Diaries of a Farmer's wife...

How do you prepare yourself for bad news? How do you “accept” and “move on” when bad things happen that are out of your control? I need to learn, and fast. One storm can ruin a $80,000 pivot…actually two $80,000 pivots; and “sand-blast” the tiny corn leaves, leaving them scarred and tattered. What if we get four of those storms this spring? Three next year? Five the year after that? What about hail, flooding, early frost, late frost, disease? One or all of these things, completely out of our control, could easily happen every year, and likely will. Yes I realize that’s why we have insurance, but it’s still a lot to deal with! In ten years I’ll be a twitching, frazzled mess! It’s so easy to say “don’t worry , it’s out of our hands” but I need to live and believe that! Pray for me to trust the Creator of the Universe with my husband’s life, my life (the lives of cute little babies when they come), and our corn’s life. (I feel pathetic reading over that sentence, but I mean it!)

<3 Emily

This season is so new and different for me now that I’m a farmer’s wife. There is always the excitement of summer being just around the corner, but on the farm spring brings some of the most spectacular smells, sights and feelings of the year!

   Tractors and implements come out of hibernation, ready to turn up the soil and watch it drink in the warm sunshine and spring rain. Standing in a freshly tilled field, with rain clouds heavy above your head,  it’s a smell you’ll never forget and can’t get enough of!

    Then there’s the calves. Oh the calves…. standing so awkwardly on their long legs, while their mommas keep them looking so fluffy and soft. When they start to play you won’t be able to help laughing out loud, watching them frolic around so childishly, on their “sea legs”. 

    Spring is also the beginning on the farm. Everything we do throughout the year starts here, with one tiny seed after another. Farmers spend every day giving those seeds exactly what they need to grow into the biggest, healthiest crop they can be!

I woke up at the luxurious time of 8:30 AM to the sound of birds chirping, and the smell of a fresh, cool spring morning. I couldn’t help but think to myself “this is going to be a lovely day”. Case, as usual, was laying at the foot of the door, waiting for me to make an appearance. I let him in to say good morning and give him his much needed affection, then told him to “sit” and “stay” on the new “doggie mat” we purchased last night. Normally he is pretty good at those commands, but in the morning he gets what I like to call “the stares”. He won’t take his eyes off of me, or be further than 2 feet from my side. It’s not a possessive gesture, more that his eyes are saying “I adore you”. It’s pretty hard to resist, but I knew I had to teach him to stay on that mat. I made him “sit” and “stay” again as I sat down to eat my cereal, but after two bites, he was at my feet. I placed him back on the mat and repeated the commands, a little more firmly. Two bites later and he was at my feet again. I stayed tough, and put him back on the mat, and this time he laid down looking like he finally understood. I kept eating and was reading some of my notes from church on sunday when I looked over and saw Case dragging the doggie mat next to my chair, where he then laid down on it and started staring at me. Umm….wow. I decided we could practice staying on the mat later, got the leash and we headed out for a walk. As usual I had to keep giving his head little shoves so he would quit staring at me and watch where he was going. This morning was especially bad, and as we got off the street and onto the sidewalk, Case walked right into the curb, and literally fell down. Luckily no one was there to witness his little blunder and we kept going. We passed within a foot of a dead squrriel, a dead bird and a live bird, and he didn’t notice any of them…too busy staring. As we finished the walk, and he started behaving like a normal dog I was thinking of ways to fix his little weirdness, but the more I thought the more I realized, what are dogs for, if not to love us so much it hurts ?      

It was 12 degrees this morning and according to weather.com it felt like -3. I texted Andrew to tell him how cold it felt outside, and he texted back, “I know, I am fixing fence”. Of course, he also had to take hay to the cows and break the ice in their water tank. Sometimes I think the things farmers do for their livestock is inhumane…