Keep Manhattan

Yes, for those of you who may not know it, I grew up on a farm. Now, before you minimize, let me be clear.  Not a house in the country- a farm.  With a capital F.  I have watched them slaughter pigs on cold winter mornings, up close and personal, and can write down the steps..  I have, on more than one occasion, followed behind a tractor to pick up the potatoes as they were dug fresh from the ground.  And yes, Virginia, I have milked a cow.  Complete with side humor of spraying milk at the barn cats and watching them chase the milk down for a taste.  So, given the evidence, let's all agree that while I may indeed be a little on the prissy side, I did indeed start out on a farm.

For approximately the first 18 years of my life, I wouldn't have even admitted this information in crowds.  A farm.  A freakin' farm, for heaven's sake.  Does it get any more hick?  Oh my God, cows and pigs and chickens, and really, how much hay do we really need to grow?  That farm was the bane of my existence.  I hated the garden in the back yard.  Do you have any idea how many beautiful summer days were ruined by having to hoe weeds out of the rows?  Or pick beans?  Or pick up apples off the ground so they didn't rot? (Side note: this was particularly painful when Daddy had honeybees, because inevitably, apples did rot, and honey bees, well, they are mean.  People use the term "agressive" but that is an understatement.  They are ornery, and they will chase you.  Trust me on this.  I have the experience to prove it.).  And no, the fall did not bring any respite, because just when we went back to school, and the weekend was my only free time, it was time to cut down corn stalks.  If you have never had the pleasure of cutting and stacking corkstalks...thank your Lord every day.  It is nasty, and those corn knives are not our friends.  Exhibit A - at 42 years old, I still bear the scar on the back of my leg from an afternoon where the cornstalk and I had an altercation.  I can't really say who won, given Exhibit A). And then there were the cows.  Cows that were constantly needing to be fed, or moved, or corralled to take to the slaughterhouse.  Or worse, cows that somehow managed to get out.  Yes, escape.  They would end up in all sorts of places, at the most inopportune times.  Nothing better than looking out in the front yard and seeing 16 or 17 cows grazing.  What????  Or worse, having Daddy wake you up in the middle of the night to go and herd them back to the correct pasture.  Cows are not bright animals. Write it down.  I hated the farm.  I lived for the day I would go away to college, or just go away from the farm.  I vowed I would never again eat anything that I could not buy at the grocery store.  That I had chased my last cow.  That I didn't even want bales of straw to decorate my yard at Halloween. Farm life, been there - done that.  Got the scars to prove it.

And for a while, I did just that.  I moved into town.  I didn't even buy vegetables at the fruit stand.  Nope - I'll take the tomatoes from Kroger, thank you.  And at twenty one, on a retail salary, steak wasn't in my budget anyway, so I was pretty much done with cows, too.  Oh, of course I went home.  How else does a twenty-something get a home cooked meal?  But, the farming days were done.  Slowly, my Dad was stepping away from farming, too.  The Saturday afternoon hay baling began to wane.  One day, he sold his last beef cow.  And then the milk cows were gone.  And the garden started getting smaller and smaller.  From a distance, I watched the farm turn into a house in the country. And still, I didn't miss it at all.  Stupid cows, breaking down fences.  Stupid hayfields, needing mowing.  Stupid pastures with the broomstraw that needed burning every winter.  Good riddence to bad news. 

And then one day I noticed that the tomato on my salad didn't taste quite right...kind of bland.  I bet they're better at the fruit stand.  And if they're better at the fruit stand, what if I just planted a couple of plants in pots on my deck?  And maybe a flower or two, to hide all the concrete.  It's really not very pretty on a concrete deck without some foliage.  And then there was the house.  And what's a house without flowers and shrubs, and...hey, since there's a yard, why not get a dog?  I mean, it's nice to have a pet around.  Of course, I can't let him loose, because the houses are on top of each other around here.  Wow, it's really loud on this street.  I wish we could afford maybe a couple of extra acres, you know, some space.  It seems so crowded around here.  It would be nice to maybe have the room to plant a couple of cucumber vines, maybe some peppers, and well, of course some tomatoes.  Hey wait a minute....

And then it hit me.  I missed it.  I missed a yard big enough to play baseball in.  I missed the cows in the pasture, the barn cats, and the rows and rows of fresh corn.  I missed Saturday afternoons loading hay onto a trailer, and learning to drive in a cornfield.  I missed plucking tomatoes fresh off the vine and having tomato biscuits for dinner.  I missed fresh sausage and eggs.  I missed cold mornings sitting by the wood stove while Mom cooked breakfast.  My toaster and microwave put off no warm air, no faint aroma of burning wood.  I missed a basement full of canned vegetables, a freezer full of fresh beef.  I missed summer days on the farm, when if it got too hot, you could just take off your shoes and wade out into the cool water of the creek.  Okay, so maybe you'd occasionally kick up a snake.  You'd live.  I did.  I missed a field full of potatoes that would last all winter, and listening to the corn being ground into feed for the cows.  I never realized how nice it was to not know when your neighbors came home, for the only lights on summer nights to come from the lightning bugs in the yard, and to have dogs and cats that could lounge under the shrubs by the house.  I would give anything to plant that garden again - to see rows of corn, tomatos, cabbage, and onions, out the kitchen window.  To pick up a bowl full of apples out of the yard and make a batch of apple butter on the stove.  Life on that farm was pretty simple.  You got out what you put in.  You had enough to have and share.  And you could see what you had accomplished every day. 

Today, I love to head downtown in the summer to the farmer's market, to indulge in the fresh fruits and vegetables there.  I smile a little nostalgicly at a field full of cows, grazing on green grass, and I always look for that one cow, somewhere, who's sticking her neck through the fence as far as she can get it... And I love to smell a field of fresh cut hay, and close my eyes and remember riding on top of those bales...the straw scratching my legs, the sun shining down.  A farm.  What I wouldn't give for a farm.