The town I grew up in is a pretty small town, probably no bigger than 1200 people...actually let's just Wikipedia this. I know they have to have an official answer! Yep 1179 people as of the 2000 census. But I lived on a farm about 7 miles from town in an area where everybody knows everybody.
My dad is a 5th generation farmer and I grew up in an my great grandfathers house- the farm house that my grandfather grew up in.
My grandfather and Dad currently manage about 2500 acres. They grow corn, soybeans, hay…; my dad even grows cotton all the way up in KY. They also raise red Angus cattle. It is in my dad’s blood, and he is great at it. My dad, (actually both my parents) are two of the most amazing people I know. Despite common conceptions of the farmer, to be good at it you have to be intelligent. Now not all farmers are as smart as my dad- he really is one of the smartest men I know. He fixes cars or tractors, can wire electrics, welds, builds fences, remove stumps, builds, he can do whatever you want him to do, literally! Not only does he have that kind of smarts, but he also has the book smarts. He understands yields and conversions, knows when to sell grain or cattle for the right price, he translates bushels/tons/whatever to different amounts whether it is a dollar figure or another measurement. He works with chemicals and fertilizer and understands what it does and why he is doing it. All in all he is a well rounded individual perfect for his job. No question that he loves it and that he was meant to be a farmer, probably the same is to be said for the 4 generation of the farmers in our family before him.
Anyways, I went home this weekend for the first time since June. I actually got out about on the farm with my dad. I haven’t done that in a long time and it was WAY over due. It got me thinking about the fact there is just my sister and me. The generation of generations of our direct blood line of farmers will come to an end. Kind of sad when you think of all the hard work that has been put into the farm over the past few centuries. My sister and I didn't really embrace the family business...aka we are not choosing farming as our career. We both moved to the city, to meet city boys (well Sarah did, she actually married one. Me, well I am working on that haha). My parents always urged us to be independent, do what we love… they never forced us to work on the farm unless we wanted to. But growing up in a rural community and living on a farm made for a really interesting childhood. I remember when I was little my sister and I would take an empty seed bag and a garden hoe to the pasture and fill it with thistles. Dad would give us 5 cents for every thistle we got out of the pasture. I have memories of Nutmeg the baby cow that we saved from the winter when the mom didn’t survive. We had to bottle feed him 2 times a day. We painted fences, we rode around on 3-wheelers and 4-wheelers, went horseback riding with our whole family every year for Thanksgiving, we had hay rides around Halloween with the church group, bailed hay, mulched the landscape, picked blackberries, mowed the lawn, went sledding, went strawberry picking with Mimi, went to KY lake, camping with the girl scouts….
One thing though that is important when considering my childhood memories are birds. Birds have always been a part of the mix on the farm too… One year my mom got attacked by geese... Yes, my mother way laying on the ground getting pecked by honking geese while all I could do was scream and hope they got off... Traumatizing day. Haha But we have always had geese. For one of my sister's science projects she decided to make a homemade incubator in comparison to a real incubator. For a few years we went around to the geese nests, collected eggs, incubated and hatched little chicks. We also had a phase when we had beanie (sp?) chickens. You couldn't walk outside our house without rubber boots or your poor shins would get pecked to death. I remember one time I got so scared of those birds attacking me I got on the backend of the semi truck parked by the barn and my grandma had to persuade poor crying me to get down. I still have a deep fear of those little birds! We had a pet goose, we named Goosey. Friendliest bird around and made for an amazing pet (minus the special prizes she left for the bottom of your shoe everywhere!) Just thinking back to all these times makes me realize what a childhood I had and how wonderful the simple life of a farm is for a kid.
At this point I am just rambling, but gosh was it good to go home this weekend!
No comments:
Post a Comment