Monday is Labor Day. It's a day off
from work and school, but what else is it? We think of it as the
unofficial end of summer. Tons of Labor Day sales, almost as bad as
black Friday. A chance for one final camping trip. NFL football
season begins (finally!!)
I think we all have mixed feelings
about the holiday. We love the three-day weekend, but it also marks
the downhill trend towards winter. But does anyone even think about
the “labor” part of the day? Its creation was encouraged by
leaders of the some of the Labor Unions. After some unfortunate labor
strikes during which the government sent in troops and a lot of
people were killed, President Cleveland made the holiday officially
the 1st Monday of September. Thanks, Wiki for the info.
And that explains why (yawn!) we don't think about the “labor”
part of the day.
My family didn't either. It was just
another day, and on the farm that meant every day was a labor day.
One Labor Day, about 25 years ago, however, changed all that. In one
24-hour period, a new story was added to the Dwire family mythology.
It's a story that regularly comes up at family get-togethers. In
fact, it's right up there with the story about my youngest niece
sleeping in the doghouse - literally.
If you were looking for a devotional
tonight, I should warn you that try as I might I just couldn't come
up with a “moral of the story,” so you'll have to take it for its
entertainment value only.
There was a cow. (Yes, it's another cow
story. Sorry, it's part and parcel of my life. But I think you'll
find there's more human interest here, than cow interest.) This
particular cow was a long-legged black and white holstein steer. My
brother was no longer operating a dairy farm, and the bulk tank in
the milk house stood empty. He did have a couple of beef cattle, and
this unnamed steer was among them. This steer was so tall he could
just about step over the barbed wire fence. A fact which he
discovered on the day in question. He also discovered that the grass
is greener on the other side.
I'm not sure when the chase began. I do
remember that a long-legged steer runs a lot faster than a human. He
ran around the outside of the pasture. He stepped over the fence and
continued to run inside the pasture. When we thought we had him back
in captivity, he stepped over the fence and ran outside the pasture –
again.
At this point my brother decided that
since he couldn't keep the steer in the pasture he would try to get
him in the barn and stable him there until the weather got cold. That
probably requires an explanation. You see, we did our own butchering.
So we needed to have cold weather so the carcass could be hung in the
garage a day or two to get chilled. Here we were walking - or rather
running - around on this Labor Day with no coats on. It didn't
qualify as a cold day.
We proceeded with my brother's plan to
herd this recalcitrant animal into the barn. Or at least we tried.
Someone forgot to inform the steer about our plans. It would have
been a cozy gig in the barn – no more nights in the rain. No
sleeping on muddy ground. Plenty of food and water with very little
effort. Unfortunately, he had not been briefed on these benefits and
continued to elude capture.
Two members of Somerset County's Tractor Buddies - a group of intrepid tractor drivers who have figured out how to make them square dance. They do not, however, jump creeks. |
It was a hopeless quest. In desperation
we got out the tractors. My brother was on one, and I was on the
other trying to keep pace with this racehorse. However, tractors
don't spin on a dime, and they can't step over fences or jump creeks,
although for a few minutes I was certain my brother was going to try.
It wasn't long after that near fiasco
that my brother threw up his hands and said, “Go get the gun.”
Cold weather or no cold weather. We
were about to butcher this steer. My apologies to any vegans out
there. It's a fact of farm life. It's what you see in the meat
department of the grocery store, we just did it for ourselves. Don't
worry, I won't go into the gruesome details. In fact, after the chase
was over, there are only a few details that I remember.
One had nothing to do with the cow. My
brother told me to get Dad's truck. It was an old GMC. No power
steering. Standard transmission. And while I had driven it many times
in the past, this day I was under duress. I tried to drive between
the barn and the corn crib, pushed in the clutch to change gears and
found myself sliding on wet grass into the corner of said corn crib.
It did only a little damage, but I didn't tell anyone about my mishap
for several days.
The great dilemma we faced was what to
do with two halves of beef in warm weather. How could we possibly
chill them and keep them cold until we were able to process the meat?
It occurred to me that there was a big, empty bulk tank in the milk
house. It was meant to chill milk, but could it be used to chill
meat? There followed a frantic few hours cutting the meat into
pieces that would fit into five-gallon buckets. The buckets went into
the bulk tank, partly full of very cold water. Problem solved.
The days following would be spent
processing the meat. Cutting steaks, grinding hamburger, canning some
of it, but the labor of those days are long since forgotten. What we
remember is the adventure of coming together as a family to find a
solution to a long-legged problem. And I guarantee, sometime during
this Labor Day weekend, someone in the family will mention it!
You know what, I was wrong. There is
a moral to this story. And it's about family. It's about valuing the
time you spend with your family. Time spent NOT using some electronic
device or updating your social status. It's about making a family
memory. Even one as outlandish as our Dwire Family Labor Day.