who hand it over to sons and daughters.  Sons and daughters gladly take the reins from fathers because they believe that the good things about farming outweigh the hard things about farming.

I am one of those who grew up on a farm.  Was it hard work?  Absolutely!  Funny thing is, I remember more of the fun times than the work.  Like water fights in the barn during a hot summer night milking.  Like long Sunday drives to check on crops and then a stop for ice cream.  Like having root beer floats at night after baling straw all day.

I remember when I was a kid, the biggest treat was getting to go with Dad when he went to run errands in Plainview because it meant that we would get a soda pop or other treat before we went home.

The old saying "you can take the boy out of the country but you can't take the country out of the boy" is absolutely true.  Even if farmers move on to a different career, they take that work ethic with them.  They are the first ones on the job and the last ones to leave.  They will likely work more than one job because they have to be busy all the time; they don't know how to be any other way.

I remember the first night after we sold our milk cows and Captain didn't have to do chores.  "Chore time" rolled around, and all he did was pace from one end of the kitchen to the other end.  He didn't know what to do with spare time because he'd never had it before. 

Can farmers do other things?  Definitely, because they have to be a little bit of everything in their operations.  They are mechanics, vets, bookkeepers, truck drivers, plumbers, and electricians. 

More than anything else, however, they are role models for the next generation.  When those sons and daughters see their moms and dads give blood, sweat, and tears to keep their farm solvent it shows what hard work, dedication, faith, and family will get you. 

If a brilliant painter lost the use of his arms for whatever reason, the public would swell with sympathy for him.  If an incomparable composer couldn't make music any more, the world would mourn for him.  Hell, when a damn football player blows out a knee, people cry and feel bad for them.

So why is it so few people seem to care that the men and women who are feeding them are in grave danger of losing not only their livelihood but their very identities?  Someone tell me why?

But don't tell me "it's just a job." 

Images used:
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Thirty Years of Wedded Bliss

We had originally planned to go to Two Harbors for our 30th anniversary, but several intervening circumstances derailed that idea, so we went with Plan B.  A camper cabin at Whitewater State Park for a night!  Not quite the same but still a celebration in an area that we love and appreciate.  

Monday was just as hot and ugly humid as the weekend had been so by the time we got everything rounded up, organized, packed and loaded, we were both sweaty.  Air conditioned car...here we come.  

After a couple of stops in Rochester to pick up some grocery items that we needed, we headed southeast.  We saw some farmers already combining soybeans on the way down!  It's actually really early for that to be happening.   

We got to the park office and got our cabin key.  These are brand spanking new cabins in the newest addition to the park on the east side of the highway.  That makes five total in Whitewater.  Ours was the first one in the group of four new ones.

We had some steps to go up to the cabin but nothing strenuous.  We unloaded the coolers and other totes as well as the firewood before heading to Altura to find cell service so Captain could call his bother with some last minute feeding instructions for a sick calf.  During that phone call, his brother told him two severe wind storms had moved through our neighborhood but everything looked undamaged.  

Right about then the wind came up, it started to thunder and lightning, and the rain came down sideways in sheets.  Captain hung up with his brother, and we high-tailed it back to the cabin.  

Once we got parked, we dashed for the cabin.  Unfortunately for me, my shoes didn't gain traction on the wet wooden deck, and I proceeded to do my impersonation of a pinball and went careening across the floor before slamming into the door with my shoulder.  This caused my coffee travel mug to become dislodged from my hand and go flying back OUT the door where it almost hit Captain.  He was quite concerned that I had smacked my head, but mostly I just bruised my pride.  And my butt.  

We decided to unpack and just sit still for a bit to recover from all that high drama.  About then we decided we should probably get the little charcoal grill going since the rain had let up to just an annoying drizzle.  

Remember how I said we unloaded the firewood on our first stop at the cabin?  Yeah...that was outside so it was wet.  Captain did find a couple of dry sticks in the middle of the bundle and got a fire going with the use of copious amounts of charcoal starter fluid.  

