This job stinks. Literally.

A road next to one of my dad's fields. Love it. 

Biting cold air. My hands aching as another callous began developing on my hands. The pungent smell of cow manure filling my nostrils. These are the things I remember from my first job- working on my father’s dairy farm.

During my junior high years, when I was desperate to make some spending money yet too young to get a typical part-time job, I made an unfortunate deal with my father that would actually make me dread Saturday mornings. I would do some chores around the farm and receive a modest payment. Sounded like a pretty sweet deal. My older brother, a long-time employee of our dad’s, shot me a look of “you’re going to regret this.”

And so my first day on the job began when I was 13 years old on a beautiful fall morning. As I lay curled up in my bed, I could hear my dad yelling at me from downstairs to eat some breakfast and come down to the barn. As I wiped the sleep from my eyes to look at the ridiculously early time on the alarm clock, the pangs of regret began to set in.

My weekly chore was filling up giant bins with sawdust and laying them in stalls for cows to lay in-just screams glamorous, right? And so this ordeal went on for hours: shovel sawdust in a giant bin; lift the bin over the metal stalls; lay the sawdust out; repeat. A pretty mindless task accompanied by a sore back and blistered hands. When this was finished, my elation of being free from ‘slave labor’ was cut short when I ran into my dad holding a giant brush. Pretty soon I found myself scrubbing the walls of the giant milking parlor. Another back-busting chore that made me strongly reconsider this whole arrangement.

And so this went on every Saturday morning for the next three years. Definitely not a thrilling job and certainly not my favorite job. But whether I knew it then or not, it was this job where I learned important values I carried into other jobs, such as responsibility, dedication and a hard work ethic. All these great lessons aside, I’m really glad that none of my recent jobs have required me to wade through cow manure.