I’m sure that my perspective of growing up on a farm and a farmer’s perspective of daily life differ greatly! I remember a great freedom. Running up and down rows of tobacco or corn. Finding quail nests and incubating the eggs. “Helping” my dad in tobacco. A treat was getting up early and riding in the truck with dad as he made the round through the neighborhood to pick up the “hands” that worked on the farm in tobacco. Getting up even earlier and riding on the trailer down to the tobacco barn so that we could take out a barn of tobacco and get it to the pack house before we picked up the help for the day. Dad was in the top of the barn, my brother (a year younger than I was) was in the middle of the barn. I took the sticks of dried tobacco from dad and handed them to mom, who stacked them on the trailer. My little sister was always too little to officially help, so she just stayed out of the way. Our barns were gas so while the tobacco was curing, dad made multiple trips throughout the night to check the barns.
Sundays were for church in the morning and then family activities in the afternoon. We had ponies and one of my favorite activities was to ride on Sunday. We were not very old, so we were not allowed to ride without supervision. In the fall after the last tobacco and corn was in, we had more time. Daddy would take us fishing. There were several ponds on the farm and you could always catch brim or catfish. And occasionally a snapping turtle.
The one job that I absolutely despised was chopping weeds. My granddaddy would take myself and Mike, my brother, and we would each have a hoe. There is nothing longer than a row to be hoed. Get to the end and start another one.
But mostly I remember the freedom of roaming the farm and the woods and exploring without anyone worrying about where I was. Dad showed me where the old railroad had run through the woods. He taught me about different birds. His uniform was a pair of Dickie khakis and a white teeshirt. I can still see him out in the field checking the tobacco or an ear of corn. It was what he was born to do.
Now when I go and visit him, he always asked me (he asks everyone) if I want to ride down in the field with him. We get in his little truck (he is only allowed to drive on the farm now) and drive down the lane, back to the pine tree stand where he points out the trees that he wants to thin out and the ditch where he is planning to put a culvert. We circle through the trees and drive down around the pond, cut back up through the field. Sometimes he stops and asks me if I have seen the pine trees lately and my answer usually depends upon how much time I have. If I gently lie and tell him no, he will happily turn and take me right back to where we just came from. If I tell him that I have been recently, he turns and head back to the house. He’s tied tighter to that farm than Scarlet was to Tara!