Empty Brooder, Second Cutting, Raising Up Kids
A relatively laid back Labor Day weekend with a couple nights of enjoying live music. In the two evenings of music, Amy danced with me zero times. Not sure why. Next time you see her, ask her why she won’t dance in public with her dearly beloved husband.
No more chicks in the brooder. We moved over 600 chicks from the brooder out to the field. Before doing so, Amy and I had to rearrange some chicken shelters and move the empty ones off to the side of the field while the four kids played in the woods. There are 17 shelters filled with chickens to move daily now. The countdown begins. As we empty shelters to harvest chickens in the weeks to come, they’ll be no chicks ready in the brooder to replace them. We’re on the downhill side of chicken season.
The summer long parade of chickens marching across the field has really kept the grass thick and jumping. My dad, brother John, and Archie brought the hay equipment up to make the second cutting of hay. The kids love making hay with their granddaddy. About 125 rolls of second cutting hay so far. Hopefully the rest will be rolled up today if the weather and equipment cooperates. The cow herd will certainly appreciate this good quality feed when winter rolls around.
When it comes to watering chickens, Hallie and Hasten aren’t strong enough to carry full buckets of water, but Hasten is finally figuring out that the more water he carries at once, the fewer trips it takes. For the record, I don’t care how much water they can carry or how many trips it takes them. I care about the chickens getting watered. That’s their job. However they want to do it is up to them, so long as it gets done.
Recently, Hasten has made a conscious effort to see how much water he could carry. He’s proud of his progress as he should be. And he’s been aiming at improvement.
So how much can he carry? The tricky thing about pursuing your potential is that it requires toeing that thin line between what you can do and what you can’t do. You can’t know or realize your potential without butting up against your limitations or confronting failure. In other words, in order for him to figure out how much he could carry, he had to figure out how much he couldn’t carry. If his potential is the maximum he can carry, even a little bit more than that is too much. What happened when he tried to carry a little bit too much? With his over-the-shoulder bucket carrying technique, he lost balance, fell, and dumped the bucket of water over his head and all down his back. He sat there, disappointed. On the soggy ground. All that effort, wasted.
Although I was proud of myself for not laughing out loud, I was even more proud of him for pushing himself and testing his limits. For trying and failing. Now for the real test: what now? Sulk in the mud? Or get back up and finish watering the chickens? I told him that getting up after falling down would make him stronger than not falling down at all. Convinced I was telling him the truth, he got to his feet, filled his bucket back up (with a little less water), hoisted it up on his shoulder, and staggered his way towards the thirsty chickens.
Don’t think these kids spend all day out here working. They work a little and play a lot. Sometimes I think I might expect too much of them. And then other times I feel like I should probably expect more out of them. Especially when compared to expectations for kids in past generations. I’ve been listening to some of John Steinbeck’s nonfiction essays, as he points out how our American society has not done a great job of raising up kids to be responsible and independent adults.
“Teenagers cannot be punished on the same basis as adults for the same crimes. Blame for the misdeeds of the young falls on the parents and the schools. Little or no effort has been made to teach children responsibility for their acts, for this is supposed to come automatically on the stroke of 21. The fact that it doesn’t is a matter of perpetual surprise to us… I do not blame the youth. No one has ever told him that his tricks are obvious, his thoughts puerile, his goals uncooperative and selfish, his art ridiculous. Psychoanalysts constantly remind their little patients that they must find ‘the real me.’ ‘The real me’ invariably turns out to be a savage, self-seeking little beast… Actually the whole American approach to the young has extended adolescence far into the future, so that very many Americans have never and can never become adults.”
“A father being a pal to his son not only is nonsense but can be dangerous.”
This is what Steinbeck says to his boys after receiving a frustrating and inadequate report from their school teachers:
“I could feel the boys brace themselves against the usual lecture or at least prepare not to listen. I had been thinking about it for a good time, and I let the silence ride. ‘Well, I guess we might as well get to it,’ I said at last… ‘I have prepared a few remarks… At intervals, it becomes my duty, through the accident of being your father, to give you what for… I have in hand the reports of your teachers and masters who urge me to influence you… Have I not given you good and fatherly advice in letters and in speech?… I’m at my wits end, and I mean that literally. I’ve told you all I know, and it isn’t much, but you’ve had it… After much thought, I am prepared to do something painful, something drastic… I’m going to give you your freedom. I’m getting off your back… I mean no more lectures… You are free… If you get a good grade, it’s your grade. If you fail, it’s your failure. That’s what freedom means, and it’s awful… Freedom is the worst slavery of all. No boss to cheat, no teacher to fool, no excuses that work, and nobody to bitch to… Being a man is a good thing, maybe the best. But a man has to do his own time, take his own rap, be his own man.’”
I might need to keep this one on file for conversations a few years on down the road.
Have a good week.
Will