The Farm Life

Today I am grateful for recovery and sobriety and supportive friends. I am also grateful for smiles and laughter.

Add growing up on a farm to my gratitude list. The farm life is indelibly etched in the fabric of my life and my husband Darcy's life. He grew up on a farm too. My family still has farmers and farms in it. A farm upbringing is one of the reasons why I am a hard worker and a lover of nature. They tend to come with the territory.

Our son Sam took a liking to visiting the farm from an early age and loved playing with his collection of farm toys. (He still appreciates those toys and has a display in his room.) Some kids may outgrow that farm infatuation, but Sam has not.

He likes nothing more than spending time there helping out his Uncle Artie and sometimes his Uncle Lee too. Thank you to my brothers for their time and patience passing along the farming ways to Sam. He likes to learn more about not only how equipment operates but how the farm itself operates. He talks about going into an ag-related career and how he wants to have his own hobby farm.

The farm life runs deep in my family and among my siblings. Some of us are more removed from it than others, and I can't speak for my seven sisters and five brothers, but I can say that I will always be an Iowa farm girl at heart and that's a good thing in my opinion.

Both Darcy and I come from generations of farmers. Though fewer in number, members of the upcoming generation will likely carry on at least some of the farming tradition in my family. Darcy's family no longer has direct ties to the land. I am grateful that my family does though. And I so enjoy walking that land, looking out over the rolling hills through the various seasons. The farm life is a tough life in many ways, but it is also rewarding in many ways.

That is life in general too I guess. Tough in ways. Rewarding in many others. It is easier to see and feel the rewards when I remember to pause in gratitude.

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