The days are filled with the same routine, the work day beginning before dawn, long before in winter, and lasting outdoors as long as there is daylight on most days. There are no weekends off -- animals don't know what those are and need to be fed, watered and tended to every single day and very often nights, too.
Fences always need mending, as does just about everything else from harnesses to pants knees. Machines break just when you need them most and the replacement part you have to have is back-ordered, so you must fix it yourself. That's what the machine shop and welding equipment are for.
The weather rarely cooperates and is often your enemy. Coyotes will literally eat your profit, such as it is, if you don't deal with them. A gopher hole or rattlesnake can ruin your day in a most uncomfortable way.
But the people you work with or help to do their jobs are decent, kind, peaceable, polite, honest, reliable, sincere and a pleasure to be around. They are not rude or snarky or lascivious, nasty or backstabbing. Maybe they would be if they weren't so tired. But I doubt it. Being constantly out in nature, animals your abiding companions and care, seeing how wide the land is, how vast the sky, how small you are, how indifferent nature is to your life or any individual life, makes a person humble and not prone to the vanity and egotism that drives envy, malice, resentment, greed and lust. Plus, the type of person who likes this kind of life and lives it by choice over any other is just not like those who prefer the bright lights of the big city and the stimulation of the madding crowd.
So I shall cease my pining for the life that was, or a different life that could be. This one I have now is the best one I could possibly have and I need to lean into it and embrace it.
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