Farming has ruined my chances at ever being a hand model.
My daughter tells me that my hands look like an old lady’s hands. I think I agree with her.
I answer back that I can have pretty hands and a boring life, or I can have beat up, old lady hands and an interesting life.
Milking, gardening, and chasing horses are rough on the hands. Last weekend, a horse broke free from where she was tied. All that was left of her bridle when I caught her was a leather strap around her neck. I grabbed the mare by that strap. She jerked her head, and my left ring finger was entangled in the leather. Now my knuckle is extremely swollen and the finger is black. I’m wearing an old wedding band of my husband’s because mine won’t fit over the swelling.
I also have a nice collection of calluses on my palms and fingers. That’s from hauling my milker and heavy buckets of grain around. When gardening season really gets into gear, I’ll get some more calluses from the tiller and the hoe.
Yet, I still am a woman. I don’t want to look like Granny Clampett when I am not yet 35 years old. I do try to care for my appearance, wearing sunscreen every day. I put on nice, non-smelly clothes to leave the farm and make-up too.
One neat trick I learned a few years back to care for the dry, flaking skin on my hands is to whip up a sugar scrub. My niece says this style of cosmetics is using “ingredients in the shower.”
I pour a dollop of olive oil into a small bowl. Don’t use your good olive oil. The cheap stuff works just fine. I probably use a couple tablespoons. Then, I add four or five spoonfuls of sugar and mix it until it is a coarse paste.
I grab a handful of this mixture when I am in the shower and scrub my hands with it. It is great for getting out the dirt that gets embedded in my skin and around my cuticles when I’ve been gardening. The sugar scrubs away the grunge and dead skin, and the olive oil moisturizes my skin naturally. This concoction also works well anywhere you have dry, flaky looking skin. Elbows, knees and icky looking legs get new life with a sugar scrub. If your feet look bad after a long winter (and sandal weather is coming!), you can replace the sugar with cornmeal for a heavy-duty scrub.
You don’t need fancy commercial concoctions. Use ingredients in the shower for natural, inexpensive beauty treatments.
