Making Assumptions

At work the other day I asked for a scoop shovel. You see, the different work stations generate a lot of saw dust and shavings only it is made of vinyl, not wood. I operate a corner cleaner, or rather, cleaners. I run two at a time, and someone else runs one behind the ones I run, so together we made a lot of saw dust. At the end of the day we clean our work area before the next shift takes over. Unfortunately, the other machinist blows all her dust to my side and then leaves it for me. The welder, which is the process right before the corner cleaners gets some dust because the actual saws which cut their parts leave a lot of the dust on the parts and it falls off when they weld it, so they too have some to add to the mess. Several people on my side work to clean up the dust and shavings from the other side, but my section is the worst with yards several inches deep. You can see why I might want a scoop shovel rather than a large dust pan.

The problem I had was not requesting the shovel, it was the smart Alec comment from one of the hardware guys. He used to work at a saw mill and admittedly knows about working with a scoop shovel all day, and he knows I come from a farm so should not be surprised that I too know how to use one. He actually had the nerve to say I didn't know how hard it was to use a scoop shovel. The shavings and dust from the vinyl isn't actually heavy; there's just a lot of it and it takes a long time so he should have just kept his mouth shut.

I stood there ready to pound him for such a foolish comment, but the welder operator also heard him and jumped on him so I wouldn't have to. He used to work on a farm so he knew what he was talking about. "Never assume that just because she is a woman she doesn't know about hard work or how to work hard with a shovel. She could probably work circles around you!"

I thanked him, but it got me to thinking about just how much I have done with a scoop shovel. This is not exclusive to me of course, farmers, male and female, young and old, know about this dreaded tool, or as my husband calls it, a s--t spoon.

When my eldest son was only three he knew how to use one of these shovels, even though he didn't take a lot at a time, after all, he was three, but he was 'helping mom' empty a one ton pick up truck with high side panels of hog feed. We had to shovel the feed off the truck into the feeders that were taller than the truck, even with the sides on.We sometimes emptied a couple a day to get the feeders filled. After I became pregnant with our second son and got a few months along, I told my husband he was just going to have to pony up the cash and have the feed company bring their truck out to fill the feeders. He drove a truck and wasn't often home to do the job himself or he would have been doing all that shoveling.

We also had an old hay wagon someone had put 8-foot sides on to use with a combine. We planted grain sorghum and combined it into that wagon and my son and I emptied it out by hand into 55 gallon drums, filled them with water to soak the grain and a few days later used it to slop the hogs. They love soured sorghum, by the way.

We unloaded sawdust from a sawmill for the garden and liter from a turkey farm for fertilizer for garden as well.

In Wisconsin, the scoop shovel was used for cleaning behind cows, the aisle and gutter when the clean out chain refused to work, as it sometimes did (and still does), and we had one for cleaning the feed aisle of silage that had gone uneaten in order to feed it to the outside young stock and feed the fresh to the inside milking stock. I have shoveled out hog pens as well. It is all heavy work and takes quite a while, sometimes several hours. We have to clean out silos also, sometimes using a large pitch fork (another invaluable tool) and sometimes that shovel.

All of this is taken care of by all members of a farm family, regardless of age or gender as long as they are physically able. So please, never make the assumption a woman does not know how to work hard or that a child does not know how to work hard or hasn't. If we come from a farm or small family business where labor is involved, we know.