CFEs, Rural Life and a Perfect Moment

 

It started as an off run.  You know that feeling when you legs and your mind just don't seem to speak each other's language.  My back was sore, my hamstrings tight and my mind just wasn't into it.  But there are many days when my runs are a struggle to get started and end up being blissfully sweet in the end.  So I pushed on feeling like a slug.

 

 

 As I pushed up the first long steep hill it started.  A feeling most every runner has felt, often at the most inopportune times.  We try to ignore it but sooner or later we are all reduced by that stomach sickening feeling of needing to find a bathroom...now.

 

 

My run continued up that hill and the next and the next but finally at the end of a long decline I made a sharp right turn into the corn field to cop a squat.  A corn field emergency.  They may not be very glamorous but growing up a farm kid they just a part of the way we lived.  Outside.

 

 

 

It was much easier to duck among the corn stalks than run into the house when we were in the midst of the hours spent outside playing anything and everything with nothing.  I want that simple life mentality for my kids too.  They have been getting big doses of that these past weeks.  Playing in the corn fields, spending our days outside, visiting with family that includes other beyond the family we created and giving out time to help our community.  It makes me giddy to see my children enjoying the same things I enjoyed as a child.  This is the life I wish we could live every single day. 

 

 

 As I sit outside in my backyard watching LBM run barefoot between excitedly watching the farmer teet the hay and running through the rows of corn, I'm afraid to move.  As if some how I will disturb the perfection in this moment.  So for now I'll sit here in my still sweaty running clothes watching my children live a perfect childhood day.



Tearing Down

This post has little to do with running but everything to do with who I am and the kind of people I am raising my children to be. 

It's been a constant in my life.  Although my view of it has changed over the years my Pappy Max's barn has always been there as a symbol of some many things I believe my grandfather and father stood for.  It was about a way of life.  A kind of integrity not often found.

The boards and beams of our barn will be used by others and in that way they live on.

Our barn stood for hard work. The kind of work that few people do any more. The work that starts before the sun rises, blisters your hands, wearies your back, ends after the sun sets but fills your soul. 

That barn represented an escape. It housed days and days of youthful adventures. Within it's wooden walls I created worlds and lives and escaped the youthful boredom of rural living.

It represented a source of pride.  Although I would grumble at every chore my sisters and I were charged with doing, I found a sense of pride in doing them well.  I was proud to be a part of something that had stood for so long.  The sense of neighborhood and community with all the farmers gathered in our barn yard as the auctioneer sing-songed the bids as we held a cattle auction in the spring.
 

The barn represented history and family.  Being a creative child I would linger in the thoughts of my grandfather and his father's hands at work on the very boards of that barn.  I enjoyed imagining that my hand lay where theirs had been.  I felt connected to a history of my family that I would never know in this life.

The barn represented taking chances.  I remember climbing into the rafters and jumping into grain filled gravity bins below with my heart pounding in exhilaration.  My heart was also pounding the day my mother caught me with a boy in the haymile.

It's probably the same for many family farmers.  The barn is a central part of family life and takes on a life of it's own.  That life, the life of our family barn is coming to an end.  It's hard to imagine what my view will look like without it.  Tearing down walls is rarely an easy thing to do.  I am thankful for all the time I had growing up on the rural farm.  I am hopeful as I look to see what reality lays beyond those comfortable walls of my past.  But I won't forget the lessons I learned and I will share those memories with my children so that in the retelling of them, they will live on in our family always.

Cove Creek Farm

Doris June Barrack Diehl and Max Robert Diehl

gone but never forgotten

may I live to make them proud.