Back in Time, and Progress

Sitting under the maple tree with coffee and the sounds of the farm behind me; birds chirping and singing, cow-bell's ring-a-linging, and pigs squealing for their breakfast make the remembrance of city-life a long-ago memory.

While I always managed to hear the sounds of horses chewing hay, clip-clopping down the road, and the smell of leather close by, there were times when I longed to live in the country, away from the hustle and bustle of it all.  Now a traffic jam consists of two bluebirds angling for the same nest location and maybe the rush of Sunday church-goers at 9:00am trying to get to Sunday school on time. These ARE the good old days, indeed.

My husband says "for every modern convenience one eliminates from their lives, a job (or two) is created." As an example, I haven't turned the knob on a dryer in about two years now.  Out to the well-house goes the laundry baskets, to be thrown into the washing machine, and then to the well used three-strand clothes line they go.  Taken down, sometimes folded - sometimes not, they go back into the house for the third round of processing; either to lay motionless on the spare bed in the front room waiting ever-so-patiently to be folded, or to be just as patient to stay there until someone says, "Mom, where's my camouflage pants?"

It's true also, what they say, about wood heating you twice, only I think it's double that.  Cutting the tree down, to be loaded into the back of the back of the pick-up truck, then unloaded, to be split by the wood-splitter and then stacked, ready to be burned in the outdoor wood stove.

Just the random thoughts of a farmhousewife. Sitting under the maple tree.  With coffee.