I don’t know how much mending goes on out there in farm country anymore, but at our farm it’s a drudgery that has managed to survive decades of both marriage and farm life denial.

There have been times when I have been standing on my head over the sewing machine, sweating, and wrestling in a pair of insulated coveralls that needed attention, when my husband would walk in the house — totally unaware that I was in the midst of my own brand of hand-to-hand combat, and became the recipient of a river rapids-like slew of slang words (said aloud or not), red cheeks and knitted eyebrows.

I’m pretty sure there’s a reason he keeps a whiskey bottle out in the shop.

I used to wonder how a person could bodily assault so many pair of jeans — that is, until I became more involved on the farm myself after I left my job in town.

It wasn’t until then that I became more forgiving of the way barbed wire could grab hold of clothing (and thighs) and not let go; or the way blue jeans would rip out on a humid day.

Surely that had nothing to do with the brownie crumbs I’d find on my chin first.

Well, lambing time this spring was soon to arrive when my husband approached me about fixing his chore sweatshirt. It was thin from wear and had at least a billion little holes in the large front pocket and larger holes all around the rest of the front of the sweatshirt.

Assuming it should have found its way from the end of my fingers to the fire of the burn hole, I decided I could at least fix the large holes, given how many holes there were. I did that and hung it up in the garage to get (or keep) it in the rotation.

I was secretly aghast when he came back into the house carrying it while walking towards me. It could only mean one thing — quality control had rejected my workmanship.

He said, (quite carefully), “I need to have these smaller holes fixed in the pocket, too, otherwise the lambing bands will fall out. Can you do that?”

For a guy who is a lot longer on guts than he is on swimming basics, I thought he was skating on some pretty thin ice.

I took a stand for myself, “Don’t you have a gazillion sweatshirts out there you can wear? You get new ones every year from seed companies. Why don’t you get out a new one out?”

But as you can expect, he didn’t want any of those sweatshirts to wear during lambing time. He wanted THAT one … broken-in and ready to go.

“I already have paint on this one from paint branding, and it’s thinner, so it doesn’t get so hot when I’m working in the lambing barn,” he said.

Of course.

I fixed it right away so it didn’t have time to sit on my mending pile and mock me. That sweatshirt really would make a wonderful sacrifice on the burn pile. But my husband is from the old country, where nothing is thrown away and everything that might have a single breath left in it is deemed fixable. You may need to use it sometime.

Someday I will appreciate that quality in him, because it just might answer the mystery of why he hasn’t tossed me aside yet. Apparently, after 40 years, I’m broken-in yet still fixable, and he never knows when he will need to use me for some project I don’t even know about yet.

When that happens, you can believe I’ll be nosing around first for jeans and sweatshirts that have the right thickness and amount of holes (or patches) in them for the job.

Apparently, that’s how it’s done.

So women of the farm who still mend yet, I applaud all you do to help the bottom line of your farm, and contribute to your family fortune. Without those fingers that have seen and felt the dagger end of the sewing machine needle and broken hundreds more over heavy denim and duck — you are just one part of what makes the farm — and the farmer — successful.

And in another of your super powers, all you show for it is a temporary need for your own mental health recovery.

Whiskey bottles serve their purposes both in the shop — and in your sewing room.

Karen Schwaller writes from her grain and livestock farm near Milford, Iowa. She can be reached at kjschwaller@outlook.com. Note new address.