“Y’all still wanna do farm chores?”
I ask this with all the sincerity of a woman who just got kicked in the shin by an ungrateful goat and whose left boot is currently sinking into a patch of… something… I’m just going to call “mud.”
It’s 6:00 AM. It’s not the “golden hour” 6:00 AM you see on Instagram. It’s the 34-degree, pitch-black, wind-is-blowing-sideways-rain 6:00 AM.
You see the posts, right? The girl with the perfect messy bun, in her brand-new overalls, holding a steaming mug of coffee in one hand and gently petting a perfectly clean baby cow with the other. The caption is always, “Living the simple life. ✨”
Let me paint you the real picture.
The “simple life” started an hour ago when my alarm went off, and I heard the sound of a 1,200-pound horse kicking his stall door, effectively screaming, “FOOD. NOW, PEASANT.”
My “overalls” are not cute. They are stiff with 10 layers of dried mud, grease, and an unidentifiable stain from last week. My “messy bun” is less “effortless-chic” and more “I-was-just-attacked-by-a-family-of-raccoons.”
My first chore? Water.
The hose is a 100-foot-long, frozen-solid snake. Useless. So, I am hauling 5-gallon buckets. You know how much a 5-gallon bucket of water weighs? About 40 pounds. I need to fill four troughs. That’s 12 trips, back and forth from the spigot, in the dark, over ground that is 90% ice traps and 10% ankle-breaking rocks.
By the time I’m done, I’m sweating, but my fingers are numb. And the horses’ “thank you”? They wait for me to fill it, then they take one big, dusty, hay-filled bite of their breakfast, and immediately dunk their entire muzzle in the fresh, clean water, turning it into “hay-snot soup.”
“Y’all still wanna do farm chores?”
Next up: Mucking stalls. This is the “zen” part of the day, according to the influencers.
No. It’s not “zen.” It’s an archaeological dig of manure. It’s heavy. The wheelbarrow has one wobbly, half-flat tire that only wants to steer directly into the biggest pile of muck. The air doesn’t smell “earthy.” It smells like pure, eye-watering ammonia that sears your nostrils.
And just when I get the stall perfectly clean, with a beautiful bed of fresh, fluffy shavings… the horse who has been watching me for 20 minutes will walk directly to the center, make direct eye contact, and pee. For a solid minute.
It’s not a chore. It’s a power struggle. And I am losing.
So, now it’s 7:30 AM. I’m not “glowing.” I’m soaked in sweat. My back hurts. I have hay in my bra. I have “something” on my face. And I still have to break ice on the pond, fix the fence the goats broke again, and try to figure out which chicken has decided to lay her eggs in the most inaccessible, spider-filled corner of the barn.
“The simple life” is just “hard labor” with better scenery.
So, I’ll ask you one more time. Y’all still wanna do farm chores?
