One Word At A Time: Farm
Wednesday, June 1, 2011 at 7:00AM MAD21 By Ginny (MAD21)
This post is a participant in a blog carnival over at Peter Pollock's place.
After you finish here, be sure to go and check out what everyone else wrote on: Farm.
I have personally never lived on a farm. But I grew up in an area that was primarily farm land so I had lots of friends who did. My best friend, for example, lived about 45 minutes away from me. On the only road between us were your standard crops growing pretty much year round, but there were also two particular farms where over the years, we mastered the art of holding our breaths. The first one was the pig farm. I personally think nothing except perhaps chickens and a sugar factory (from beets) stink more than a pig farm <blech!>. But it was a small farm so it wasn't hard to hold our breaths until we were past the smell. But then there was the second farm... I don't remember how many acres Mr. Simplot owned on that particular farm, let's just say it seemed like miles, and miles, and miles... of STEER. On a day with comfortable temperatures it wasn't a big deal to drive by this farm, it smelled, but you could tolerate it for the 10 minutes or so it took you to pass the area. However, on hot and rainy days... that was a whole other story. Ya, we never mastered holding our breaths long enough to get past the smell on those days.
My dad grew up in eastern Idaho on a farm. He spent his entire youth tending the fields (no animals much to my disappointment). There are a few things I remember my dad talking about regarding farm life from his perspective: he HATED overalls (because he was forced to wear them all the time); he was never allowed to plow the ground for new planting because for some reason he couldn't ever drive in lines straight enough for my grandfather or my uncle; and it was HARD work.
Aside from hearing endless farming stories, having fresh fruit and veggies available during the various seasons, the one thing I liked most about growing up around farm land in Idaho was irrigation. I know that is an odd thing like about living near farms, but think about it from a child's perspective... what more could you ask for during the long hot summers but gigantic sprinklers and ditches to jump in and tube down. Seriously awesome. I remember my dad telling me years ago that just one section of a particular kind of irrigation sprinkler was around $250,000. The first thing I thought of? "Wow, that's an expensive sprinkler for me to run through."
Our challenge to Make a Difference... to many.
I talked a little last Friday in my Fingerprint post about how we have such a different perspective when it comes to water in this country than others do in many areas around the world. My friend and co-blogger Matt over at Becoming Last was inspired to do something big, really big.