Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
I had a friend at UW from the Imperial Valley in California. He was a farm boy and a great power back for the Cowboys. J.C. Fowler was a virtuoso on the piano as well, though he couldn’t read music. His talent was to hear a song once, then play it on the piano. He entertained the guys and the visiting gals in the Crane Hall lobby on many a snowy night in windy, frigid Laramie.
A few of us lifted weights with J.C. and some of the other football players in our dorm on the second floor of War Memorial Fieldhouse. Occasionally, the big boys on the offensive line came in with us.
J.C. always smirked when they grunted up three to four hundred pounds on the bench. He’d watch, then say to me, ” Gym muscles, they’d be useless on the farm.” J.C. introduced me to a term I’ve used many times over the years with many teenagers: “Farmboy Strong.”
J.C. knew what he was talking about. Farmboy Strong meant you could lift a lot, maybe not as much as the guys whose strength came from only the gym, but you could do it all day.
Strength over time equates to farmboy strong.
There are a lot of things on the farm that require strength, even in the age of hydraulic power; you still have to lift five-gallon cans of oil, 50- or 100-pound bags of feed, and, of course, the universal test of farm strength, the small bale.
Today, most hay comes in big bales weighing from 700 to 2000 pounds. “Back in the day” there were occasionally round bales, but the big bales hadn’t hit the market yet. Instead, growers put up their first, second, and third cuttings in small bales. We call them small, but when they’re wire tired and packed tight, they can tip the scales at 100 pounds or more. The string tied variety was usually less than 80.
Picking up a few thousand a day was a workout.
As teenagers, you might complain a little bit on an extra heavy one, but it was all part of the job. As my dad used to claim, the heavier ones stacked tighter.
Put three or four teenage boys together on a summer day in June or late July, and the bales disappeared quickly. Also, being teenagers, there were a few times when a bale might have “slipped” out of your hands as you threw it on the trailer, only to land behind the knees of your buddy on top stacking the bales.
From there, it grew exponentially until bales were flying over the top of the trailer and landing on the other side as the boys competed to see how far and how high they could toss them. Fun is where you find it, even on a 100+ degree afternoon with endless rows of bales waiting to be picked up and stacked by hand in the farmer’s stackyard.
Sometimes, the “Farm Olympics” weren’t totally about strength and power, they could be about finesse and accuracy as well.
It was a vanishing practice. It’s impossible to pick up and stack hay with a cell phone in your hands, and that is sadly the situation with almost all teenagers today. The hypnotic glow of the small screen has stifled productivity, ambition, and destroyed creativity. It is a strange thing to witness, but it is real.
Tossing cow pies was a popular thing to do when you were walking a long way across a field to set water, open gates, or move livestock.
In later years, those cow pie-tossing skills came into use once again, this time in Yellowstone National Park. My late friend Jim Yager and I were taking a Large Mammals of Yellowstone Class from Idaho State University. It was a mixed class of adult students from across the nation. One older gal from Ohio, named Carol, was always a good sport. As we walked back a couple of miles across grassy meadows after watching the interactions of a bison herd, we spotted cow pies, ok, buffalo pies, covering sections of the meadows.
I picked up one and tossed it discus style. It flew apart, too dry. Jim and I began looking for just the right pie, one that was dry enough to hold its shape, but wet enough to hold together. We started sailing these buffalo pies about a hundred feet.
Carol picked up a couple and tried to toss them Frisbee style, only making 20 to 25 feet. I showed her how to hold and spin the pies discus style, and she was suddenly right there with us.
My parents’ farm and the ground owned by neighbors were littered with small rocks, many of them bits of petrified wood and clear agates. They’re too small to throw very far, but they’re ideal for hitting with fence pickets and straight pieces of driftwood.
Many nights as the sun dropped behind the Wind River Mountains to the west, my dad sent me out to drive the cows into the corral.
On these little three-quarter-mile hikes, I’d find a piece of heavy lathe, or more often, a piece of dried cottonwood limb that looked like driftwood. As I walked, I’d pick up these small rocks, toss them into the air like a baseball coach hitting fly balls and grounders, and drive the rocks into the gathering twilight.
Once again, fun is where you find it.
A higher-level skill came with two pieces of baler twine and a hunk of leather cut out of a worn-out glove.
Cut two holes on opposite sides in the leather, slide the twine through, and tie it off. The leather should make a little cup, a cup that fits those agates and bits of petrified wood.
The skill comes in spinning this “David and Goliath” style slingshot accurately. The first few times, it might send the rock high into the air, straight into the ground, behind you, or flying left or right like the worst hook or slice you’ve ever seen at the golf course.
After a few hours of trial and error, I was able to hit bottles consistently at 50 yards. When I mentioned this to friends at school who lived on nearby farms, they all agreed, it was fun, and something to occupy your hands while you were on the way working for your parents.
Farmboy strong, chip tossing, hitting a petrified home run, or hitting a target with an agate 10 out of 10 times.
Fun is where you find it. There is an entire world outside that cell phone screen waiting to be discovered.