Lessons Learned…
At The Farm
We
were city kids. We lived about twenty blocks from Lambeau Field, to be exact.
We walked to school, biked around the block on straight flat sidewalks, played kick-the-can
with all of the tons of neighbor kids rambunctiously and delightfully swarming
the area, regularly ran very profitable lemonade stands, and trick or treated
and Christmas caroled door to door at a hundred very welcoming, close-at-hand
doors. Then we moved. Twenty-five acres of rolling hills, wildlife-filled
ravines, rows and rows of planted oats, alfalfa, and corn, endless sky with
endless stars at night, and the sounds of farm animals going about their days.
From paradise to paradise. Urban to
rural. Crowded, noisy and energized to spacious, still and free. Loved both
worlds, but especially loved the new one. The gentle farmer across the road
became our unknowing teacher of textbook-transcending lessons. In his faithful
living, working, caring, patience, he shared the pure beauty of simplicity and
selflessness. He never said much, but his living said it all. He and his dear
wife never really officially invited us city-slicker kids to serve as slightly
incompetent but ever so enthusiastically willing farmhands, yet every day in
the summer to his farm we would race to offer our hands. And every day, his nod
and his big smile said come on in. During those precious summers we learned
about life and death, the passing of seasons, planting and reaping, making do,
improvising, waiting expectantly, and countless life-impacting lessons as deep
and rich as the good soil itself. Farming is a life of tremendous faith and unshakable optimism; the sun will return to warm and light the earth each morning, and
spring, at the appointed time, will always awaken and emerge from under the
silent blanket of winter. Under the wise farmer’s tutelage, these city kids
became country kids.
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