Right about then, it started raining again.  And it rained, and rained, and rained.  Now it was full dark out, wet, and we had no way to cook supper because the DNR frowns upon charcoal grills inside the cabins.  

We could have filled up on popcorn, chips, and salsa.  Instead we opted to drive into St. Charles and get Subway sandwiches to bring back to the cabin.  When we got up to walk out to the car, I realized that my pinball impersonation had done more damage than I had originally thought.  I could walk, but I looked like a constipated penguin.  I had to take the steps one at a time rather than in alternating fashion.  Yeesh!

When we got to Subway, I realized that even though I remembered to pack the camp chairs this time, I forgot something more important.  My debit card!  Luckily Captain had some cash in his wallet, or we would have had to resort to the popcorn and chips option.  

We got back to the park and into the cabin for supper and to read the newspaper Captain picked up for reading material.  There is NO cell service in the Whitewater Valley, so we couldn't even check Facebook.  I guess maybe that's the point of a vacation...getting away from it all...right?  

Captain decided he needed a shower, so off he went.  I stayed behind to lounge, eat popcorn, and have an adult beverage.  First I had to use the outhouse.  Conveniently there was a path from our cabin to the outhouse 100 feet away.  Captain had left the lantern with me, so I took that and started down the path in the dusk.  

Halfway between the cabin and the outhouse, a large toad decided to leap from point A to point B.  The sudden movement startled me so I hippity-skipped a little bit right into his flight path so he bonked into my shin scaring the living crap out of both of us.  

Now I'm hopping on one foot trying to not step on the poor little guy.  I mean, come on, he's just doing his toad thing and here comes this behemoth of a woman lurching into his travel plans!

With all the hopping, I get a little bit off the path and stepped into a puddle.  Now I have toad poop on my leg and cold water and mud on my foot.  And I still have to pee!  I lurched back onto the path and over to the outhouse.  Never have I been so happy to step into a dark, semi-clean, kind of stinky vault toilet as I was then!

I beat Captain back to the cabin and indulged in a long swallow of adult beverage to calm my nerves.  By now it had quit raining again, so when Captain returned we decided we would try the fire thing again.  

Despite our best efforts with tenting the wood over paper/cardboard and using more lighter fluid than was probably wise, we ran out of lighter fluid and still didn't have a fire.  Dang.  

Having had enough alcohol now that the snark was coming out, I asked if he wanted to try that stupid idea about starting a fire with potato chips.  He said to bring them out and he would try it.  Ten minutes later, I had to admit he was smarter than me because there was a lovely fire going in the fire ring.  Whoda thunk it?!  

We got over an hour of time by the fire and under the stars.  We even danced a little in the moonlight.  Not very well; we are both terrible dancers.  But we tried!

We both decided that sleeping through a rainstorm in a camper cabin was FAR preferable to sleeping in the same conditions in a tent.  With the windows cracked slightly to let in a fresh breeze and the sound of pattering rain, it was great sleeping weather!

The next thing I knew it was 4:30 and Captain was standing looking out the porch screen door, and he announced that it was hailing.  Okay, that's a good reason to go back to sleep!  When I woke up again, it was light out and Captain was making coffee in a light drizzle.  

It was raining too hard to cook bacon and eggs on the camp stove, and popcorn and chips were just a distant memory, so we headed toward the river.  We had a nice "Sunday drive" kind of thing through Altura, Rollingstone, Minnesota City, and into Winona where we found a McDonalds that wasn't busy.  

Fueled up ourselves and then the car before heading back to the cabin.  We drove down through the old campground and were surprised at the number of occupied sites.  

We returned to the cabin and packed everything up, followed the cleaning instructions on the wall, and locked up.  We took the key back to the park office and spent some time looking around the visitor center before hitting the road again.  

