Nostalgic Saturday - Farm Girl Moments

I grew up in the country and regularly visited my grandparents wheat/sheep farm on school holidays. My Dad ran the dairy at the local Agricultural College and as such I could also go with him on school holidays and milk cows, care for chickens, pigs, calves and whatever else needed doing at the time. I was in Rural Youth and did really well for myself in a number of competitions. I do like to think of myself as a 'farm girl' but, well, really I am not. I am competent, and I did dabble, but I am not really a true farm girl.

In my early 20s I visited the farm after it passed to my Uncle and Aunt, and after Grandpa had had his strokes. The job of the day was to pull the hayseeds out of the sheeps eyes. First they needed to be moved from the paddocks to the pens. No problem, Cousin Stuart did all of that. For some reason he then left for a moment, or was otherwise occupied and the sheep needed to be run through a race. It could have waited until Stuart got back but I had the sheep dogs so I figured it would be no problem - they knew what they were doing even if I was only having a go.

My problem was that I didn't know the codes to get the dogs to "go" - I tried a few whistles but they weren't right. I tried a "get behind" just like Grandpa used to say, but Uncle Arthur had trained these dogs and he obviously has a different tone, or phrase. I tried to look them in the eye and have a rational conversation but that was equally as useless.

I turned around to see Grandpa laughing so hard he had tears coming down his cheeks. His strokes had rendered him speechless (unless he was singing in church) so he couldn't help as such so he decided to laugh instead. I chose that too :-)

Oh, and yes I did do a session of pulling out the hayseeds - so maybe I am a farm girl (just a little bit).