Hardly Simple

A barn. A door to the hay mow. An old kettle and old bucket. A grandson. Three sisters. The last day we would spend on the farm back the lane on Neff Road. The old racks once sat in the cow stable full of Dad's tools. Old boxes, crates and buckets held all sorts of odds and ends.  A cow stable that once was a milking chamber became the catchall for an old piano frame, old sleds, baseball bats, piles of twine and sweet memories.

The older I get, the more I realize what an incredible experience was that life on the farm. It was a place of adventure and imagination. A place of hard work, bonfires, long walks and lazy Sundays. A place of wheat, corn, tobacco, soy beans and oats. A place for cows, chickens, sheep, rabbits, horse, dogs and cats. A place where the planter, drag, rock slide, baler, manure spreader, tobacco planter, plow, cultivator, elevator, wagon and tractors resided. Barns full of tobacco hanging from the rafters, corn piled to the top of the corn crib, hay on the west wall and straw on the east in the hay mow, oats in the old barn along with the wheat. A place that saw lambs, calves and bunnies born. Where sheep were shorn, bulls became steers and bunnies went off to market along with the chickens. Warm eggs were gathered from beneath the hen.

We played in the barns, in the creek bottom and in the woods. We roamed and nobody cared where we went. When dinner came, Mom would yell knowing we were within hearing distance. We ate fresh vegetables from the garden, meat from our own stock, eggs from the hen house. We saw ground hogs, owls, moles and sometimes packs of wild dogs.

One might say that life was simple back considering the above, I hardly think it simple. I think it simply wonderful.