My Hardest Summer Job....EVER!
What was your hardest summer job?
That's an easy question for me!
Sort of.
..."Sort of" because I did lots of hard work every summer, but I only got paid serious money for a couple of things from an outside source (outside of my dad).
One summer job (not my hardest) was one that my sister and I did together. There is an official name for it, which I forget, but basically we had a neighbor that was growing alfalfa for SEED, not feed, so instead of baling it up like the rest of us did, he harvested it to gain it as a seed crop. Compared to oats/barley/wheat, alfalfa seed is tiny and, when harvested through the combine, the combine decides to keep lots of small stuff that it thinks is seed but is actually junk. Our job was to shake this junk which included valuable seed through a variety of sizes of strainers until the only thing that remained at the bottom of the pile was pure alfalfa seed. The sifters were sort of the size of, um, extra large communion trays, and were stacked 4 or 5 high. We had to shake the whole stack side to side and the good stuff fell to the bottom tray. We kept that and discarded the rest. We went through sacks of this stuff and stood in the garage day after day, shaking. No wonder we were skinny! Our employer - "Joe".
The job that I would consider to be my "hardest job ever" was also for "Joe". Joe was a distant relative of ours, and a bachelor. A Ukrainian bachelor. He dropped in for meals often. ;) No kids, no sons to do these crazy jobs for him. He had some crazy ideas sometimes and he was on this "alfalfa seed" kick for a few years so, on another summer, he employed my friend and I to clean up his alfalfa field. I'm bad at estimating acres, but I'm going to say that he had a field that was 30-40 acres big and his goal was to grow pure alfalfa for this seed project. However, in a landscape where clover and alfalfa easily grow together, there was clover in this field which would, potentially, ruin his alfalfa seed project. So, can you imagine we actually did this, my friend and I walked up and down this field for DAYS and plucked out every single clover plant by hand. We had little shovels or some sort of hand tool and we would walk up and down this field all day long, south to north, north to south, looking at every single grass plant that was growing. If it was alfalfa, it stayed; if it was clover, we pulled it out. The alfalfa would have been mostly grown by then so was probably mid-thigh height. It was in the heat of July, and we did this all day long, sometimes going to my house for lunch, sometimes just eating our lunch at the side of the field. I remember the heat and the helplessness of looking across the field, hoping to see purple flowers (alfalfa), cringing if we saw yellow flowers (clover) and the monotony of this routine that went on for days. It was so hot. It was dirty work. There were bugs. I think we each got paid $100.00, which seemed like a lot of money. We earned it, though!!!
Those jobs with paychecks attached were few and far between. As a farm kid, you just worked. We grew up close to a beautiful lake but we seldom went there in the summer as there was too much work to do on the farm. In addition to the large gardens that Mom had, we helped pick rocks and roots off the fields and we helped with haying. This was in the days of square bales and stooking. Poor dad only had daughters and there was never any gender inequality on our farm. We did the work of farmers; being a girl was no excuse to not work. Hay baling, however, was more than I was capable of. My dad drove the equipment, which failed more than it worked, and mom and I (or mom and my sister) rode on the stooker behind the baler and, together, lifted those heavy hay bales onto the stooker to make a perfect pyramid. It was dry and hot and incredibly itchy work. You had to wear long pants and long sleeves to protect yourself against the dry, scratchy hay and, really, you hoped for hot dry weather to get the hay done in, but, goodness, that was unpleasant. The wind blew the hay dust into your face and covered your whole body with dust that itched and scratched under your long sleeves and long pants while the sun beat down on your head. Sigh. Can hardly believe we worked that hard, but we did.
However, in my current work world of multi-tasking and balancing acts, head games and thought process continuity requirements, I find comfort and peace in a day of hard physical labor work. When I can set aside the nurse in me, and get outside and work with my hands, there is some inner "me" that gets nourished. And I like that.
I'd love to hear what some of your summer jobs were! Care to share?
I'd like to record another rhubarb recipe here. I went searching for rhubarb cake recipes this morning. I found one, but it made a 9 x 13 pan and we will be here and there for the next little bit and I thought the cake would be wasted. I resorted to hunting for another spring favorite recipe for a rhubarb loaf that makes 2 loaves (so we could eat one and freeze one). And how's this? When I compared the 2 recipes, the recipes are virtually identical! So, here's a recipe that can be in cake form (9 x 13" pan), loaf form (2 loaf pans) or muffin form (18 or so muffins). Cake form would be more in the line of a coffee cake.
