A note:
Just in case you're wondering, this is not the official website for Green Being Farm. This is just my blog from the summer I spent at the farm.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Hands



I fell off my bike a two weekends ago, and sprained both of my wrists. Nothing severe, but bad enough that I couldn't use my hands for two days, type much for a week, and still have trouble opening jars or doing anything that involves gripping whilst twisting. But by the middle of the first week I was back hand-weeding a little, and by the end of this week I was able to use the tractor again for light work (but actually it was a stupid thing to do because the tractor kicks so much that occasionally I felt some pain).

Luckily I have great housemates that took care of me, and helped me weed the garden right when it was getting a little out of control -- I'd been neglecting it to do other things around the farm, and of course, to get the potatoes in (more on that in the next post).

All of this made me think about how important the health of my body is to the work that I'm doing. Without my hands I'm essentially useless. Can't weed, can't seed, can't plant, can't lift, can't ... etc.. At least, not in the ways I'm used to, and not with the tools I have. I did figure out new ways to do old things, like lifting bags of feed with my elbows and forearms, but mostly I just paced around wishing I had a mini-scuffle hoes I could strap to each arm.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Jon,
if you still feel pain you should get an XRay. I fell off my bike and thought I'd sprained my wrist. Turns out this tiny hard-to-heal bone was broken (scaphoid). The first doc missed it too.