Listening to our 9 year old son facetime my mom on her birthday to tell here all about his day, on the farm, during his mid winter break really warmed my heart. It made me stop and realize that being raised on a farm really has an impact on how we raise our kids.

It was not the best day for my husband. The boar (a boy pig-remember I was a city girl so I understand that some of you may not know exactly what a boar is) he put in with the sows (girl pigs) ran right through the fence and over to the neighbors. The truck with the cattle trailer still attached got stuck in the mud and snow. The kids were fighting with each other about which door of the truck someone got in, he had to drop everything to take the kids to a doctors appointment in the middle of the afternoon, and when the boar did come back he wandered in the chicken coop- where he got locked in and the door nailed shut for a couple hours so my husband could find his sanity and build a stronger, better pen, in the barn, for him where he could be all alone . Some days are just unpredictable and hard…..and that’s farming; actually that’s life!

But hearing our son retell his version of the day to my mom, recalling his favorite part was that he got to ‘drive’ dad’s truck- with the radio blasting rock ‘n roll- while my husband pulled it out with the tractor; that my friends is something that warms our hearts and makes us smile. He didn’t really drive the truck, but in his 9 year old mind that’s what he did to help his dad during this tough day of farm life. It gives me hope that even though we don’t know how to stop the fighting about so and so climbing in on ‘their’ side of the truck, we do know how to provide memories I only pray they take with them for a lifetime.