Rhubarb Cake-ffin-loaf!
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup oil
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk (or sour some milk with vinegar)
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups chopped rhubarb
Topping (rub ingredients together for a crumb topping):
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp melted butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease selected pans well.
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. Add rhubarb and toss lightly.
In a separate bowl, blend sugar with oil; whisk in egg, buttermilk and vanilla.
Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients, just until flour is incorporated. Spoon into selected baking pan and top with crumb topping.
Bake muffins for 20-25 minutes.
Bake loaves and/or cake for 40-45 minutes.
Tell me some stories!!!
That's an easy question for me!
Sort of.
..."Sort of" because I did lots of hard work every summer, but I only got paid serious money for a couple of things from an outside source (outside of my dad).
One summer job (not my hardest) was one that my sister and I did together. There is an official name for it, which I forget, but basically we had a neighbor that was growing alfalfa for SEED, not feed, so instead of baling it up like the rest of us did, he harvested it to gain it as a seed crop. Compared to oats/barley/wheat, alfalfa seed is tiny and, when harvested through the combine, the combine decides to keep lots of small stuff that it thinks is seed but is actually junk. Our job was to shake this junk which included valuable seed through a variety of sizes of strainers until the only thing that remained at the bottom of the pile was pure alfalfa seed. The sifters were sort of the size of, um, extra large communion trays, and were stacked 4 or 5 high. We had to shake the whole stack side to side and the good stuff fell to the bottom tray. We kept that and discarded the rest. We went through sacks of this stuff and stood in the garage day after day, shaking. No wonder we were skinny! Our employer - "Joe".
The job that I would consider to be my "hardest job ever" was also for "Joe". Joe was a distant relative of ours, and a bachelor. A Ukrainian bachelor. He dropped in for meals often. ;) No kids, no sons to do these crazy jobs for him. He had some crazy ideas sometimes and he was on this "alfalfa seed" kick for a few years so, on another summer, he employed my friend and I to clean up his alfalfa field. I'm bad at estimating acres, but I'm going to say that he had a field that was 30-40 acres big and his goal was to grow pure alfalfa for this seed project. However, in a landscape where clover and alfalfa easily grow together, there was clover in this field which would, potentially, ruin his alfalfa seed project. So, can you imagine we actually did this, my friend and I walked up and down this field for DAYS and plucked out every single clover plant by hand. We had little shovels or some sort of hand tool and we would walk up and down this field all day long, south to north, north to south, looking at every single grass plant that was growing. If it was alfalfa, it stayed; if it was clover, we pulled it out. The alfalfa would have been mostly grown by then so was probably mid-thigh height. It was in the heat of July, and we did this all day long, sometimes going to my house for lunch, sometimes just eating our lunch at the side of the field. I remember the heat and the helplessness of looking across the field, hoping to see purple flowers (alfalfa), cringing if we saw yellow flowers (clover) and the monotony of this routine that went on for days. It was so hot. It was dirty work. There were bugs. I think we each got paid $100.00, which seemed like a lot of money. We earned it, though!!!
Those jobs with paychecks attached were few and far between. As a farm kid, you just worked. We grew up close to a beautiful lake but we seldom went there in the summer as there was too much work to do on the farm. In addition to the large gardens that Mom had, we helped pick rocks and roots off the fields and we helped with haying. This was in the days of square bales and stooking. Poor dad only had daughters and there was never any gender inequality on our farm. We did the work of farmers; being a girl was no excuse to not work. Hay baling, however, was more than I was capable of. My dad drove the equipment, which failed more than it worked, and mom and I (or mom and my sister) rode on the stooker behind the baler and, together, lifted those heavy hay bales onto the stooker to make a perfect pyramid. It was dry and hot and incredibly itchy work. You had to wear long pants and long sleeves to protect yourself against the dry, scratchy hay and, really, you hoped for hot dry weather to get the hay done in, but, goodness, that was unpleasant. The wind blew the hay dust into your face and covered your whole body with dust that itched and scratched under your long sleeves and long pants while the sun beat down on your head. Sigh. Can hardly believe we worked that hard, but we did.
