I have been a farmer’s wife for 25 years. When I was growing up did I ever consider this life for myself? Of course not. I planned on marrying and having babies but I never considered the vocation of my husband. I don’t think I considered my own vocation except I knew that it centered around office equipment. I loved office equipment. My grandfather had an old time adding machine and I absolutely loved playing with that. But I had no idea what my husband would look like or what he would do for a living.
I married young, the first time. I had no idea what I was getting myself into but knew I wanted to be married and to have children. Having children was hard. We had to wait 5 years to have our first. I do believe that did more harm to our relationship than anything. We ended up having another child 3 1/2 years later but the marriage had crumbled and we soon separated and later divorced.
When my life couldn’t get a handle on itself I accepted the offer of a good friend of mine and moved to another part of Kentucky. I was going to start over where very few people knew me. It was the best decision I ever made. Four years later I married my friend’s brother and moved to the family farm. Suburban girl turned farm girl. It was fun. I got to help milk cows (it was my job to get them out of the barn). I got to help scatter soybeans (I was riding on the bumper of the tractor). I got to ride around in the farm truck with the windows down and act like I really belonged. But I really didn’t. I did those things because I wanted to be with the farmer, not work the farm. And he had been raised on this farm. He always had plenty of help. But as his brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews started moving on he didn’t have much help. And so I became his help.
He taught me how to milk the cows which I didn’t mind unless I had to do it all. Some of those cows were stubborn and would not come into the barn or leave the barn. They knew that I was not him and they didn’t like me. I never got kicked (thank you Lord) but I was pooped on and peed on quite a bit. I’m not proud of the time that I spent in the milk barn. Those ladies learned a lot of swear words. I was ultimately saved by my oldest son who learned to milk and took over that chore.
He taught me how to tet and rake hay. I wasn’t allowed to cut and we didn’t have a baler so I didn’t have to do that. I enjoyed being out on the tractor but not as much as I had when I was with him. But this was a chore that had to be done. I learned a lot about chores that had to be done.
Since he was a tobacco farmer I did quite a bit of that too. I set tobacco which was a lot of fun and you got a pretty good suntan. I got to disc tobacco, top tobacco, sucker tobacco. He didn’t make me oil tobacco and we both agreed I should not cut tobacco since I lost more leaves than I saved on each tobacco plant. But he would let me hand tobacco up to him so he could spike tobacco. That meant he didn’t have to bend down to pick it up. Guess who did all of that bending? When he would house tobacco I got to pass it up. That meant someone would hand me a stick of tobacco stalks and I would hand it up to the guys perched high in the barn so they could hang it to be cured. I got to fire barns and help take down tobacco. I got to strip tobacco some. I came to realize that I was not very good as a tobacco farmer. There was always work to do and you couldn’t be done until it was done.
There were other things that I got to do: load cows, chase cows that got out in the middle of the night, etc., etc. I’m sorry, I have to stop. This is wearing me out! I’m not even going to mention the garden. You don’t even want to hear the horrid garden stories.
Since all of my children have left home, save one (who has no interest in farming), Jimmy has started taking me as his helper. I now get to mow the yard and have only been stuck twice. I get to jump out of bed when the cows are out in the middle of the night. I haven’t had to feed but I do get to guard the gate when he is feeding hay.
The more I think about it, the more I have come to realize that I will never be a farmer. It is so much work, and the work never ends. It’s a lot like raising kids and keeping house but on a much grander scale. I think I’ll reconsider my role from being a farmer’s wife and be what I did 25 years ago: I married a farmer. Being a farmer’s wife is too much work.
Another GREAT READ! I enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing!