Memories from a Farm Kid for Mother’s Day
Things that make me think of my mom: fresh strawberries, the smell of homemade bread, summer thunderstorms, her scarf, milking time, baling hay, and bookwork. Those were all things that my mom produced, managed, wore, and did on the farm where my siblings and I grew up. If you met her back then, she would have said she was “just a farm wife,” and for many years that was how I saw her. Men were the farmers; women were just farm wives. But the longer I work in agriculture, the more I see women embracing the title of “farmer,” and it’s how I'm starting to see and remember my mom.
Mom was a critical leader on the family farm.
She worked side by side with my dad, drove tractors, backed up wagons, shoveled manure, took care of calves, grew and canned food, prepared meals, raised five kids, and did it all with humility, patience, and grit. She rarely lost her temper, even though my sister and I were constantly acting out the world’s greatest sibling rivalry. That made one especially heated day unforgettable: my mom cursed to stop us from fighting. Cursing was rare… it got our attention!
At the start of each growing season, Mom would wrangle us kids to plant, weed, and tend the enormous garden. Our staple crops included potatoes, peas, beans, lettuce, tomatoes, and sweet corn. What wasn’t eaten fresh was canned or frozen for later, including strawberries that were transformed into sweet jam or mashed and frozen for winter meals. Those mashed strawberries were pockets of summer joy in fall and winter, often eaten with fresh homemade bread or accompanying birthday cakes. There was nothing sweeter than chocolate cake with summer strawberries on my January birthday!
The farmhouse didn’t have air conditioning, and during the summer, windows were left open to let in the cool night air. It was my mom who listened for distant thunder and made the rounds to close everyone’s windows before the rain came. Something about the sound of thunder and the smell of rain takes me back to that time, and I can picture her at the window in my bedroom.
Chore time on the dairy farm was a twice daily event, and a handkerchief scarf was Mom’s preferred head covering. I suppose it provided just enough protection for her head while she milked cows and completed all the other daily chores. Summer chores meant baling hay and Mom was the one unloading 50 lb bales from the wagon. My sister and I were tasked with helping her, which meant we had to put aside our rivalry to roll, drag, or carry bales so my mom could load them onto the elevator that carried them to the hay mow.
The quiet work that held it all together
Somehow, after managing people, plants, animals, and kids, once a month, my mom would declare that she had to do ‘bookwork.’ She would sit at the desk with her adding machine, jotting numbers into the ledger to keep track of all the financial comings and goings of the farm and household. This was a crucial lynchpin to keep our family and business solvent. Calling this critically important task ‘bookwork’ feels like the perfect analogy for how understated my mom was and still is regarding all her contributions to the farm. Over the years, those daily contributions were so common that there aren’t any photos capturing what was seen as the daily grind; instead, only clues, like the memory of strawberries with my chocolate birthday cake.
At 82, Mom doesn’t milk cows or bale hay anymore, but she still grows an amazing garden, bakes bread for special occasions, wears a scarf when it is cold, and does the ‘bookwork.’ She does many of these things side by side with my dad, and she would still say she’s just a farm wife. But I, and thankfully so many others, have come to recognize these critical roles women play on farms and proudly call her: Farmer.
