Growing up, I knew if I was going to see my Dad on a weekend, then I was going to need to ride with him as he did hog barn chores. So I spent many hours in the truck as he went from farm to farm feeding pigs. Or I followed in his footsteps as he checked on the baby pigs. But the one thing we rarely had the chance to do was to just hang out at home. Or go on weekend trips to the zoo. There weren’t any trips to the park. There were the hours spent at church and Sunday lunch together. But we didn’t have the typical weekends that many families experience.
If you’ve read anything I’ve written over the past 5 years, you have heard me say that my Farmer works all of the time. He is always on call, wether it be the hog barn alarms going off because the barn temperatures may be too hot or cold, the weather knocking the power out, causing my Farmer needing to hook up generators to keep the power going or just the basic everyday chores that have to be done when you have hogs that have to be fed. There is never a break. The work is always present.
Winter brings even harder and longer days around the farm. This weekend dumped over 6 inches of show around the farm. Our country roads weren’t getting plowed which means feed trucks weren’t going to be able to get to our various hog barns. So my Farmer had to go and plow a few paths down some snow-covered roads. And much like I did years ago with my Dad, the kids wanted to follow Dad around. So the bibs were put own, hats and gloves gathered and off they went to plow snow. But even more fun for them was to build forts and play in the piled up snow.
While you may get to enjoy weekend trips and home projects, we don’t. Our weekends are spent doing much of the same as we do during the week. It’s a tough life, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.
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