Stan Potts, a reader from Maidstone, Sask., found food for thought in the Producer’s Sept. 14 special report on future directions in farming technology. It prompted him to write a letter but it also stirred some memories of a friend and a poem. Here is what Potts wrote.
Interesting, your special feature on the future. Certainly the last 30 years have brought a lot of change so I guess only time will tell what the future holds.
What really strikes me, though, isn’t so much what has changed but what hasn’t.
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Here’s a poem my neighbour (Steve Bobocel) used to recite when I was growing up on the farm. He memorized it in Grade 4, which I would guess was in the mid-1930s. I have searched for the author to give due credit but I can’t seem to find it published.
Anyway, I’d wager a guess that the reason he recalled it and recited it for all those years was because, even though the farm changed drastically in Steve’s lifetime, the poem was as true in 1936 when he memorized it as it was at the end of his life and a few short years ago.
Here is Steve’s poem, Down on the Farm:
Down on the farm about half past four
I slip on my pants and I sneak out the door.
Out on the farm I run like the dickens
To milk 10 cows and feed the chickens.
Clean out the barn, curry Nancy and Jiggs
Slop all the pigs.
Work two hours, eat like a turk
By heck I’m ready for a full day’s work.
Grease the wagon, put on the rack
Throw a jug of water in an old grain sack.
Hook up the horses, hustle down the lane
Must get the hay in for it looks like rain.
Look over yonder sure as I’m born
Cows on the rampage, cattle in the corn.
Leave the horses run a mile or two
Heave like windbroke, wet clean through.
Get back to the horses for recompense
Nancy gets straddled in a barbwire fence.
Joints all achin’, muscles in a jerk
By heck I’m ready for a full day’s work.
Worked all year till winter is nigh
Figure up the books, heave a big sigh.
Worked all year, didn’t make a thing
Have less cash now than I did last spring.
Now some people tell us there ain’t no hell
They haven’t farmed and they can’t tell.
Next year rolls around, take another chance
While the fringe grows longer on my old gray pants.
Give my suspenders a hitch, my belt another jerk
By heck I’m ready for a full year’s work.
