(this is just a joke - of course farmwork still has physically demanding parts)
I dated a farm girl for a few years. Up hours before sunrise, you’re always lugging some large container/bag of something or making a million trips to handle it. None of them mechanize everything. It’s way easier than the dumb tractor days but it’s still no f’ing joke.
I’m in the best shape I’ve been in about 2 decades, and you know what my hobbies have been since spring of last year?
Amateur farmer, construction worker, and landscaper. And I guess mechanic too, to a lesser extent.
I live in a pretty standard suburban US neighborhood of single family homes, but my little fenced-in back yard is an active construction zone rather than a patch of grass.
My oasis is coming along pretty well. I can’t wait to share it with those around me once it’s more presentable.
I know its a joke, but man I just bailed hay yesterday and I’m really feeling it. My nephew had his first time bailing, fella looks like a bit of a twig, and I could tell he was struggling with it. As is usual, I had to pickup the slack, just as my family did when I was new to bailing as a kid. Bet he can’t wait until the next field is ready next week.
You’re trying to spell check a farmer. We simply do not care.
Not caring about spelling is nothing to be proud of. Literacy is important. A farmer who is literate is even more than a farmer who isn’t.
For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another hundred out there who weigh a hundred and thirty pounds—and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling seventy-five pounds of marijuana across the desert.
~ U.S. Representative Steve King (R-IA) in 2013.
Now that’s a horror story.
The heros we need
I get it’s a joke, but… The strapping-est kids I knew growing up were farm kids. Throwing hay bales gets you jacked. I have also driven the air-conditioned tractor around all day though too.
This is also happening less and less as farms consolidate under disadventure capitalists. I’m in my late 40s, and the town I went to highschool in was the type to have 2 weeks off at harvest and seeding time because so many kids had to go out and help on the farm.
Last year they did not have any time off for that because only one family was left actually working their farms, the rest are working them for a corp and the corp hires transient labour to do the heavy work.
Throwing hay bales gets you jacked.
Those round one are over 100 kg. What?
There’s different sized bales. The big round bales you move with a tractor and aren’t getting tossed around, but the smaller rectangular bales get moved by hand a bunch.
A typical hay bale is rectangular and weighs about as much as a bushel of lemons. You pick it up by the twine and heave-ho until it’s in a big ridiculous pile on the truck.
Bushel of lemons
Heave Ho
Americans will use anything to avoid the metric system…
You pick it up by the twine and apply the ol’ hectoNewton metre.
Because they’re not all the big round ones
They “wouldn’t wouldn’t last”? So they WOULD last. Double negative cancels itself.
Is that what you’re saying?
That’s how I took it. I’m curious as to what percentage of folk saw the duplicate “wouldn’t”?
I needed more physical fitness working at Tesla glueing cars together than I did on any of the farm jobs I’ve worked. But to be fair, the only farm work I haven’t done is harvesting things like strawberries and whatnot, which are normally done by hand around here.
But, to be fair, there is a difference between strength you get in the gym and practical strength. Its a lot of factors and i dont wanna write an essay but it is (kind of) true.
Your fake farmer toughness wouldn’t last a day working in an artificially-lit, soul sucking office cubicle for someone else’s profit!
Ha! Gotcha farmers!
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m now going to cry.
bonus points if you have to deal with deeply toxic office politics
I wish we had a “bring your kid to work” day so I can show my child how it feels to be in four back-to-back 1-hour meetings with the most brain dead takes and people going, “Let’s table that” and “I hear what you’re saying and we’re saying the same thing” And then everyone gets drunk at Chilis before another round of four back-to-back one hour meetings.
That’s real endurance.
let’s take this offline can we have a sidebar 💀
I hope this email finds you well. Just to remind all employees that crying should be through as personal leave and signed off by your manager.
If you are struggling with mental health please use ai
Kind regards Hr
The difference between physical damage and psychic damage.
Work in nuclear power! Experience both!
You can totally physically damage your body while working in office
When the boss uses vicious mockery.
I worked in an office environment that regularly interacted with field workers. They would often give us grief about how easy our jobs are (being in an air conditioned office, on chairs, etc). Two of them got injured and in order to keep them earning a paycheck, and keep their sick hours, they came to help us in the office. They were supposed to be on restrictive duty for months I believe. Within two weeks they begged to go back into the field doing anything except helping us. Haven’t heard any grief from them since. Haha.
