John Deere Tractor

It's funny that my favorite time to think and reflect on things comes while riding around on my John Deere lawn tractor. Today I spent several hours mowing and spraying and had some great time to think about life.  My thoughts keep coming back to this small piece of the planet I call home.  I have lived on the same farm now since  I was 5 year old, that's when mom and me moved here.  I now live in another house with my family and am a 1/4 mile away from my parents but still living on the family farm.  I love this farm like I love my family!  I stole that line from Sarah Palin in her show about Alaska.  I remember as a small boy playing in the barn and throwing walnuts at the horses in the pasture.  We use to have about 250 head of sheep up here but after they kept getting out and eating mom's flowers, they had to go away.  It was about this time in my life when I learned that not all animals that live on a farm stay on a farm, some move to the freezer!  That was a tough lesson to learn...it was such a cute lamb.  There are the animals that lived here till they past away from old age.  My favorite was a donkey named Willy Bill!  I miss him all the time, it's been 22 years since he died but that donkey was a good friend, and I loved him!  Over the years we have had several other animals: goats, llamas, chickens,ducks, pigs.  The goats were a bummer something killed them so I had to get ride of them.  The llamas sucked butt, those fricken things can spit and jump a fence with ease.  The pigs are yummy and kinda fun to raise.  My chickens and ducks are cool, by far my favorite animals very easy to care for and produce yummy eggs

I remember as a kid I was so embarrassed that my father was a poor farmer, he was often dirty and smelly.  Dad never drove a "new" truck his was always a old farm truck.  I was jealous of my friends who's dad's worked in offices and drove new cars.  I wanted to be like my friends who got to go on vacations in the summer.  Can't do that as a farmer, summer is the busy time, always too much to do.  At times dad would work from sun up to sun down.  At about 10 I got to start working with him.  My job was to follow him with the little Massey Ferguson 175 and disk up the stuff the big disk missed.  I loved working with Dad and working the ground.  Today as I sprayed and mowed I let my thoughts drift back to being a kid and driving a tractor turning the dirt.  Now At 39 I would give anything to be able to farm with my dad.  I now understand why he loved farming there is something spiritual about growing crops.

The most profound thought of the day was that my children are the 7th generation to live on this piece of property.  Most of the land has been sold over the years but we still owe the small piece of the property.  There is enough land left to hobby farm and that's what do.  My goal is to raise all my own meat and raise a big garden.  I hope my hobby farming makes the family who has gone before me proud of me and that I am still trying to make this land work. I do love this place!   Rick