People often ask me how I like retired life. I thought it was time to share a week of retired life. Last week I wrote about sorting out calves and lambs to take to market. Saturday was the day to take sheep to Rockville to the sale barn. Since we had to load up calves to take to the local sale barn on Tuesday, the trailer was left on the truck until then, meaning that the truck was more or less out of commission. Sunday, since my husband was stuck at home with the trailer on the truck, I came straight home from church to bring him some lunch. (Sometimes on Sundays I have lunch with my daughter and son-in-law, or I go to the grocery store since I’m in town, and my husband goes into town to his favorite restaurant for lunch, but not this week.) These were the relaxing days.
On Monday, I had to make some bank deposits, so it was a trip to the “big city” 20 miles away. Okay, I did sleep in, so I waited until after lunch before taking off. Then it was a trip to the city to make deposits in three different bank accounts (one of them ours). I also had to take some pants back to Sam’s to return. You probably know how trips to Sam’s go — it took a while, and I spent all the money I got back from returning the pants. I did spend a relaxing evening working on a sweater for my grandbaby.
Tuesday, it was up early to load three trailer loads of cattle to take to the sale barn. My husband stayed at the barn to work after taking in the last load of cattle. I headed to my daughter’s house to babysit for the afternoon. (It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.)
Wednesday was the actual cattle sale (calves always go in on Tuesday, are sorted Tuesday evening, and are sold Wednesday afternoon. ) The hydraulic cylinder on the hay mower had blown a seal, so we had been out of the hay business for a week and a half, and my husband was anxious to get the repaired cylinder and get back to doing hay since it is late in the season. So my daughter, granddaughter, and I took off for the parts store an hour’s drive away to get it. (There may have also been another stop in Bloomington on the way back home.)
Thursday was another babysitting day. In addition, my daughter had a yard sale planned for Friday, so after I got home, we had to go back to town with tables and a tent. Since there was a sale, my husband and I went out to the storage unit to find a few things to sell (always dangerous taking my husband there, because he has to look for long lost treasures). My daughter graciously fed us supper. My mother had veteran’s benefits from my dad, and although she passed away in March, the VA office suggested that we try to recover the year’s worth of benefits she was owed from when we reapplied after losing benefits when her house was sold the previous year. The VA office had requested 16 months of financial statements to verify her net worth during that period, so I was up until midnight trying to send that information to the VA office. It didn’t take long to get everything together, but rural internet stinks, and I kept getting errors trying to send the emails. (Yawn.) They did finally go.
On to today! My daughter asked if I could be in town at 7 am this morning to watch the baby while she set up for the sale (and it turned out, help set up). Then I work at a log yard on Fridays, doing payroll, writing checks and managing our inventory database. (We buy and sell logs.) After I got off work, I went back to town to see how the yard sell was going (slow!), and then headed home. I didn’t get home until about 3:00 and hadn’t had lunch, so I got a little lunch and then laid down for a nap, because I was tired after my short night (and hey, I’m retired – doesn’t that make me entitled?). I hadn’t much more than laid down when my husband came in and said “Are you sleeping? I thought you might want to see something in the front pasture that you missed coming in.” So I got up, grabbed my phone, and went with him. It was a newborn calf. I have to admit that I love how after all these years farming, a new calf still excites him. I took a few pictures, and we came back to the house, me to my postponed nap, my husband to do the work in the barn (feed and lock in the sheep). Again, I didn’t much more than lie down, and he came in and said “Are you sleeping? I need your help.” Turned out that a ewe had died (no idea why). leaving orphan twin lambs. I fixed a couple bottles and we went out to feed the babies. We got back to the house and I was thinking of my nap, but once the hay mower was fixed, a pump went out on the tractor he used to mow hay. He called his brother to see if he could help pull it up from the bottom to the front pasture where it could be loaded up to send it off to be fixed. His brother told him that he had fishing plans for tomorrow, but he could do it this evening. So my husband suggested that I take the brother down to the bottom in the Kubota so he didn’t have to ride on the tractor fender. (Yawn!) Fortunately, his brother said he was fine with riding on the fender, so I finally got my nap.
And that’s how my relaxing retired farm life is going. Do I ever wish I had married a nice Purdue engineer? Yes. Yes, sometimes I do. (But I would miss the farm life, and I can’t imagine being married to anyone else.)
Imponderables: Here’s an imponderable for the day. You probably know the story of Cain and Abel and their sacrifices in Genesis 4. Abel was a shepherd, and Cain was a farmer. Abel sacrificed the choicest cuts of lamb from the firstborn of his flock, and Cain gave some of the crops he had grown. Abel’s offering was accepted, but Cain’s was rejected. Here’s my imponderable: Cain sacrificed some of his food. God had told Adam that he could eat of any of the plants, but as far as we know, he didn’t tell people that they could eat meat until after the flood, many years later. So as far as we know what Abel offered was not food — maybe clothing. So what did that cost him? Why was that considered better than the food that you need to live? Here are some answers I have thought of: Maybe the sheep were specifically for sacrifice and Cain should have bought a sheep from Abel and sacrificed it instead of the food he sacrificed. (Although either way, he was giving up his food.) Maybe his sacrifice was rejected because it wasn’t his best – he kept his best for himself. (This is the general consensus, especially since the Bible specifically says that Abel gave the best of his flock, but it doesn’t say that Cain gave the best of his crops.) Or maybe crops were not acceptable because the ground was cursed, although the law Moses received included grain and wine offerings – but if crops were an acceptable sacrifice, then Abel’s non-food sacrifice seems pretty non-sacrificial, even if it was the best of the flock, because what else was he going to do with it? Another thought is that although we are not told until after the flood that God said that people could eat meat, maybe they did eat meat after being sent out of the Garden. After all, God killed animals to give Adam and Eve skins to wear, so if they wore skins, it makes sense that they also ate the meat. In that case, Adam’s lamb seems like more of a sacrifice. Definitely the idea of a non-food sacrifice being accepted and a food sacrifice not being accepted made me go “hmm.”