Do you ever think about the meaning of life? Yours, not the Monty Python film. Don't worry, this is not a serious discourse on life, the universe and everything. But here I am, side of face covered in cow poop, screwdriver in one hand, listening to the vacuum pump (I'm sure it's asthmatic!) and contemplating the eight more horse stalls I have to pick, and the eight horse breakfasts to prepare. What on earth am I doing here! During my life I have made many choices, taken many paths. To say I have planned all along to be here and doing what I do, would be hardly fair to whatever great creator is responsible for my life journey. Yet I believe I am here by choice, however those choices were presented. Not only that the things I have learned during that journey have, quite amazingly, prepared me well for my new farming life. When I was a teenager in the UK, I became a "Young Farmer". Now, I was not really a country boy, and my family had no farming experience. Some of my friends joined, so did I. We met once a week or so, and listened to lectures on cows and chickens and the like, and then I forgot most of what I learnt in those two years. As with most teenage boys, girls happened along, and so I moved on to horses, just to impress a local beauty. I learned to ride and stuck with a local riding school for a year or so. Lack of scholastic endeavour led to my enlisting in the Royal Navy at the tender age of 16, and any thoughts of a bucolic life were submerged by engineering and the delights of pubs and tatoo parlours. I ploughed the seas (sorry, bad pun) but not the sod for 12 years, doing my bit in the "Cold War". I did learn a lot about pumps and electrics, and how to repair things with a piece of bent wire and duct tape, but with marriage and children came responsibility, and the inevitable settling down. Not unsurprisingly on the basis of "do what you know" I went into ship design, rather than agriculture. Until then my life choices had been governed more by Naval requirements, than personal choice, and it was a company requirement that put me on to what would prove to be my professional career as an ergonomist. Preparing equipment lists, budgeting tight projects, and dealing with the minutae of complex systems was my life, on and off, for the next 35 years. Coming to the US in pursuit of happiness in the form of my lovely Jorg, I was little aware that the jigsaw puzzle that was my past experience was going to be so beautifully put together at a farm in Southside, Virginia. My experience with animals had always been intermittent. Occasional cats, and the usual array of guinea pigs and rabbits for the kids. My philosphy has always been "don't have them (animals, although the same principle applies to kids!) if you aren't prepared to look after them properly." Suddenly, I was involved intimately with a real animal person, and there were horses, a dog, a parrot, some cats, and koi in the pond to look after and keep healthy. The stepping stones from that re-introduction to horses, via dog rescue transport, to our own horse rescue, and thence to Triskelion Farm and the menagerie we look after here, seem natural if explained sensibly, but that would be way too long for this post. Sufficient to say that the various learning organizations I had encountered throughout my life would be proud if they could see me now - side of face covered in cow poop, screwdriver in one hand, listening to the vacuum pump (I'm sure it's asthmatic!) and contemplating the eight more horse stalls I have to pick, and the eight horse breakfasts to prepare. But with a self-satisfied glow that outshines the golden brown I am turning from the Virginia sunshine.
That's me, on the left!
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