Posted By FarmerJ on June 20, 2009

Ummmm…what is my Darling Husbie trying to tell me?  We’ve talked about getting a few different farm-type animals one time or another, but we’ve also talked ourselves out of it at this juncture in our adventures in farmsteading.  Was this his way of telling me I’d better get some tall rubber boots?

Nah.  This was yet another way my loving, adoring, sweet husband was spoiling me.  How To Shovel Manure and Other Life Lessons for the Country Woman is the title of a book written by author and real-life country woman, Gwen Petersen.

Husbie had been to Lincoln and stopped in a cute little “Nebraska” store we’d visited when we first came here looking for our new-to-us house.  [I know without looking at the online check registry the reason he was in the area was to have lunch at his favorite cajun restaurant. Heehee!]  We get one of our favorite seasonings from there ~ Misty’s BBQ Seasoning ~ and knowing we were getting low, he stopped in to pick some more up.  While there, he spotted this little book and just had to get it for me.

Anyway, Gwen Petersen is referred to as the Erma Bombeck of the farmhouse and the Ann Landers of the barnyard.  This book is equal parts handy how-to advice, rural humor and philosophy, and fond farm and ranch nostalgia ~ all written tales of her own hilarious successes and failures.  To boot, her ranch is located in Big Timber, Montana which is just 80 miles from my birth town!

It didn’t take me long to realize I could sooooo relate!  From the little things such as referring to her husband as the ‘Master of the House’ ~ I’ve always referred to mine as the ‘King of His Castle’ ~ and her ‘Knight on a Tin Horse’, to the actual stories themselves.  I swear she just had to be watching me a couple of weeks ago when she wrote:

“Dig out your rubber gardening boots, which will be found under the stairs leading to the basement.  Find some thinish leather or plastic garden gloves and don your striped bib overalls.  The red-speckled straw hat with the chiffon tie completes the ensemble.  Stock your pockets with tissue because all the bending and stooping makes your nose run.

A runny nose is the least of the bodily disorders that occur as a result of gardening.  When your back reaches an unbearable level of pain, be ready with certain remedies.  First remedy: Try not to bend and stoop.  Drop to hands and knees and crawl.  The rows may become crooked, but pay no attention.  Remedy Two: At 4:00 p.m., after a brutal gardening session, go to house, draw a deep hot bath to immerse self in for thirty minutes.  Do not start timing till you are in tub.  …

Direct orders accompanied by awful threats encourage both sons to help with the back-breaking labor.  Finally the lovely, thick, black-velvet carpet of loamy earth smiles up at you.  Whip out the Master Plan and the seeds.  If you are one of the fortunate green-thumb Country Women, you know exactly what to do.  Automatically, the spacing, the depth, the loaminess or non-loaminess of the soil, and the proper sequence of the planting fall into place.  You, however, consult the directions on the backs of the seed packets.  Rake, dredge, poke, hoe, pat, and tromp.  …”

There are even tried and true recipes included.  I will undoubtedly be trying the one for chocolate cake!

I’m anxious to read more of this humorous little hardcover ~ perhaps while I’m soaking my aching back in the hot bath for thirty minutes, eh?!  I think the next chapter I read will be the one entitled, “Basic Farm and Ranch Attitudes” (A Ranch Is a Ranch Is a Ranch Is a Farm Is a Farm Is a Farm…)  Wherein one learns that regardless of the labor, the chapped and peeling complexion, the lack of elegance, and the dearth of shopping centers, one still counts oneself the luckiest person in the world.

Yep.  I think I can relate to that, too!

Categories: Plainly Ponderings
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