“No, please! Don’t make me troubleshoot the printer again!”
This sounds like “would you want some torture for your sick period?”
Fun fact: you can have a soul sucking office job AND do farm work! Just get a horse or two!
Hey if it makes you feel any better, most farms are corporate owned and so they get to work in hot, back breaking fields for someone else’s profit instead!
Most farms should be corporate owned in the US if for no other reason than to be a liability shield. The question is who owns the corporation and whether the workers are being adequately compensated.
Who owns farms: overwhelmingly it’s inherited wealth in trust to avoid paying taxes and run by incorporated entities.
Are the workers being adequately compensated… The answer changes depending on what color your skin is and where you were born.
They’ll never even make it to the office, because of all the terrifying minorities in the city who have the audacity to exist.
Granted you paid for that John Deere update.
Day on a farm:
She looks very happy!
Have you ever driven a tractor? It’s pretty damn awesome.
My wife works at a company that auctions off machinery of all types. The week before an auction, they let anyone who registered come into their lot and try out the equipment. You’re not allowed to move it much, but you can try out basically any other function.
I’ve operated all kinds of machinery I had no right to even try. Stuff that dwarfs me and/or could kill me at a moment’s notice. I didn’t usually try the bigger scarier stuff, but even machines like excavators, tractors, party busses, and super cars were enough to thrill me.
My wife’s work wallpaper is of me in the driver’s seat of a firetruck. I feel bad about that one - I accidentally triggered the siren and couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. By the time I was ready to ask for help the yard crew had left. I really tried to figure it out or recruit help, but I ended up just leaving with it still on.
Some say you still hear that siren if you listen closely
Well, that just makes me feel sorry for whomever ended up buying it.
I was told there be goths in it. Just fat nerds.
Be the goth you wish to see in the world
You should have watched the promotional material more closely.
Pale, weird, server room, and occasionally some Cradel of Filth, that’s just my office…
Wouldn’t wouldn’t
does that work like a double negation?
It makes this a pure shit “meme”, post.
OP should hang their head in shame.
The double “wouldn’t” is purely an embarrassment. Such garbage!
OP should hang their head in shame.
Repeating the last word of the top caption at the start of the bottom caption used to be a common ironic trope at least in certain circles, an attempt to make the meme shittier on purpose. An elegant literary device for a more civilized age…
only semi related but ive been gifted with soft skin, the kind that old men would handshake and say “you never worked a real day in your life!” i work a blue collar job. some people are just gifted.
From Bag Balm:
Originally, it was used for only cows’ udders, but farmers’ wives noticed the softness of their husbands’ hands, and started using the product themselves.
Lol or you know how to use lotion?
Older gen hated sunscreen and lotion.
I don’t use lotion and still have very soft skin. I also work in a print shop with plenty of heavy lifting and manual labour.
Landscaper, a d likewise. Blisters beget no callous, only fresh pink skin to blister once more.
I have baby soft skin, as noted by male and female friends alike, despite working tons of physical jobs including driving fence posts for a summer. I’m pretty sure it’s a condition called Ehlers-Danlos, in my case, but I’m not officially diagnosed, just have every symptom. Learned about it through my DNA testing, there was a gene there that was connected to it.
i had a mini slut phase recently and everyone who touched my skin said it was really soft, like women who i thought had soft skin told me how soft my skin is. this is what finally pushed me to really look into Ehlers-Danlos and learn that i have it. having very soft skin without really trying is one of the features, but there are a lot more. it sounds to me like you might have it too. worth looking into.
Ha ha ha, farming was hard work, like we have no idea, back in the pioneer days. Now? You can’t compete without the industrial operations, unless you have a niche.
These pioneers, they were harder than any of these gym freaks, they weren’t swollen, they were scrawny, wiry, and stronger. Muscle mass doesn’t mean strength necessarily.
industrial operations
True for the corn and soybeans that cover vast swaths of this country, but a lot of fruits and vegetables are still very labor intensive. That labor is usually done by underpaid immigrants, who are definitely not swole, but are definitely in better shape then any of us.
Wouldn’t the pioneers drive boulders?
