Our Farm Didn't Look Like Your Farm, Which Doesn't Look Like Their Farm, Which Doesn't Come Close to Her Farm...and That's OKAY!

Happy mid-planting season, everyone!

I would be remiss if I didn't wish all you farmers safety and good weather as you continue your quest to get #plant2016 buttoned up.

However, amongst my farmer friends, blogs, recipes shared, articles in our FarmWeek, I can't help but once again see that our farm's picture isn't in the frame. Our farm's depiction, when we were "full timers," is quite different than shared by the smiling faces, meals in Styrofoam, and sweeping sunset pictures.

And that is OKAY.

Because that's farming. That's agriculture.

I'll spare you the details of farmers who never want to stop to eat, and the feelings that accompany when you have loaded three kids under four in the car in order to find the field only to realize that no one wants to stop, no way my car was going to make it to the back, and no way was I going to drag all that stuff out there on foot and how that affects your willingness to bring food out.

Ahem.

And that is OKAY.

Our operation runs on quitting and being done when it's time to be done, and going when it's time to go, so don't mess around with a nice brownie.

A pang of guilt and those all-to-familiar outsider feelings used to come up when I was first a farm wife. I felt like I was doing it wrong. Again, the code of farm wifery a mystery to me.

But that's not the case today.

I know what my role is/was on the farm, and that I'm doing the best I can for my people. I sure do hope that no one is scarred for life because of a lack of participation in the most traditional sense.

I hope.

I learned from the best, in my opinion. My mom was a farm wife, but not until I was nearly out of the house, and to a moonlighting farmer until my dad "retired" to farm. She worked full time, lived 30 miles from the farm's home base, and probably received the same, "I'll get it when I'm finished here" response. While I know some of you do the same, I saw how her role as just as important: holding down the fort at home, working as a teacher, being a mom and a taxi and keeping it all rolling while Dad was working.

Around our kitchen peninsula in dimmed light after we were supposed to be in bed,  that's when the "farm meals" were held. Unlike my awesome friends who have mastered the "hand held meals," omelettes and oatmeal may not be cookbook material, blogworthy, or even worth mentioning, but those meals shared in our kitchen are the ones I remember.

Those are good memories, and quite possibly may be the reason my dad has remained the same size since high school.

Anyway, my point here today is that I should take note and mark this revelation. I still continually scrutinize the way other's farm, comparing how we work to how others work. I realize that's not healthy, but it's human, and I'm human, so there. You probably do the same in other ways, or maybe I'm just a weirdo. But take a look at this as a reflection on how you view agriculture and food production and how it's changing: it's all relative. It's all personal, and it's because a majority of the time, a farm is being farmed by a PERSON.

And people are, well, people.

And that's OKAY.