Farm Sweet Farm

What is it with getting old? When you’re young all you think about is the future, and when you’re old all you think about is the past. What you did as a kid, what you would change if you could go back…all of your memories and regrets and dreams swamp your brain.

My mind is a traveler but my heart is a homebody so I’m always all over the place. Thinking about the future but at the same time reminiscing about the good days, and wishing they would come back! That’s why I’m so ambiguous when I hear Are The Good Times Really Over For Good by Mr. Merle Haggard on the radio. Because…well...they are over in a sense. And although I’m not exactly a snowball headed for Hell, I still get very sentimental.

Thanks for that Merle...

Everything’s changing and it will never be like it was when I was growing up. I have to pound this into my head a lot. I mean some things I can manage without… like scrunchies, looking like a swamp person with my missing teeth, or only eating cottage cheese and hotdogs.

I was a very, very picky eater…

But then there’s everything I miss. Like my Grandparents. My Mormor and Morfar. I didn’t get to know them as much as I should have…they passed when I was still quite young. But the time I did get to spend at their farm was brilliant!

When we got to visit the farm, my siblings and cousins and I basically ran wild, because that’s what we got to do…

…in the good old days…sniff sniff…okay, enough of that!

My mom where she grew up...on the farm!

Ahh what adventures we came up with…lava suddenly appeared under the swing set and the propane tank was a gigantic pig we could ride anywhere! Literally, it had a face and tail and once we got our scrawny bodies shimmied up on top of him, we’d spend hours on his back. It didn’t matter that he was stationary, we had our imaginations to take care of that.

My Grandparent's barn

We could venture to the barn and try to catch a glimpse of an untamed kitty or we could explore the wild forest of a tree row and talk to Grandma’s deer statues (okay maybe that last part was just me). Of course while inside there were plenty of things to amuse ourselves with, like the Fisher Price farm set. I will never forget that barn, with the door that moo-ed when you opened it and hayloft where the rooster resided.

 

Photo from Etsy


Isn’t it funny, the things you remember? Back then I didn’t know which politicians were running, I didn’t know how the economy was, but I can remember the color and feel of the farmhouse’s carpet, and exactly where to find the Chinese checker board, and the way my Grandpa looked after he let us fix his hair.

Thinking back on my childhood, I recall tons of days spent on that farm where my mom and aunt and uncle grew up. When I think about the house I want to live in some day, it’s always a farmhouse. When someone asks me what kind of house I want, that’s all I can think of. I can’t explain it, except old, but not too old, and little, with nooks and crannies. And I realize now that I’m talking about my Grandparent’s house. The vision I have in my head is vaguely similar to that little white house we visited and played in as youngens. Never in a million years could I have imagined that that little farmstead would mold me into the person I am today.

So as I get older, and my life changes (as much as I try to fight any change, it will happen…something else that I have to pound into my head), I will always be able to carry with me those good old times, those sweet summer days spent at the farm as a child. And I won’t be sad anymore, I will be glad that they happened and that I get to relive the amusing memories those days have bequeathed me.

And I will live in a farmhouse. Someday…

My cousin Chelsey & me visiting the farm.