We spent some time exploring the picnic and beach area of Whitewater and the base of the steps that go to Chimney Rock and/or Inspiration Point.  We were getting soaked, but at this point we both decided we weren't so sweet we'd melt in the rain, and since we came to explore the park, that's what we were going to do!

We detoured toward Plainview and Carley State Park on the way home then looped back to Rochester to pick up some medicine at Target.  By then we were ready to be home, so off we went.  

Somehow it seems like there is more stuff to unload upon return than to load when heading out.  Why is that??  No matter; we got it all into the house and then collapsed in our chairs.   

It was a whirlwind trip and completely not what we had planned, but we enjoyed our time away anyway because we were together.  Together still after 30 years.  

Go us!!

Images used:
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Awaken the Dragon

One of the things that I wanted to do after going through treatment for breast cancer was to join Making Waves, the dragon boat team for Join The Journey in Rochester, which I did in May.  I have had a lot of fun at the weekly practices all summer and have met some amazing women.

This past weekend, some of us traveled to Dubuque, Iowa, for the 31st annual Dubuque Dragon Boat Festival.  

Saturday morning we were up bright and early so we could be at the festival park by 7:30 for the opening ceremonies.  This festival is normally held in Miller Park along the Mississippi River in Dubuque but due to recent flooding, the venue was moved to A. Y. McDonald Park along the Peosta Channel where the water was a little calmer.  

So let me back up a little bit and give you some history about the Dubuque Dragon Boat Festival.  It started in 1988 and has grown steadily since then.  Each year for the past six years, there have been 30-plus dragon boat teams participating including teams from Canada and Germany!  Breast cancer survivor teams are only part of it. There are youth teams, corporate teams, and community teams as well.  

Each team has a camp site where they set up canopies and tables, chairs, etc., so they can watch the races in comfort.  Each campsite decorates according to the overall theme of the festival.  This year's theme was "Holidays," and our team chose National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day as our holiday.  Let's just say we were really popular with all the free cookies we had!  There are prizes given for the best campsite decorations, best team spirit, and best T-shirt designs voted on by the team captains.  

The boats used in the competition are traditional Taiwan style boats made of wood.  I'm not sure what kind of wood it is, but it's a heavy boat.  It is divided into 18 squares--9 rows of 2--for the paddlers, one square for the stern, one square for the drummer, and a special elevated seat in the head of the dragon for the flag catcher.  

The boats are loaded at a dock and then paddled to the starting line in the middle of the river.  It takes teamwork from the paddlers and finesse from the stern to get jockeyed into the correct position.  Commands like "right side pull water" or "three strokes reverse" are what you hear in the boat.  

Once the boats are in position, the starter yells "Sterns, ready?"  After an affirmative reply, he yells, "Paddlers ready?" At this point, all paddlers lean forward at the waist with their paddles in the water waiting for the air horn that signals "go" to sound.  Once it does, it is basically one paddle stroke per second or a little more to race 250 to 350 yards to the finish line.

At the finish line, there is a buoy for each lane, and each buoy has a flag.  The person sitting in the special seat in the head of the dragon waits until the last possible second and then jumps up, turns around and lies flat on the top of the dragon head with feet anchored around the horns and arms outstretch to grab the flag as the boat passes.  It is the most intense 60-ish seconds I've ever experienced!  

Each race consists of two heats, one on the inside track and one on the outside track.  After the first heat, the teams paddle their boats back to the starting line, repeat the "jockey into position" maneuvers, and complete the second race.  

This year in Dubuque, there were 36 teams competing.  Saturday's races were the time trials, and there were some fairly significant lopsided races.  On the other hand, Sunday's races were bracketed with more evenly-qualified teams competing so winners were sometimes determined by time differences of hundredths of a second.  

Sunday also included the pink flower ceremony which honors breast cancer survivors.  In Dubuque this year, there were only two teams whereas normally there are four to six teams.  However, that did not diminish the impact and emotion of the survivor's ceremony as seen in this video.  

