Farm Girl
If you know me, you know that I have a strong dislike for anything to do with house work, cooking, etc. My mother was an AMAZING cook…but to me, that looked like A LOT of work.
What didn’t look like work was feeding, cleaning, and caring for the entire dairy herd. I was in charge of the calves at a very young age (5?) and boy was I proud as a peacock for that assignment. No joke. My calves were attended to, fed milk at just the correct temperature, weaned at the appropriate physical condition and kept clean at all times. This meant that I woke up ~5:15am, every day, before school…we started milking at 6, but there was cleaning and feeding of the dairy cows prior to milking. After school was the same routine. Winter required more feeding and cleaning due to daily housing, summer not so much.
When I wasn’t preoccupied with the calves, there were barn kittens and monitoring the soon to be momma cows. Summer breaks consisted of continuous exploration, looking for the next orphan that needed my attention…a baby bunny, an orphaned raccoon or fawn. I spent hours down by the pond and creek looking for baby paint turtles, baby ducks or geese, tadpoles, salamanders…built forts in the woods…found treasures along the railroad tracks, (even if it was scrap for Dad’s scrap runs). Never a dull moment, never bored, never in the house 😊. We had our imagination. What we didn’t have was more than 3 channels on the TV, cell phones or social media. We had fresh air, acres to play, responsibility and accountability…
Grateful to be born a farm girl…