I remember my aunts visiting when I was a little girl and telling me I would miss the farm when I grew up and moved away. I thought they were silly old ladies. I remember my Grandpa Max lamenting all the people who had to miss the sunrise since they were still curled up in bed while we were fortunate enough to be out working in the pipe field. I thought he was crazy.
They were right, I was wrong. I miss the farm.
I will always consider it one of my greatest blessings to have been raised on a farm. The life lessons are just so many and so easy to come by. It's hard to narrow the list down because it's more a way of life than specifics, but here is what I miss:
#23 - Moving Pipe - I never actually hated the moving pipe part of moving pipe, just the bothersome hours it required. 5:30 in the morning? No thanks. I remember many dark, cold mornings in the pipe field and that specific part I don't miss. Same goes for moving pipe in the blazing early evening heat while trying to battle mosquitoes. But, the sunrise? I miss seeing that. And the smell of dirt and mud? I miss that. And working together with my family? I miss that.
#24 - Driving swathers/combines/tractors - I am kind of a loner. I like a lot of quiet time to myself. I do not get enough these days. Driving on the farm gave me plenty of time for that. It was an ideal job for me.
#25 - Pulling Rye - Pulling rye doesn't even really happen much on the farm anymore, but we used to gather a crew and go walk through the fields looking for wild rye. It was easy to pull and I usually had some friends on the work crew, so it wasn't really a bad job. Basically, it was just walking through fields and pulling a few weeds. Even as a kid, I liked pulling rye in the evenings. The only part of pulling rye I don't miss is when we would go in the mornings. It started out okay, but by the time we finished up late in the morning, it was always really hot. I did not like that part.
#26 - Saturday Night - It was crazy busy around our house in the summertime. My dad worked loooong hours, usually farming long after the rest of us went to bed. When I was a teenager, one of my favorite things was to wait and listen on Saturday night for him to come home. He always always always came home at about 11:59. My bedroom window was right by where he would park his truck when he came home and I loved hearing that diesel engine come home just in time for the Sabbath. I'm sure it was tempting to keep working some of those night, but it was a really good lesson for me to hear him coming home on time.
#27 - The sound of sprinklers - I loved leaving my windows open in the summer. I probably never closed them from May until September. One of the main reasons was I loved listening to the sound of the sprinklers in the field. I like the sound of lawn sprinklers too, but the nice, even staccato of sprinkler pipe is completely soothing to me.
#28 - Working with my Family - I think most parents want to teach their kids to be hard workers. Sometimes, I have to invent jobs for my kids just because I want them to learn to work. There was always plenty of work to be done on the farm {although at the time I was totally convinced that the "rock picking" job was invented just to punish us}. My best co-workers ever were my family. I worked with my siblings and parents and grandparents and some cousins that came to stay every summer. It was fun to be out there with them and laugh together and work together.
#29 - Harvest - This list is getting a little long, but harvest time was just so great. It was always busy and hard work, but so rewarding to be able to feel like accomplished something. Even as a little kid, I remember sitting on top of the pile of wheat in the back of the truck and being so proud of how much wheat my dad had cut.
Just so I don't totally over-romanticize life on the farm, here are some things I don't miss: mosquitoes, setting up pipe, waking up early every single day of summer vacation, missing activities with friends to move pipe. And of course, the very worst job on the farm, answering the CB radio and having to call a farm store with some obscure question. It was such punishment to take those calls.
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