When I Knew.

The day I knew we would be moving our family to my wife's childhood home to help maintain the family farm was a dusty Saturday in July.  I'd spent the morning helping Bethany's father, Frank, and her brothers work cattle. That entailed herding the near 100 head into a large corral, separating the calves from the heifers, and then working them all through the head gate for fly tags and vaccinations.  It was hard, dirty work, and we were all thrilled when my mother-in-law, Mickie, called everyone in for lunch.

Over the clatter of kids chasing their cousins around the living room, we recounted some of the more amusing moments of the morning's work while washing up at the sink.  How wonderful it felt to finally sit down and noisily gulp ice water at the kitchen table.  As everyone gathered around for lunch, Bethany showed off the bags of sweet corn one of the neighbors had asked them to come pick, and how she'd improvised a baby carrier out of a checked tablecloth to get the job done.

And that's when it happened. Three generations came in from working on the family farm to have lunch together.  Sometimes the most natural things in the world can also be the most extraordinary.  Bethany and I had been searching in vain the last several years for a small piece of land to call our own, and here we were too preoccupied or short-sighted to see that the best fit was a place Bethany never thought she'd call 'home' again.