As I walked home from the grocery store the other day, the scent of fresh cut grass hung in the air. No matter where I am, that smell immediately takes me back. Back home to the farm. This time, it was to the summer I was fourteen. That was the summer that I started raking most of the hay on our family dairy farm. Back then, we spent the summers “chasing hay,” as my Dad would say. We turned two hundred acres of hay into small rectangular bales – thousands of them. Tens of thousands of them. First, second, sometimes third cuttings. They all ended up in the hay mow of the barn. It was hot and dusty up there – I was thankful that mowing (rhymes with cow-ing) the hay away was not my job. No, I was thankful to have an outdoor job. Occasionally I unloaded wagons, but usually I raked the hay. There I sat, on a John Deere tractor probably twice as old as I was, pulling the rake. I wore a tank top, shorts, and dusty old sneakers. My hair was pulled back under a baseball cap that I wore backwards. (This kept my hair from flying around, and if I wore it forward, the wind would catch the brim and the hat would go flying away.) Sunglasses shielded my eyes from the bright summer sun. I must have had more of a tomboy look than I realized, because the neighbor asked my Dad who his new “hired boy” was.
At fourteen, I didn’t like the fact that my family didn’t take family vacations like most families I knew. But looking back, I realize I had something that most of them didn’t – I got to spend every day working with my family, enjoying the beauty of God’s creation. Sure my Dad worked seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year, but he was always accessible to us. We could always find him – whether he was in the barn milking or out in the fields working.
I love summers on the farm. Soaking in the warmth of the summer sun. Enjoying the beauty of God’s creation. Knowing the satisfaction (and fatigue) of a hard day’s work as the sun sets.
For the last several summers, I have split my time between Germany and the farm. But now, for this season of my life, my summers are spent entirely in Germany. Summers on the farm are one of those things I must "sacrifice" for now...
