Farm Girl

In the lexicon of our culture there are distinctions between farm girl and city girl.  Sometimes each term can be a source of pride or it can be derisive.  When one thinks of differences between urban and rural, the movie "Footloose" can provide some stereotypical reference.  For part of her life my wife grew up on a small hobby farm where chickens and cows were raised.    She participated in the varied farm chores: feeding animals, cleaning stalls or cages, gathering eggs, and of course in the slaughtering of the chickens.  The cows, I believe were slaughtered elsewhere.

Damage to sun gold tomatoes caused by Hornworm

She has carried this farm girl mentality over to suburban life.  Of course she is a great cook and seamstress, quilter, but those may not be traits solely related to farm personnel.  Related to baking all pies she makes are home made including the crust.  All her cakes are also homemade.  She cans and puts up varied preserves, mainly tomatoes. I don't even have to get into her sewing and quilting capabilities.   Let me explore a few areas where her farm girl mentality assists with household chores in the suburbs of Madison, WI this summer.

More damage

She is not against mowing the yard, or at least part of it.  One time this year I was at a meeting and the power drive on the mower broke and she mowed the whole lower yard with a power drive that did not work.  It is much harder to push a power drive mower in this instance than one that is not a power drive mower.  Not only that, but she watched a You-tube video to get the power drive repaired.  Without the video it would have been hard to figure out how to access the screws and parts that needed to come off for it to be repaired.  Unfortunately when I got home and started to mow the rest of the yard, the belt broke.  I completed mowing and then called a proprietor  to find the belt and asked them to hold it for me and I would be there in about 20 minutes. While I was gone she had most of the necessary assemblage apart ready for me and the new belt. The video she found came in handy to take apart the system to replace the belt.

Hormworm

But where she most shines is with rodents. Rodents make many women and some men squeamish.  For example, we are trapping mice and she has no problem taking them out of the traps and dropping them into small plastic bags.  She grabs the mouse with the bag on her hand uses the other hand to release the mechanism, and pulls the mouse away and turns the bag inside out so to speak to complete  the quick movement and tie shut the bag  She uses bags in which the newspaper is delivered.  She takes it upon herself to set and monitor the traps.  As I write this she is complaining of critters that eat the peanut butter and bird seed mix off and set off the trap, meaning she has to reset it once again.  The critters have developed an art form of doing so.  Of course, she is not often pleased by the mice, such as the gnawing of our shutter by the bedroom window which I wrote about here. That is why we are now trapping them. Critters can cause chaos.

Farm girl's index finger to show length of hormworm,
true farm girl did not get squeezy at being next to it

But, there are more pests than rodents.  Together we harvest the garden, although I do most all of the tilling and planting.  We also harvest the Japanese beetles which take over and destroy roses, ruin raspberries, and other plants.  She thinks it gross when I pick off a Japanese beetle and squish it between my fingers to end its invasive life.  I have done that very little this year, since someone told me that such beetles are attracted to the wretched scent of a dead beetle.  I am not sure if that is true, but anything to help reduce the number or impact of the Japanese beetles to the flora of our yard I am willing to try.

Size of sun gold tomato

Last week Sunday we were up harvesting tomatoes, squash and cucumbers from the garden when I noticed the sun gold tomatoes I planted were clipped off at the top.  The main Roma tomatoes were not affected.  We, chalked it up to possibly deer liking the sun gold plants more than the Roma plants.  The next morning we are again up in the garden and looking at a number of the fruits of the sun gold tomatoes which had been significantly devoured.  Quite different from the plant top being eaten.   So we started to look to see what caused the damage.  First noticed were large droppings on the leaves of the plants, and significantly more damage to the tomato plant.

They were not easy to remove, like held in place by a suction

It did not take long for me to notice a giant caterpillar, While she stayed in the garden I went to the house and did an internet search to find out the type of caterpillar.  It was a Hornworm caterpillar. The thing was huge, particularly compared to the butterfly caterpillar we noticed last week.   I started walking up the garden and told her she should pull it off  as I found out it is destructive to tomatoes.   She said "eww", as in yuck, and shivered, moving her arms as they dangled. We had our culprit--this large caterpillar was engorging itself and doing a great job of destroying our sun gold plant and its sweet fruit, but she found it too yucky to pick off.  I was surprised at the reaction of my farm girl.  I went up and pulled it off and two more she had located.  Although I did use gloves, which if I don't add she will get on my back for having omitted.  I guess I have found that my farm girl has limits.

My Farm Girl

So, the yuck limit of my farm girl, in terms of fauna, is a hornworm.  She even plucks spiders, but will not crush them as I am known to do.  I suspect if she had gloves she would have plucked them off the tomato plant, but yet this is the first time I recall seeing such a reaction from her.   Although,  I had to remove the rabbit that got stuck up in the dryer after coming in through the dryer vent.  I have yet to see limits on my farm girl when it comes to my favorite past time which is eating the food she cooks, bakes, or makes.  I may have had to suggest that she do the the first raspberry pie this year, but she has made at least two more since, including one when we celebrated her birthday.  (A raspberry pie is too important to leave to my abilities.)  All of course, with homemade crusts.  She is not Ariel, but perhaps more like Rusty, in the 1984 movie "Footloose."  Yes, I appreciate and love my farm girl.  After all, but for her what would have I written about in this week and last, and many times in the past?