Farmer Thoughts: I’m Not Ashamed To Admit It

Contributed by Farmer Becca, Bottomland Farm —

Last winter, I found myself in our neighbor’s haymow tossing hay bales to Farmer Bill as he stacked them in our trailer to take home for winter goat feed. I was standing on rows of bales that were stacked as tightly together as bales can be, but every once in a while, as I’d take a step, my foot would find the gap between the bales, and my leg would disappear beneath me. Luckily, hay bales provide a soft place to land. 

With thick gloves on my hands, I’d grab the bales by the twine and toss them as far as I could toward the trailer, trying to move quickly while also ignoring how much I could already feel this work in my arms, legs, and knees. I grabbed a bale from the back wall, and as I lifted it up off the stack, I uncovered two very tiny, very fuzzy kittens. One of them appeared as though they were dressed in a little black and white tuxedo, and the other was all orange, with its fur sticking out in every direction. 

Farmer Bill saw my hesitation and almost immediately realized what had caused me to pause. 

“No,” he said slowly and firmly. 

“I wasn’t even thinking about it,” I sighed as I carefully put the hay bale back. But truthfully, I was thinking about it.

I grew up in the suburbs, and as a little kid, we had a dog but no cats. I had family members who lived in the country, though, and it always seemed like there were a few extra cats wandering around their porches. 

One day, I remember peeking under my aunt’s wooden porch steps to find five or six small kittens who must have only been a couple of weeks old at the time. As a five year old, I fell in love with them instantly, and I’m still not sure how my parents pulled me away.

That winter day in the haymow, when we left our neighbor’s farm, we had a trailer full of hay, but no extra kittens. It was fine, though, because when we got back, I found one of our own farm cats hanging around our porch with a mouthful of mouse to proudly show us. 

These cats belong on our farm just as much as our pigs, goats, or chickens do. They have their own jobs, and they excel at them: They stand vigil by our feed bags, keeping the rodent population down; they force me to pause and take a couple of extra minutes to scratch behind their ears; they make me laugh when they don’t quite pull off the acrobatics they were attempting. One of our cats even rides around in our UTV with the farm dog and me while we do chores, the three of us sitting on the bench seat next to each other until the cat has reached his destination and jumps out. 

Ultimately, they add joy to my days in tiny, countless ways.

Despite their fantastic job performance, Farmer Bill still won’t admit he’s a cat person. I’ll admit it proudly, though: I’m a farm cat person, and I’m not ashamed.

(Bottomland Farm, located in Berkshire, N.Y., can be contacted via email at farmer@bottomlandfarm.com.)