As I have mentioned in other posts, I was raised on a farm. I recall being raised on a farm as a gift and something I definitely treasure. I actually considered myself lucky that I was raised on a farm because I learned lessons that would stay with me the rest of my life.
One of the very first things you learn living on a farm is that there is really never any days off. There is always something that had to be done. Feed the stock, milk the dairy cattle, mend that broken fence before Bossy got out, clean this or that, repair this or that. Sunday was the only real day where work slowed down to the absolute necessary jobs.
In my era, there were no fancy toys for us kids. Nothing electronic or the like. Most of our toys revolved around farming. With the exception of baseball equipment. In fact, no Christmas list would have been complete without at least a few farming toys. All us kids around the area had our own farm sets. What we wanted was more toy tractors, more farm animals, more farm building and anything else that would make your “farm” bigger.
After I was grown up and had a family of my own, I really look back and have more love and understanding of my mother. It didn't matter how hard your mom tried for us to have “good clothes” and “chore clothes,” and/or “good shoes” and “chore shoes,” everything you had turned into clothes you got dirty outside.
Some of the lessons we kids learned on the farm were the most random things and most of the time we learned them the hard way. For Examples: One learned that if you got stuck in the mud while wearing your muck boots, you might just as well stay put and wait for help. It didn't take you long to learn to avoid crawling through or over barbed wire fences. I still have the scares today I earned learning that lesson. I learned the hard way that even though that little mouse looked cute, the darn things bite
As a kid on a farm you have some unique experiences kids in cities don't have. When real young, you have the experience of being chased by a chicken. You also have the fun of being bucked off a horse. I mentioned being cut by a barb-wire fence. As a kid, you just haven't lived until you have been kicked by a cow. Of course you have fallen face first in mud, fallen out of a tree and/or have fallen off a tractor/truck/trailer on a few occasions. You know something? All those things it did not slow you down one bit.
One of the best experiences was that you were really able to bond with your dad. Some of the best bonding time with your dad came from sitting on his lap in the tractor. I have mental pictures of us going up and down the fields with me sitting on dad's lap and I holding onto the steering wheel just like I was actually operating the tractor.
For most farm kids, mom was the best cook and made the best home-cooked meals. She was also the best at making those daily bumps, scrapes and bruises that we would always get all better.
Now things were much different back in my day but I could operate equipment, drive a tractor, drive the farm truck and run the 4-wheeler at a very young age. Long before you could ever get away with it these days.
By the age of 7 or 8, I could tell if a cow was calving or not. I got to see more live animal births by the age of 8 than most adults have seen these days. I gave you a real understanding and appreciation for living creatures.
We kids learned to have manners and learned to respect your elders. I wouldn't dare talk back to my folks - not if I wanted to be able to sit down for a the next week.
I remember well that the older I got, the more responsibilities and chores I was given. We kids weren't slaves and we weren't “overworked.” My parents were teaching us kids one of the most valuable lessons any person could learn – that is responsibility. We learned and understood the value of hard work, commitment and especially we learned that a good character was important.
Of all the lessons we kids learned, the most important one was that we learned at a very young age that you needed to pray every day. Granted, yes we need to do that every single day. However, you prayed for things most kids would not even think about. You prayed for rain during a drought. You prayed for a good harvest. You prayed for sunshine when hay needed to be made. You prayed for your animals. You understood just how important faith in farming is. Most of all you understood that without Jesus in our lives, we had no life.
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