Insert me here...



Insert me here and I would die from happiness.

Exhaustion for sure....but it would be due to a dream fulfilled.

I have always had a secret penchant for all things agricultural.  My upbringing seemed to skirt around the issue, but I never got to have the full-blown experience.  I even envied the kids in 4-H.  My family would go to the County Fair, and I would cast sideways glances at the kids in Wranglers and cowboy hats and wish that I was one of them.   They knew stuff.  They weren't scared to hold a chicken.  They weren't scared to walk around with a 600 lb steer.  The girls knew how to can.  The boys knew when the wheat was ready for harvest.  They all got to drive a tractor as soon as they could reach the pedals.

For me, I am so thankful that I at least had some exposure.  My dad is a veterinarian (now retired), so I got to wrestle a sheep a time or two so dad could do whatever he was needing to do.  For the record, I do not like sheep.  They stink and their wool coat is oily.  And that stuff doesn't wash off easily.  But I liked traveling with him to the various places around town where he did his work for the university.

When I visited my grandparents in Wray, out on the eastern plains of Colorado, I would go out with my grandpa when he needed to do some sprinkler work.  My grandpa was a jack-of-all-trades in his later years.  He began as a farmhand, and when he returned from the war, he and my grandma settled on a farm for a short while, and then he gambled and built a large greenhouse to make a go of it as a tomato-grower.  I don't remember the specifics, but the venture didn't work quite as well as planned.  I recall being with him in a very large greenhouse, and walking along rows and rows of tomato plants as well as what seemed like hundreds of geraniums.  Those two scents will be forever linked in my memory.  Anyways, in his later years my grandpa (with the help of a few teenage boys - poor kids, my grandpa yelled a lot ) installed sprinkler systems in and around town.  I remember traveling around to these places in the back of his little blue pick-up.  I would sit on the tailgate and let my feet drag on the pavement whenever he crossed the street and went a little too fast over the gutter dips.  One time I even bounced out... and he kept on going!  Luckily we were only just going down the street to the church, so I just walked the rest of the way.  Once in awhile he would drive out to a small farm or two, and chat with the farmer, and I would just wander around, mesmerised.  Chickens!  There were chickens wandering around, everywhere!  Won't they run away?  Horses would wander over, looking for a treat.  Dogs would be running around.  I just wanted to stay and never leave.

We visited family (long lost second-cousin type family) in Nebraska one summer.  They lived on a hog farm.  Pigs scare me.  They are absolutely huge and push their weight around.  The smell made it even hard to breathe.  But once again, I was in awe.  There was just so much 'life' all around you - animal sounds all day and all night.  The kids all had chores, and they wore boots and hats to do it.  Cool.

My only 'Ag' experience is home gardening.  I was in my early 20's when I finally got my own place, and building my own garden was on the top of my wish list.  My boyfriend and coworkers made fun of me for doing something so... 'domestic'.  I can't help it - it's in my family.  My dad gardens, my aunts and uncles and my cousin.  It used to be the family joke that as soon as dinner was over, the talk would immediately go to gardening.  I wish I had done a little less eye-rolling and a little more listening.  I have a very short memory when it comes to how to do something, so I have to call my dad up several times a week during the growing season to ask him the same questions I asked him last year.  And the year before that.  And the year before that.

Even though our city passed an ordinance a couple of years back that allows backyard chickens, our HOA does not allow it.  So for now I have to settle for living vicariously through the several of friends who have them.  I have yet to hold a chicken...I'm still afraid of getting pecked.  But I long for the time when I can have my own coop.  We still have a couple more years in this house before we can entertain the thought of moving, and you can bet that high on my 'must have' list is ample gardening space and the ability to have a chicken coop.   And maybe a goat or two.  And a small barn.  And a tractor.  And.....