Aug. 1, 2008
S&T Fri -- "Farm Families Have Always Gone Green"
Yesterday, I received the most delight surprise in the mail. Two months ago, I was reading about 100 mile diets, gardening on city lots, etc. As I pondered on all of those things, thoughts of my childhood came to my mind, and I jotted down a little something on my laptop.
My sweet MIL, who is editor of a local newspaper in her area (I'm so proud of her for fulfilling her dream!), is always interested in my musings that I share on this blog, along with any private ones I may have. So off went the document to her via email, to give her a little smile.
Imagine my surprise when she replied to me that she loved it and wanted to know if I would consider submitting it for a Going Green section they were planning on for the end of July. So I agreed, and didn't think about it much more, as I was busy being a wife & mom, was delighted to be working on another writing opportunity God had sent my way (writing a chapter for a Nature Study ebook TOS will be putting out soon), and preparing & attending Creation Camp.
Well, yesterday the newspaper arrived from her and within the section was my article! Thank you my dear, sweet mother-in-love* for helping another person fulfill her dreams.
*What a privledge it is to have her for a mother-in-law, but she is far more than that. She welcomed me from the very moment we met and has been one of the dearest people in my life. Although a 17 hour drive separates our families, we chat via email or phone weekly, and she is always interested in our going-ons and encourages us. We may be bound through the legal law, but there is a bind between us even stronger for the love and respect we have for one another.
FARM FAMILIES HAVE ALWAYS "GONE GREEN"
Have you heard about the 100-Mile Diet? It is becoming a popular movement today in some circles, encouraging people to eat locally. Much of our current food supply comes from 1500 miles away – that’s right 1500 miles!
People are saying, “Enough of that! Let’s get our food locally, fresh & organic, and in season!” They are supporting their local farmers’ markets; buying from health food stores that carry local produce, meats, and dairy products; even replacing some of the sod in their yards for a small garden, all with goal to have the food on their plate come from less than 100 miles around.
Hum… seems like this farm kid’s parents were hip before they knew it – they just did the 100-mile diet out of necessity and by following how their parents grew up, and their parents before them. Seems like this new “idea” is just a matter of getting back to the way things used to be.
My folks are 3rd generation farmers; my older brother is currently the 4th generation farmer for the land that has been in our family for about 90 years. Growing up, my mom was “super-woman” of farm-wives, but then again so were most of the farm-wives around us. Typical of most of the farmers around us, we had a large garden, chickens, beef cattle, etc. and what ended up on our dinner plates came from our own farms.
We have pictures of Mom pulling my older siblings in a wagon while she tended her geese. We slept on feather pillows, thanks to those geese and my mom’s pillow making abilities. We sliced fresh sweet corn off the cob every summer to put into the freezer. Strawberries would be sliced, sugared, and frozen for toppings for ice cream (the home-made kind, of course, made with milk from our dairy cattle and eggs from our chickens). And I remember how sad Mom was when her huge strawberry patch had to go to make way for a much needed grain bin!
Vegetables were enjoyed fresh out of the garden and the remainder canned. We milked twice a day, brought the milk in, strained it, separated the milk from the cream, sold some to a few town people, and had the rest to drink and cook with. Mom even made fresh butter from the cream.
A whole cow that had spent its entire (short) life on our farm was usually wrapped in neat white paper in the huge chest freezer located in our cellar. I remember many scary times of going down into the dim light of a single 60-watt light bulb, getting out steak, hamburger, etc. to bring up for Mom to cook for dinner. There were many nights we kids, sick of beef, complained, “Oh, Mom! Not T-bone steak AGAIN?!”
Every spring Mom ordered dozens of little fuzzy yellow balls of baby chickens, or peeps. For those of you who don’t know chickens, in my mom’s, aunts’, and grandmothers’ minds, there were two kinds: layers & fryers. When grown, the layers lived a life of producing eggs on our farm and my mom made a small income off their eggs and the above mentioned milk from our cattle, while the fryers… well, became fried chicken. I remember learning anatomy when we butchered those chickens every late summer – that might be why I had the stomach to be a nurse.
I also became an expert at holding my breath for long periods of time when it was my turn to gather eggs from the chicken coop (due to all the good “natural fertilizer” in there). My sister and I also had the joy of cleaning the eggs before putting them into the cartons – they aren’t always the nice clean white things you see in the store!
Farming is hard work, especially keeping up on daily chores. We kids whined – a lot! We always had chores to do. We would complain that our other friends had nowhere near the number of chores or amount of hard work. We did daily farm chores, helped with inside house work, did dished by hand every morning before school and every night after supper, walked beans, cut thistles out of pastures, were in 4-H, helped with seasonal work around the farm, etc.
But, wow, what an amazing work ethic we each have now. We shake our heads when we see people who don’t know how to work, or who fail to have any initiative. I’m afraid it’s becoming an epidemic.
People are amazed when they see “little, petite me” lifting heavy things, doing hard work, etc. We helped at a work day last spring at a friend’s house, as a group of us cleaned up his acreage. When he commented that he has never seen another woman work as hard as me, I was a bit amazed. In my family, you just worked HARD. It was normal.
When an elderly neighbor recently offered to help my husband and I move a mattress box spring into our house, my husband declined, thanking him but saying, “My wife is one strong lady. We’ve got it.” The neighbor turned to me, looking at me like, “How can your husband make you do this?” I replied, in a joking way, “I grew up on a farm. If you didn’t learn how to work, you got yelled at or made fun of.” J
Plus, it was the only way your family would make a living or have anything to eat…
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I have been the bride to the most gracious, sweetest man in the world for the last 11 years. What I love most about him is that he is always striving to be a better husband, father, and child of God.
