It’s strange how things you despised as a child you miss as an adult.
Growing up on a farm was no picnic. We moved from Florida to Kansas when I was 8 years old. We’d only been on the farm a year when my dad started investing in livestock. My brother Dave and I went from city slickers to farm hands pretty darn fast. Collecting eggs, bottle-feeding calves and piglets, butchering beef, feeding goats and more. We sold a pig we raised and split the money to start our first savings accounts. $53.13 each.
And then the garden. One summer we canned 200 quarts of green beans and brought more to the farmer’s market in town. My mom used to say that even if the garden didn’t produce anything, she’d still have it just to teach us to work.
But we hated the work as kids. We’d wake up Saturday mornings hoping against hope that just this once, Dad wouldn’t say, “Great! No school today means you can help ME with some chores!” Splitting wood, and throwing it in the bin was one of our least favorites. We used to bale hay and toss the square bales on the trailer and then stack them in the barn. I did benefit from those chores in the short run – I could beat every boy in the homeschool group at arm wrestling.
But in the long run, I consider myself so blessed that my parents taught me to work. Some days they probably felt like they quoted Scripture verses about work to us until they were blue in the face. Probably the most effective was 2 Thessalonians 3:10, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” If you want the benefits that come from hard work – for example, food – you work for it.
And now I honestly miss that back-breaking work (Except chasing cows. That you can keep.). I miss hours of mulching the garden with my siblings. I miss mowing for hours. I miss my stomach growling after 6 hours driving the tractor that only a good meal with sweet iced tea could satisfy.
Knowing that God gave us hard work to do blesses it in a way. Like he gave Adam and Eve the job of caring for the Garden of Eden, it’s our responsibility to work and to take care of our own garden plot, so to speak.
What are some of your memories of working as a kid?