I helped my father put up hay for the first time in many, many years. As a girl I sometimes drove the tractor for him while my brothers and cousins threw square bales on the wagon I was towing. This seems like eons ago. Now he has a driver follow him in the truck while he lifts round bales with his tractor and dumps them on the wagon. Towing the wagon in an air-conditioned truck as an adult is a very different experience than the heat of my childhood days on the open-air tractor, completely unaware of the real workings of the beast of a machine I was driving. Working with my dad, each of us in our own vehicles, communicating with vague hand signals, felt somehow more intimate than much of our day to day interactions. It was much needed after losing my father-in-law.
We're adapting to our new lives on the farm with more purpose. We've expanded the chicken coop and I watched as my husband pulled multiple snakes out of it over the course of a couple weeks. I've enjoyed watching my eldest daughter gather eggs, and helping my mother pick beans in the garden. We've taken hikes to the far corners of the property and dragged back skulls and interesting rocks, while trying to identify the native grasses and flowers. My baby girl finally has said "mama" and is getting close to walking now that we've celebrated her 1st birthday. We bought her a beautiful red wagon, and now that I can tow her and her brother around in it as I go about working in the garden and checking on the chickens, it at least appears as though we have melted into farmlife.
