the farmer takes a wife

Remembering this evening, first posted two years ago ... my children still astonish me, and leave me amazed that a subdivision-raised girl like me could have daughters (and a son) so confidently knowledgeable about things I am only now discovering, both about the natural world and myself.  May God Himself sustain their faith and make it sure.

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This evening, after supper, I walked with my Farmer (who carried our son) and three daughters, back behind the barn and along the ridge through the cornfields to the neighbor's pig barn to watch giant tractors bring their manure-spreaders in to be filled.

One was green (John Deere).  The other was red (Case IH).  The green one had huge double wheels.  The red one was hinged in the middle ("articulated", to those in the know).  Both pulled 7300-gallon tanks of liquid manure, the weight spread over three sets of tires (the front two could be lifted free from the ground).

My daughters held their noses and exclaimed over how big the tractors' wheels were.  My son, ears covered by his fleece cap but his little legs sticking out, chilly, where his pantlegs had ridden up, just gazed around in wonder at the wide, wide world.

I watched them, my children.  I am their mother - these offspring so foreign to me, sometimes.  They know so much about tractors, growing things, and manure.

We drove out to buy milk from a neighbor's dairy this morning.  We spotted some new calves and day-dreamed about having one at our house.  Sugar, in her 9-year-old wisdom,  said we couldn't keep it in the barn, though, or it might get hoof disease.  Hoof disease?!  Was that in the science curriculum somewhere that I missed?

On the way home,  I admired the green growing in a field and Sugar said it was probably rye.  

After we (well, I) had marveled long enough at the giant tractors, we headed back home over the cornfields.  Sugar and Spice ran ahead, hair flying brilliant in the setting sun.  Nice stayed with me, hanging on to my arm and telling me what a nice mommy I was.  Lil' Snip bounced along on Daddy's arm and just looked and looked and looked.

I wonder what he was thinking ....