However, in my current work world of multi-tasking and balancing acts, head games and thought process continuity requirements, I find comfort and peace in a day of hard physical labor work. When I can set aside the nurse in me, and get outside and work with my hands, there is some inner "me" that gets nourished. And I like that.
I'd love to hear what some of your summer jobs were! Care to share?
I'd like to record another rhubarb recipe here. I went searching for rhubarb cake recipes this morning. I found one, but it made a 9 x 13 pan and we will be here and there for the next little bit and I thought the cake would be wasted. I resorted to hunting for another spring favorite recipe for a rhubarb loaf that makes 2 loaves (so we could eat one and freeze one). And how's this? When I compared the 2 recipes, the recipes are virtually identical! So, here's a recipe that can be in cake form (9 x 13" pan), loaf form (2 loaf pans) or muffin form (18 or so muffins). Cake form would be more in the line of a coffee cake.
Rhubarb Cake-ffin-loaf!
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup oil
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk (or sour some milk with vinegar)
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups chopped rhubarb
Topping (rub ingredients together for a crumb topping):
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp melted butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease selected pans well.
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. Add rhubarb and toss lightly.
In a separate bowl, blend sugar with oil; whisk in egg, buttermilk and vanilla.
Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients, just until flour is incorporated. Spoon into selected baking pan and top with crumb topping.
Bake muffins for 20-25 minutes.
Bake loaves and/or cake for 40-45 minutes.
Tell me some stories!!!
You worked much harder than me! I was the only girl with four four brothers, so I helped in the house and garden. As I got older I babysat and then worked as a car hop, nothing compared to your hard labor.
ReplyDeleteShirley! I hardly ever babysat and never waitressed in my life in any form. I always thought waitressing would be fun. Lucky you with brothers!
ReplyDeleteMy summer jobs were very similar to yours because I also lived on a farm in northern Sask. and was the oldest of 5 kids, the two youngest being boys. I probably didn't work quite as hard as you did but I picked an awful lot of rocks and roots. One of the worst jobs I ever did was shovelling barley into an auger in a grain bin. I was so choked up and itchy after that.
ReplyDeleteI had lots of good times working on the farm, too. I enjoyed driving tractors doing field work or especially haying. I never did baling except straw, but I mowed and raked hay. Our family put up silage so I hauled a lot of loads with tractor and wagons. And we occasionally got to go to the lake on hot evenings or Sunday afternoons.
Your rhubarb recipe looks delicious! I will have to try it.
Elaine! Thanks for your story! I, too, remember shovelling barley....horrible, horrible job. We also made silage but I didn't get to drive the tractor. The first year we made silage, I was maybe 5 or 6, and my sister and I ran back and forth through the fresh silage to "help" compact it. Great fun! I remember my legs being as green as could be. Good memories!
DeleteWorst summer job...working in the ice cream shack at Northside...scooping vanilla ice cream for people's dogs and whatever flavor for them and their kids...leaving there sticky, sweaty and almost repulsed by ice cream...thankfully that was not a lasting ill-effect. :-)
ReplyDeleteOr the summer I babysat three boys under 5...2 of which were twins...all three were full of mutated mischief...mutated mischief included things like cleaning up their room by popping out the screen on their window and throwing everything from toys and clothes to trying to drag their mattress over to toss as well.
We lived close to the river (I lived in) and would have strange men try to get in the house once or twice that year and during a certain riverbank side event, I moved down to the couch to "sleep" and had the phone and a kitchen knife under my pillow. Oh how brave I was... Not. :-)
Best job, riding with my uncle in the pasture checking fence lines, looking for sick or injured cattle...the pay??? Oodles of wisdom and stories and quality time with a man I admire...
I've never scooped ice cream (or waitressed or worked at a store or babysat....) but I always thought it would not exactly be a dream job on a hot day, ha ha! A girl at work told me a strange man slept in their sun room on the night of the storm this week. Eek!
DeleteGood memories with your uncle. My best job was working in the Cancer Patient Lodge in Saskatoon as housekeeping/cook assistant. My first "real" grown up job; paid great, and, like you, the experience was amazing. She told me she hired me because I was a nursing student and had just been to Bible school and felt that I would be a good fit. I was an inexperienced farm girl to that point; did a lot for my self confidence and the interpersonal experience was amazing. I was heartbroken to hear of my manager's death a couple of years later....to cancer.