Country Women Rock!

Enlarge Image Image Gallery From picking corn to shucking and cooking the corn, farm women can do it all. iStockphoto.com/princessdlaf

Whoever invented the phrase “multitasking” was surely talking about country women.

These “ladies of the land” can drive a farm truck alongside a silage chopper, run a hay baler, pull a calf, or kill, clean and pluck a chicken. And then, in their spare time, prepare the family meals, do the shopping and laundry, keep the books, mend skinned knees and torn jeans, help the youngsters with their homework, and deworm the dog.

I know of at least four categories of country women. Some are masters of their own destiny, entrepreneurs who own and operate their own farms or livestock operations. Many country women partner with their spouses to manage working farms or ranches. Some farm and ranch wives are left in charge of the crops, children and critters while their husbands hold full-time jobs in town. And then there are rural women, who themselves work in town to supplement the family income or obtain health insurance.

None of them are afraid to get their hands dirty.

Country women know how to use a fence stretcher and a set of jumper cables, can speak knowledgeably about livestock breeds or corn hybrids, and know their way around the three-point hitch on the tractor. They’re equally adept at using a frog knife or a pair of fencing pliers, and they always remember to close gates. They’re part animal lover, part veterinarian and part wildlife expert. Part horticulturist, part entomologist and part economist.

If there are livestock on their place, you can bet that farm or ranch that women have, at one time or another, chased down errant cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses or llamas on the lam. They have bottle-fed orphans and brought newborn lambs, calves or colts into the house to keep them from freezing on an icy-cold winter night. They will put out food for the barnyard cats and aren’t squeamish about retrieving field mice from traps.

Like their urban counterparts, farm and ranch mothers are counted on to drive their children to school sporting events and doctor appointments. Even if it’s a 30-mile trip to town and there’s a foot of snow on the ground. Country mothers help their children halter-break 4-H club calves, and teach them how to ride and how to judge when the sweet corn is ready. Some have been known to take their children fishing.