Everybody has a Great Story To Tell

Everybody Has Great Story To Tell

It’s been one year since Farmhouse Front Porch by Kelly Writing was launched.

In honor of our anniversary, I wanted to reintroduce myself to our readers with few stories from my history, and let you know that I’m available to help write your family stories and memories too!

Family legend has it that my grandaddy bought his farm and farmhouse on a front porch promise and a handshake. 

Sometime in the 1940’s he and his brother were sitting on the front porch of a house that was being auctioned along with the farm on which it sat. Grandaddy needed a farm because the one he owned would soon be at the bottom of a lake which was, at that time, under construction. His brother commented, “If I had my place sold, I’d buy this one.” My grandaddy stuck his hand out to his brother and said, “Then you better buy it, ‘cause I just bought yours.”

They shook hands and the deal was done.

Now some 70 years later, our kids, while multi-generation farmers, will be the 4th generation to grow up and work on that same farm. They were brought home as babies to the same farmhouse my grandparents made a home for us all.

Hence the blog name: Farmhouse Front Porch

Beyond the income and the livelihood that our farm provides for our family. 

Besides being my father’s and my husband’s occupation.

Farming is the backdrop of our lives.

It makes sense that farming, agriculture, and showing livestock have become the subject – the “niche” – of this blog.

It’s not just a subject, it’s our life. Our daily life. For all my life.

One of my clearest memories from childhood was when my Grandaddy was determined to make 5-year-old me a horse lover. 

I’m a farm girl. I’m a sheep girl. I’m a cattle girl. I have never been a horse girl. 

My sister loves horses. My cousins love horses. 

The only horse I’ve ever loved was Mickie.

A beautiful buckskin, Mickie was one of those horses who just knew her rider. My sister and cousins would hop on her and she would run, giving them the ride and the thrill they wanted. With me she was gentle and sweet, nuzzling my palm with her velvety nose as I fed her treats perfectly content to stay on the ground.

Until my grandaddy, headstrong that I was at least going to learn how to sit a horse, plopped me down one day on Mickie’s back.

She just stood there. Feeling my unease, abiding by our mutual understanding, that good old mare just stood there. So grandaddy nudged her, pushed her, did what he did to make her move. 

All of a sudden she took off!

Sweet Mickie bounded through the barn lot at warp speed while my tiny five-year-old body bounced and swayed. 

I clung to the reins for dear life, tears streaming down my face, praying that I would survive this ordeal. 

Finally, arriving at the end of the field and faced with a fence she apparently didn’t want to jump, Mickie stopped short, throwing me to the ground with a splat, right in the middle of a wet spring.

Witnesses to this event remember it a little differently. 

My tears, they say, were real. Me pleading for my life, factual. 

However, they report that grandaddy merely nudged Mickie and she meandered through the barn lot at barely a walk, stopping gently at the spring, probably disturbed by my panic, at which point I slid off into the spring of my own free will. 

Not-so-shockingly, I never did develop that love of horses.

That’s just one of my many childhood memories made on the farm.

I’m grateful that our kids will make memories there too.

Like witnessing the beginning of new life.

Our kids have watched the birth of countless lambs and calves. 

Even the occasional goat. 

They understand that when a cow or a ewe has difficulty bringing their offspring into the world, it’s our job as farmers to help the animal achieve a safe delivery. 

Our kids still talk about lambing season one January a few years ago.

It was brutally cold. 

Subzero temperatures caused lambs being born to begin to freeze before they could even hit the ground. Freshly born lambs had to be immediately dried and placed under a heat lamp for life-saving warmth. This meant someone had to monitor the ewes 24 hours a day until the weather improved. 

One parent and one kid would stay in the enclosed feed room in the barn monitoring the sheep. We took turns day and night, switching pairs every few hours. 

To our kids, it was an adventure. 

A little farming campout. Sleeping in their winter coveralls on outdoor lounge chairs. Eating sandwiches for breakfast or whenever we had a chance to grab a bite. A couple of times PaPaw brought us take-out or dinner from Granny.

We even set up a computer to watch movies during the down-times. 

A lambing barn cinema. 

It was three days of hard work, little sleep, and freezing temperatures. 

It was necessary to keep our flock safe, healthy, and growing. 

It also turned out to be a lot of fun.

 I feel sure this is one of the memories our kids will share with their kids.

Somewhere in the middle of my years growing up a farm girl to raising two farm kids of our own, I married a farm boy.

I knew when My Farmer and I married, the farm was the only place to have our wedding.

Weeks of cleaning and sprucing up, weed-eating and mowing, planting flowers, and pressure washing everything in sight happened to make the beloved family farm wedding-ready.

We chose a beautiful spot for the ceremony on the top of a hill just beyond our barn overlooking a river valley with a gorgeous backdrop of mountains in the distance.

My husband-to-be and brother-in-law built an arch out of trees harvested from the farm. 

A family friend lent us chairs from his new business for our guests. 

His business was a funeral home but hey, the chairs were free.

More family friends spent months growing flowers in their greenhouse. Beautiful pots and baskets that would be the perfect final touch to our mid-May wedding.

Tents set up, dresses steamed, meat slowly smoking for the reception dinner, one of the only things left to do was mow the grass at the ceremony site, which was in the middle of a pasture. 

The afternoon before the wedding I prepared to get this job done. As I gassed up the mower, my dad appeared to inform me that mowing wasn’t necessary.

 Ever the resourceful farmer, he announced proudly that he had turned a group of 30 some cattle in the pasture and they were happily munching the grass down as we spoke.

No! I thought. No, no, no, no… I rushed up to the ceremony site and found exactly what I knew I would find. 

Cow manure. 

Everywhere.

Ya’ll, I’m a farm girl to the bone and this was a fairly casual country affair… but it was cow crap. 

We’re not talking cow pies that could be shoveled somewhere else.

This was cattle turned on fresh green grass after a long winter of eating hay and grain. 

This was green, runny, and messy!

Everywhere. All over where the guests would sit, beneath our lovely arch, and down the aisle.

Everywhere.

I really didn’t want to drag my white wedding dress through that.

I really didn’t want to ask our guests to “watch where they stepped.” 

PaPaw realized his great idea had gone awry so he came up with the solution.

Our wedding rehearsal was spent with our family and our wedding party laughingly scooping dry dirt and sand over the manure. 

The next day turned out beautiful, by the way, a fantastic wedding. 

Plus, we have a great story to tell.

So many things happen on a farm. We have fun times. Hard times. We feel the circle of life. We live through uncertainties. Most of the time we rely on faith. 

Farming is our livelihood, our way of life, our home. 

That’s just the way we want it.

These are just a few of the stories of the past, and present, that makes us who we are. 

The stories of us.

I can help you tell your personal story! Your family’s story!

Ask me how: kelly@kellywriting.com