Our team got second place, and it doesn't matter that there were only two teams.  We raced our best and even improved our total time from Saturday to Sunday by almost 10 seconds.  That's HUGE, considering that we were three partials teams paddling together for the first time.  By the time we left on Sunday, I was tired but in a really good, satisfying kind of way.  I made some new friends, learned some new skills, and saw some new country.  I just don't think it gets much better than that.  

Of course, there was more than just paddling over the weekend!!

The two ladies that I traveled and roomed with were awesome.  We left Friday morning to make a sight-seeing day of it.  We headed south on Highway 52 under partly cloudy skies and warm temperatures.  

We stopped in Guttenberg, Iowa, because the motel along the highway had a deer head mounted outside each door, and the antlers for each deer had a plethora of empty beer cans on them.  Some of the deer were wearing hats as well.  A perfect photo op!

Right around the corner where the motel office was located, there was a wooden cow cut-out with random holes in it with a sign that said "Holy Cow!"  Huhn...another perfect photo op.

Then it was on down the road for half a mile to the scenic overlook of the Mississippi River.  We happened to see a barge going upriver!

The rest of the trip into Dubuque was uneventful but we were hungry by the time we rolled into town, so we stopped at a place called The Copper Kettle.  It is a locally owned establishment just kitty corner for the town's old brewery.  Unfortunately, the brewery is in a sad state of disrepair and is being torn down.  The restaurant, however, was full of nostalgia honoring the brewery.  I was fascinated by the ceiling fans that operated on a pulley system.  

The burger I had there was one of the best burgers I have ever had!  I'd put it up against the Juicy Lucy at Newts or the Swanee burger at Coates.  It, obviously, did not surpass my homemade burgers from Brogan beef, but nothing does.  Because the food was so good, and we didn't want to eat at any chain places, I asked the bartender for a recommendation for supper.  She suggested their sister restaurant across the river called the Silver Spoon.  Sign me up.  

From The Copper Kettle, we went to the hotel to check in.  The GPS took us on a scenic route there so we got to see a lot of the unique architecture of the older houses in Dubuque before getting to the hotel.  We got checked in and then decided we wanted to see Galena, Illinois, which was only about 20 minutes east.  

When we had gone about 20 minutes and not even crossed the river yet, we realized something was probably wrong.  We pulled off into a Casey's in Farley, Iowa, and realized that we had been heading west instead of east.  Uff da.  Pretty sure that was my mistake as navigator!  So we got back on the highway headed in the right direction and finally got into Galena about an hour later.  

Oh my goodness the cute little shops they have!  A lot of high-end clothing stores, several restaurants, some coffee houses, two or three candy shops, and so much more!  I found the perfect dish towel for me in one of the kitchen stores.  

Before we could explore everywhere we really wanted to, it was time to get supper and head back to the hotel.  We did stop at the Silver Spoon on the way back to Dubuque, but we all decided it wasn't as good as The Copper Kettle had been.  

Back at the hotel, we had a quick visit from the team captain with Saturday's timeline of where to be and when.  Then it was into our jammies to watch some Friends reruns before lights out.  

Saturday after we were done racing in early afternoon, we decided that we just had to finish up seeing the rest of Galena, so we invited others from the team who wanted to join us.  The nine of us split up for shopping purposes but met up for burgers at Dirty Gurt's Burger Joynt--a very unique establishment with very good food!

This time we made it back to the hotel before full dark and opted for HGTV episodes to fall asleep to.  

After Sunday's races and ceremony, we headed home tired but happy.  We stopped once for gas and a stretch break and one in Harmony for supper at Estelle's.  I made it home by 5:30 or so.  

I am so very glad that I made the decision to join this team.  These ladies are wonderful role models and support people.  The team is about camaraderie and having fun while being active.  If we win a medal, that's just icing on the cake.  

Thanks, ladies, for making me part of the your team!

Images used:

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