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Welcome to our blog, menfranco general blog
and this post, my life in the farm.
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My life in the farm
-Horses are very strong and friendly farm animals, we used them to draw carts and to pull the plough when we were ploughing the fields. They sometimes seem very clever too, one is almost tempted to talk to the horses if there is nobody around.
My life in the farm
Dear readers, this
post is the continuation of our last post, The human side of farming. Now,
these posts we are posting, is my life story and I am writing these life story
articles and publishing them in short stories, so, this article is the
continuation of our previous article ‘my farm life chapter’; in this article,
we are also talking about my farm life in the farms of southern Italy when I
was young. Anyhow, here I would like to remind you that I am going to tell you
my life story just the way that I have lived it. Now, apart that this is my
life story and a true-life story, I need to point out that in those times life
was very different from today; for this reason, to understand some of my points
of view that I would like to make here, one should try to compare the present
way of life in the farms, which people are living today, to the time when I was
young.
From my life
experience that I am writing here I can assure you that life in the past was
much harder and boring than today. I am saying this to you dear readers,
because today you are living in this new and wonderful era of electronic
devices, and you can choose to listen, watch or play with these electronic
devices; and in doing so you may be able to enjoy yourself, and at the same
time you may be able to learn something useful from them, if you put your mind
to it; which is a good thing. But in those times, there was nothing similar, in
fact we could not even guess that these things were going to come up and they
would help humanity live a better life. So, we lived our boring and dull life
and we did not even know that it was boring, in fact we thought that we were
doing all right, since everybody else was doing the same things.
Therefore, I would
like to say to the youths of today wherever they are, I would like to ask you
this; could you just imagine a world that has no man-made electronics devises?
A world with not even a single push button devise that you could amuse yourself
with. Here I am talking about what we see today everywhere we go; we see people
with their mobile phones doing all sort of things, which is wonderful, if we
think about it. And then, you could compare this new way of living that we are
living today, with the old ways of living, while you are doing that just ask
yourself, how could anyone live in a very isolated environment where silence of
human voices reigns supreme days after days, except for a few phrases every now
and then. I suppose all this is hard to believe today, because wherever you go
there are these electronic devices that sing to you talk to you or inform you about
many things that are happening in the world. I could only say that this new way
of living is a lot better that is was in the past.
Anyhow, in those
times there was nothing like that, because those electronic devices that we
have today, they had not been invented yet, so, life was completely different
then, it was very quiet and boring and that’s how my farm-life was like when I
was young, and this sort of life I had to endure in my long stay in the farm
during my youth. So, let me describe a bit more about this life in the small
farms of Southern Italy in those days.
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The small farms of those days
Now, let me
describe a bit more how life was then. In the small family farms of those days
there was no electricity for a start, so, we had no electrical devices of any
sort not even a portable radio to listen to, because those devices had not come
out yet on the market, and even if there had been a portable radio on the
market we would not be able to afford one, you see, there wasn’t any money
around if you were farming in those days. I know that today it would be hard to
believe what I am saying, that in those times, we the farmers could not afford
to buy anything outside the bare things needed for surviving, but it was so, believe
me and I had to live with it.
So, I had to grow
up in this lonely environment mainly in the company of our farm animals, which
they don’t talk back to you when you say anything to them, they just listen and
everything ends there, even if there is a certain understanding between you and
those animals, so, you may feel that you have some sort of friends, but these
friends is as if they are not there. Therefore, as I grew up and became a
teenager I started to realize that I was falling behind to the rest of the
normal town community, in a social way. In order to understand what I am saying
here, I need to explain that even though I was working in the farm every day,
we were allowed to go to our home in town ones or twice a week in the evening
and when we were not too busy in the farm we could also spend every second
Sunday in town with the other members of our family that were permanently
living in town, this is the way of life that every farmer had to endure all
their life then, and this is how I was able to see and compare that I and the
other youths that were in the same position as I was whished that we had a
better life, so, I started to believe that we were all in a disadvantaged
position, but at the same time, we could do nothing to improve it.
As I have said
above, we were all in a disadvantaged position and becoming dull, as long as we
were in that position there was no way of improving ourselves; here I mean
everything at all could have helped us a bit, even the way of knowing what was
happening in the community, which the other boys in town seemed to know
everything and we seemed so dull when we were compared to them, also the ways
of expressing our self clearly was not easy, since we were forced to live a
lonely and taciturn way of life and therefore we did not speak much.
There were times
that I wanted so badly to have a radio like the people in town, so that at
least I could listen to a proper way of speech, or perhaps even a song or two,
and I could improve my knowledge that way, but it was not possible. Therefore,
I was stuck in that lonely world, where one is stuck for good with one’s own
company and thoughts day and night for ages; this is how we used to live our
young lives then, and there was not much that one could do to improve it, so,
let me explain a bit more that situation:
In the farms of
those days there were only a few people staying and working there, and they
would go on about doing their farm duty. So, they didn’t care to talk to you,
if you were much younger than them. So, as you can see, it was a very lonely
place to be in such farms when one was young, as I was.
Those people which
usually are staying in the farms don’t talk very much, since in their isolation
there is nothing much to talk about; so, they are used to be taciturn, and
there were days when only a few necessary phrases were exchanged between us; so,
conversation was very low indeed. Therefore, this way of life that I was living
then could only result about not being satisfactory for me later in life,
because I was very young and my needs would have been better served, if I had
been in a more sociable place to learn a more sociable way of life, and in
doing so, I could have overcome some of my personal shyness that usually
follows the people that don’t talk much. So, this staying in the farm when I
was young became later-on a great disadvantage for me, because it only made me
grow more isolated, and in the end, it made me feel even more isolated from the
rest of the world; and in this isolation, I had to grow up.
There were lots of
times when I was alone and nobody would be near me to say a single word, and
this was happening to me many days. So in my isolation I would start thinking
and learning things all by myself in my own way, anything at all that came into
my mind, or things that would happen in the farm, and when you are by yourself
for a very long time and think by yourself for a great length of time, you
don’t need to express your thoughts in words to yourself, therefore anything
that you learn may start being stored within your own mind in a different way,
you still learn things, perhaps even more accurate than when you learn with
words: The only drawback is that when you have to speak out, lots of times you
would not know what to say; not because you don’t know it, since in your mind
there is a very clear picture of what you need to say; but because you find it
hard finding the right words to express yourself. So, this is one of the great
disadvantages, which I and those youths who were unlucky like me, as they ended
up working in their own families’ farms at a very early age. I am sorry to say
it, but we had to put up with the hard consequences which have followed us for
the rest of our lives. Now allow me to describe a bit more the farm life of
those days.
I believe that this
post is becoming too long, so I will continue with my story in our next post
called, describing our farm life. See you then.
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Menfranco general blog
My life in the farm
IS TO BE CONTINUED
Next time with, describing our farm life
Menfranco general blog
My life in the farm
IS TO BE CONTINUED
Next time with, describing our farm life
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