A few days ago it was 8 p.m. and my house was quiet. The feeling was a mix of nice and strange; strangely nice. I took advantage of the quiet time to write and found it to be too quiet to write, so I turned on the music app on my phone and Dierks Bentley’s song “Living” came on and I stopped what I wrote, looked outside my farmhouse window and cried.
Some days we truly are living. My view illustrated what most of you are experiencing: the hustling and bustling of farming—the nonstop go, go, go. Here in East Moline, Ill., my 14-year-old daughter, Cassie was behind the seat of a tractor, hauling wagons while her father chopped rye and our oldest son, Tyler was operating the bagger, after he had spent the afternoon vaccinating heifers with one of our employees. Our youngest, ten-year-old son, Jacob had school in the morning and then he came off the bus and went straight to the fields, so he could ride shotgun hauling wagons with our neighbor Bill.
I should note that morning our two oldest kids had remote-only school. They started their day with calf chores and then Tyler had to be at high school by 6 a.m. for football conditioning practice before coming home to do schoolwork. The duo quickly changed gears around the lunch hour and clocked in nearly ten hours helping out on the farm. Without complaining they accomplished more than most adults do on an average day.
More of the same unfolded the next day. Cassie went back to running wagons and Tyler took care of our offsite heifers across the river in Iowa. Their grandpa was merging the rye and their uncle was hauling manure on sections of the field that has been freshly chopped. Rain is in the near forecast and beans need to be planted.
Dairy farming is truly nonstop. It takes a team to get it all done and more days than not, I’m proud of our team, which also includes nine employees who help care for our herd of Jersey cattle.
At way past 9 p.m. my kids all came inside—tired, dirty and happy. A combination that their mother admires. They gave me a hug and showered and went to bed. Dinner was served tailgate-style in the field. The house was quiet again, but then their father came in shortly after and cracked a cold one and headed to the shower before heading to bed, just so he could rise again to do it all over again.
I’m reminded to cherish these days. These are the days that make you really love farming and these are the kind of days that fill your heart with hope. Days like this reminds you that every once in awhile everything can go to plan accordingly.
Some days we truly are living. The skies are clear and so are our eyes. Good days like the ones my family just experienced makes us see the beauty in it all—corn popping up out of the ground, cows filling the bulk tank to the brim, kids helping out, grandpa with a grin on his face. This is all inspires and fuels our hearts to plow on.
Some days it’s easy to forget why we are doing all of this in the first place.
Cherish the good days. I know I am.
