Farm Life versus Work Life
Posted on 20. Jan, 2009 by Laura-Jane - Whimfield in Inspirations, Personal
I am torn between “country living” and “work”.. One minute I am helping Cameron stack firewood and the next minute I am taking a business phone call. Having a foot in each camp is bizarre, and I’m not afraid to admit that these polar opposites have a tendency to freak me out.
Case in point
It’s bitterly cold and I am heading to a business meeting. Our vehicle, very farm hardy, takes twenty minutes to warm up and start, and I am dangerously close to being late for an important meeting as a result. My hair is perfectly coiffed, but I am scraping my windshield and getting blown about like a plastic bag in a parking lot.
Similarly, I want to keep our costs down. But if I’m attending a brightly lit seminar with twenty gorgeous women I want to at least be wearing spiffy shoes that don’t scream “I live in mud!”
This battle between farm life versus professional life has been a recurring theme, and I am learning to adjust to it.
Sometimes I feel like two people, and I don’t like it when my worlds collide.
Aunt Krissy
Jan 20th, 2009
I’m glad that my job is in a small town where “spiffy” shoes arn’t needed!
Gary Gray
Jan 20th, 2009
Hi Laura -Jane
Relax!…..Your on P.E.I. How do you think those perfectly coiffed gorgeous women got to that brightly light seminar? By chauffeur driven limos? Hardly!
Most gals on P.E.I. have grown up either in or around farm families. They are most likely as comfortable in blue jeans, coveralls and a milking parlor as they are in spiffy shoes.
They most likely are very familiar with P.E.I. cold, wind and mud. (oh and most likely with cleaning stables and the term “cow paddy”)
If you were to follow them after the seminar out to the parking lot and asked them to pop the trunk, there would be the farm togs complete with safety work boots. Most likely you would also find an empty Sobey’s bag that brought those spiffy shoes to the party.
I once had the pleasure of working with eighteen gals at the Central Credit Union and they could all dress to impress at our business meetings in Charlottetown. But almost to a lady they all knew their way around a fishing fleet, a farm operation or a wood lot.
We’re not high class folks on P.E.I. (total pop 140,000 give or take) Farming , fishing and woodlots are our way of life. And mud roads, that just happens to be where we live.
So the next time you are in a seminar with twenty gorgeous women on P.E.I. keep this post in mind and visualize the other side of these gals lives.
I’m just sayin…
Smiles :o)
Gary
Andy Collier
Jan 20th, 2009
Well said Gary, well said!
Nora
Jan 20th, 2009
My once sparkling clean city car…….is now full of mud, a wintch, emergency kit and yes indeed boots………..I’ve learned that parking at the end ensures your car moves in the morning in spring but also ensures that you will wade through 400 ft of mud…….I work in an office…….and my work shoes are indeed in a plastic grocery bag. Five years ago if you had told me I would have waded through a field of cow paddy’s I would have told you you are off your nut…….but somehow it happens slowly over time……and I’ve embraced the windblown look…….since I seem to have it daily. I have waded through a cranberry bog and learned why rubber boots are a girls best friend. Have you ever been smelting……..you walk into a river with boots a flashlight and a plastic bag and you pick them up (yes with your hands) and put the smelts in the bag…….I know I thought they were pulling my leg too……but thats how its done. There are things that are done daily here that I would never have even considered doing before……like splitting wood in the middle of the forest……I wouldn’t have even been in the forest….so even those 20 women……got out of their mud soaked car, took their shoes out of the bag…….tried to fix their windblown hair………difference is most of them didn’t care……cause thats life. Its funny but country weddings are the best time……..you have people smartly dressed and people in jeans and a tee shirt and no one says a word about it, my own wedding had 350 people (most I didn’t know) just because that was the way it was done………and new outfits all around. Full sit down dinner with fancy desserts……..was it any more fun than a good old country wedding …. no it was just way more uncomfortable……..shoes hurt……..I wonder if you can get rubber boots in white…………..LOL
shonna
Jan 20th, 2009
i dont think its so much that you want to look good cause there is a room full of other beautiful women, i think you want to look good for yourself? i say this cause i dont mind wearing my muddy scrappy home-clothes around my cabin, but it doesn’t make me feel pretty and feminine-so when i go out into the general public i always try to dress up cause it makes me feel good-not necessarily cause i have to. there is nothing wrong with this, but yes, it is hard. like everyone else states, i have learned to wear boots when going somewhere, and slip on my nice shoes before i exit the car to where ever i am going. trying to maintain the feeling of looking visually beautuful is exausting sometimes…but if you are like me you keep doing it cause when you do you feel fantastic!
well written laura jane, especially the part about being blown about like a plastic bag. made me smile!
Sandy
Jan 20th, 2009
I can relate to this so much, Laura Jane. By the end of the winter, my car is usually so full with extra boots and shoes (my city boots) so I can be prepared to change when I arrive at my destination.
Kim
Jan 20th, 2009
Laura-Jane, that’s funny you posted this just when I was experiencing something along those lines…
Yesterday, when it warmed up to that wonderful warm 4 degrees or so, we decided to go to the nearest store, only a few minutes away.
I was SO sick and tired of sluffing off in public in gumboots and filthy farm clothes that I figured, hey, I’m dressing UP!
So, I wore a jean skirt and tights and a pair of cute little black boots.
FELT SO GOOD!
I didn’t even make it to the car before my boots were caked in red mud and somehow I’d splashed some on my skirt.
Ah well…
I still felt great!
Natalie
Jan 20th, 2009
I gave you a award on my blog, not that I quite compare to the Sook-yin Lee! :)
http://knatolee.blogspot.com/2009/01/oooh-im-kreativ.html
Natalie
Jan 20th, 2009
I don’t know why I inserted “the” before Sook-yin Lee. Well, I guess she is sort of monumental! Come to think of it, I’m not 100% sure I spelled her name right, either…
warren
Jan 21st, 2009
You can start up another business… therapeutic mud baths…you’d be all the rage!
John Quimby
Jan 22nd, 2009
I like dressing for farm work. It’s so much more sensible than getting “duded up” for the office.
Ya know what Laura Jane? I’ve noticed that the more successful you are…
the more rich, powerful, mature, confident and poised you are…the more freedom you have to look anyway you want.
The showbiz people I work with are like that. For them, dressing down is dressing up – because they CAN. And a real mark of success is not needing to have a cell phone! It means you don’t need to take ANYone’s call.
Amanda
Jan 22nd, 2009
I am wearing a skirt at work today. My co-workers asked if I was feeling ok.
Such are the gulf islands.
We can tell the off-islanders by if they have high-heels and perfume on.
But what can I say? I love it!
When in Rome.
Marie
Jan 22nd, 2009
Yes, I know what you’re talking about… I have the same problem with the mud on my shoes. And I’m a teacher, which means my clothes need to be very clean (the kids notice everything, they’re worse than businesswomen I think!).
When they ask me where I live, I often lie – I say that I live in an appartement in the city, which is only half-true – , because, just like you, it makes me unconfortable when “my two worlds collide”.
Laura-Jane - Whimfield
Jan 22nd, 2009
I love your comments!!!!!!! Actually, they made me cry a few days ago. I love you, people!