The days on a farm don’t seem to ever shout “holiday” loud and clear. Everyone is too busy to notice what the calendar indicates to the rest of the world.
I remember having to pass up weekend festivals with friends throughout the summer, but the one that stung the worst was missing the annual canoeing excursion with church youth group friends on Labor Day. Every single year, the farm needed us for various reasons, and school would soon demand our presence, so it was a day for, well, labor.
One thing I have come to realize for some of us who grew up as dyed-in-the-wool farm kids is that we forever seem to put work before play, and perhaps to excess. I have never, for instance, gone canoeing, even though I surely could have by now. As an adult, it just seemed kind of pointless. I would rather stay home and get some work accomplished.
Cousins visiting us from Alaska last week remembered this, saying their summertime visits over their childhood years meant enjoying meals with us, but they would then go do something fun while we stayed home and worked. If it wasn’t a hay baling day, it might mean rock picking or fence walking to check for electric shortouts.
Another summer job involved cleaning the barns, with most of the emphasis put on the milking parlor.
“You never know when the milk inspector will pay us a visit,” Dad would say.
It seems preposterous to me now, but we felt as responsible as an adult, even when we were just little kids, for keeping that milk inspector happy. We took it all seriously, because that farm belonged to us all.
I remember sweeping the barn floors with a push broom and then standing back and taking it all in with pride. When Dad patted one of us on the back for a job well done, it was a fine feeling, and we glowed all the way to our boots.
My sisters will tell you that each one of us, responsible and hard-working in our youth, carried that into our adult lives. It is a gift that growing up on a true family farm provides. We could see a job that needed to be done, and without being told, we accomplished it. We learned more than we ever realized we were learning, with traits carried over into jobs we each landed after leaving home.
We each needed to work on finding time for fun, because accomplishing jobs was priority #1 in our bones. We lived by the clock and by the calendar, long before we were old enough to hold down a real-world, off-the-farm job that would have provided paid holidays.
Labor Day is one of those. I wish everyone joyful accomplishments by the bushel!
