FARM LIFE FROM A FARM WIFE: Not all memories pleasant on the farm

By: 
Kay Reminger
Columnist

This past winter from January through May, I took an online creative writing course from University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Stretching beyond my comfort zone, I wrote and wrote and wrote, with lengthy assignments each week involving lots of reading, watching videos and critiquing other students’ work. Included was learning more about poetry than I thought possible.

One week we were tutored via video by a wise, kind, soft-spoken professor named Rebecca Balcarcel, who explained how to come up with original writing ideas based on personal experiences. Since I was literally the grandma of the group (most of my peers were in their early 20s), I had more life experiences than they simply because I had lived longer. So based on Professor Balcarcel’s suggestion, I delved into my personal arsenal, remembering things I thought long forgotten.

Growing up on a farm, there have been times I hazily remember misfortunes. Don’t all of us tuck those off somewhere and mostly we call to mind only the good? Thinking back, I recalled some less than pleasant memories.

When I was a small girl, I was as round as a Georgia peach, quite pudgy, simply loved to eat. I never thought there would be enough food to go around, watching my mom like a hawk as she dished out the food for breakfast, dinner and supper for a family of six. Never did any one of us go hungry. Why I thought that might be the case is beyond me. There was always more than enough.

One day, I was running through an alfalfa field back from the woods to the farmhouse. I was by myself, a miracle when there were four kids with a span of barely six years between us. I had popped a hard butterscotch in my mouth from my stash secretly hidden within the pockets of my shorts. Taking a deep breath, the partially dissolved candy lodged in my windpipe, halfway down my throat.

I couldn’t breathe, in nor out. Bending my head down, I thought I could dislodge it. Sweaty and panicky and seemingly an eternity later, I could feel it like a stone slip down the back of my throat with the sensation of depositing itself all the way to my gut. Dropping to my knees, I sobbed, swallowing several times. I was so relieved, incredulous that I had not simply died right there in the middle of a hayfield. I never told anyone about it because I didn’t want to admit a stash of butterscotches were in my shorts pocket. Because, you see, there was never enough to go around.

When I became a mom, I was vigilant, as my own mother had been. Three small children on a farm has Mom with eyes in the back of her head 24-7. We’d have the kids in the barn with us from little on, even in strollers with Rico, our German Shepherd standing guard. As watchful as a young farm mom is, once in a while the littles take off on their own adventure.

One day when our oldest was about 3, he came over to me chewing on something, and because I was the only one supplying any type of snack, it puzzled me. Taking his small chin in hand, I gently squeezed his mouth open, and with the pointer finger of my other hand, swept through across his tongue and withdrew a slim black bug, all eight legs wiggling. He had tried to eat a bug. A very live bug. I blanched.

Another time my middle one, loving sweets, was about that same age and came to me with telltale white powdered sugar on either side of his mouth. As I looked down at him, he immediately lowered his head, guilty without saying a thing. Just that morning I had thrown mini donuts in the barn cat dish, located at that time in an open-ended shed, in plain view of a little boy who loved sweets. Especially mini white powdered sugar donuts.

I blanched. I gagged. Scooping him up, I ran into the house to rinse his mouth and for days watched intently for serious signs of something deadly. Surely, something deadly. He miraculously survived.

This same one at 5 years old crawled into our pigpen and slipped, gashing his head on a piece of metal roofing on their pen. Why he was inside the pigpen was a mystery not solved. I was eight months pregnant with our daughter. He ran over to me, crying; blood spurting from the cut near the cowlick at the top of his head. Grabbing a cloth to stop the flow, I awkwardly picked him up, flying to the doctor where, three stitches and a lollipop later, he was smiling again.

These memories are put aside by so many more wonderful ones, working and playing and loving together. A family dairy farm, even with many dangers, is still the very best place to raise a family.

(“Praise the Lord. I will extol the Lord with all my heart in the council of the upright and in the assembly. Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them.” Psalm 111:1-2)


Kay Reminger was born and raised on a dairy farm, and she married her high school sweetheart, who happened to farm for a living in Leopolis. Writing for quite a few years, she remains focused on the blessings of living the ups and downs of rural life from a farm wife’s perspective.