MEN! Who put them in charge!

Every morning at the same time, we all go out into the fields to harvest wheat. Inevitably, the men will say, “Ingrid, take the women to the hill fields and work there today.”

The hill fields are, well, uh, on hills. Maybe one day, a century or three from now, someone will come up with a way to harness a horse’s powerto make cutting wheat easier, but now all we have are muscle power and scythes.

While the men cut the level fields, we women have to climb the hill fields and spend all day whacking away on slopes. All of us have developed a condition where one leg is shorter than the other. Works fine up there, but down on the farm we lean sideways when we walk. The men jokingly say we all walk on hill heels. We’d like to give all of them permanent wedgies.

Then there’s the issue of how they play fast and loose when clocking in and out on the hourglass. We’re expected to work sunup to sundown with a 30-minute break for lunch, while they take breaks to smoke their pipes, talk sports (which farm-league team “baled”), have plowing contests, play Hide and Go Sheaf—absolutely anything that means that a good day’s work for them is from 9:00-noon.

And THEN there’s the problem that shared division of labor won’t be on anybody’s radar in our lifetimes, so the men are off work the minute they leave the fields. We still have to cook, clean, employ “best practices” parenting skills, and mend their darn socks. We drop in bed exhausted, and they can’t figure out why there’s no hanky left in our panky. (Who cares?  We keep having babies.)

Still, I wouldn’t want to give up the fieldwork entirely. It enables us to hold onto that most desirable and marketable trait in farm women: “Sturdiness.”

Copyright © 2025 John Arthur Robinson