SANGERVILLE – It was daybreak, and Shirley Campbell stepped from her warm kitchen out into the crisp, morning air and headed for her barn.

The gray-haired woman trod gingerly over the dirt and gravel driveway with her steady companion, Faye, a mixed breed dog, beside her. “You’re getting old just like me, aren’t ya?” she told her dog.

At the sound of her voice, geese began honking from their pens, loose chickens ran to greet her, and horses in a pasture headed in her direction shaking their manes.

“See? They know I’m coming,” Campbell said. “Animals know a lot more than people give them credit.”

Poking her head into the darkened barn, Campbell cried out, “How are ya this morning?” In return, she received a whinny, a gobble and a baa. The tenants then got a pat on the head or a hug, a verbal cluck or a word of encouragement.

This is the beginning of a day that would not end until dark for this 82-year-old farmer, who works seven days a week.

“I was born on a farm, brought up on a farm and married a farmer,” Campbell, who will turn 83 on Sept. 28, said last week. It is her compassion for animals and the rugged work involved to keep them healthy that have kept her on her feet, she believes.

“If I just sat around the house and did nothing and read, that’s where I’d be today,” Campbell said.

Instead, she can be found hauling long, green hoses throughout the day to fill watering troughs, shoveling manure, helping an animal deliver its newborn, tossing baled hay from a haymow down onto the barn floor, then toting the hay around the farmyard, stopping long enough to make sure each pen gets a portion.

“You live on a farm you have all this stuff you’ve got to do to take care of them,” Campbell explained.

“I can do anything most men can do,” she said tartly. “I can lift a 5-gallon pail of water, a 50-pound bag of grain, I got no problem lifting. Whatever I need to do, I’ll do it.”

Campbell’s son, Brian Campbell, lives with her and helps on the farm when his daytime job allows. Her daughter and son-in-law, Betty and Junior Richardson, and two grandsons and their families, who live nearby, also help when they can.

But it is she who runs the operation and makes sure the animals are comfortable.

“I know you’re hungry,” she told one of the mares in a pasture on a recent day. Nuzzling its head with her own, she left and returned with a bale of hay. Pulling the sleeve of her sweatshirt down over her hand, she grabbed the electrified fence, lifted it and climbed inside the pasture with the animals.

The horses rubbed up against her and nearly lifted her off her feet before she managed to spread the hay on the ground. Asked if she has ever has been afraid of the animals, Campbell replied, “Good God, no!”

A nonsmoker and a nondrinker, Campbell said she wouldn’t hesitate to throw a saddle on one of the horses on the farm and go for a ride, but she hasn’t lately because she doesn’t have the time.

The woman with the complexion of a model did admit that she has taken a few flips. In fact, she broke her hip in one fall a few years ago.

And, she added, the electrified fence had zapped her. “Once you get lifted a few times, you are careful. It will smarten you up awfully quick,” she said.

Nothing seems to ruffle Campbell, not the weeds in her garden, the dust in her kitchen or the pile of manure that rankly perfumes the air. The worst part of being a farmer is having a sick animal, she said. And when animals do get sick, she plays the part of the nurse unless she feels the conditions warrant a veterinarian’s care.

“It’s quite a life on the farm, I tell ya,” Campbell said. “I’m just an old lady in my 80s, but I just keep going.”