I Was Told it Produces Character

Dear Reader,

It’s barely April and I am tired already. I’ve been telling myself that things will slow down after the county fair in January, but they seem to be about the same level of busyness. Nothing really has changed as far as me being busy other than trying to make it to younger siblings’ tennis matches, horse shows, and fishing tournaments, which isn’t much. I try to attend their home games and events; that sometimes makes me feel a little stressed out, and I am not even the mom trying to make sure everyone gets to practice.

Even though we are probably not as busy as other families because my younger siblings are homeschooled and don’t have to be in school all day, things can still get a little hectic when you have a ranch to take care of on top of other things.

 On nights when we have an event to go to or everyone seems to be everywhere it can be hard because we still have many mouths to feed at home. Evening feeding isn’t so hard on regular days because it only takes 20-30 minutes to have all the animals fed when everyone does their part. However, on the days when you are the lone soul to do all of the feeding, it feels like you are Frodo trying to get the Ring to the mountain with no Sam to encourage him.

Those nights rarely occur; most of the time if one of us is not going to be there for evening chores we feed our designated animals early, or trade on chores. This means we will do someone’s chores the next morning for them if they do ours that evening. Likewise, when they are gone for a few days, we will feed for them and when we are gone for few days, they will feed for us. Sometimes we don’t do any trading at all, it just seems to balance out. What really makes you tired, though, is when you come home late from something, and you still have to feed everything before you can go to sleep.

Sometimes it makes you feel like the trustworthy knight left to guard the fort when you are left alone to feed. This weekend I stayed home and took care of the ranch while the rest of my family went to a horse sale a few hours away. Of course, I felt a little pride that I was capable of taking care of things by myself. It wasn’t my first time and surely not my last time. I have even been paid to take care of other people’s animals, but being the adult daughter who bravely volunteers to stay home still has a nice ring to it.

That is until you are all by yourself and have to deal with things… by yourself. For example, having your sister’s blue heeler wriggle out of her pen, not even an hour after everyone leaves, to say good morning to you while you rinse out the dog pens. Or when you have to board up a hole in another dog pen because Amy the escape artist decides to do drills right before you have to leave for work (she asked if she could go to the office with me, but I’m not sure her presence would have been appreciated).  

When you have to deal with things by alone, you truly discover new things about yourself. For example, I learned that I am more afraid of snakes than I realized. Rushing through feeding in order to meet up with friends, I found a snake that had crawled into one of the dogs’ pens. Luckily, it was just a big, yellow rat snake that Arli the blue heeler asked if she could keep as a pet (oblivious to the fact that it looked ready to bite her). First, I tried to just prop the door open, in the hopes that the snake would just crawl out… but didn’t. Then I tried to scoop it out with a shovel, to no avail. Finally, after a few minutes of poking and prodding (and maybe some small squeals on my end), the snake crawled back out the hole it came in, and I made it to restaurant in time to scarf down a hamburger before we went to get ice cream.

So, I guess the dads are right when they say that chores are good for you and produce character.

Sincerely and Snakelessly Yours,

The Rancher’s Daughter