Farm life

This redirection – from big city life to rural farm life – has put us where we were needed most, helping to care for Grandma. It has also allowed Harry to get to know his Grandma in a way that wasn’t possible during our brief visits to Wisconsin.

And as Harry gets to know Grandma, Grandma gets to know her grandson, which has brought her immeasurable joy and laughter…most of the time.

Walking and talking with Grandma.

There have been some rough spots. I think that’s inevitable when you are living in someone else’s home, living by their rules and finding your place in their space.

An eight-year-old boy with an expansive imagination, pretending to be anything from Luke Skywalker battling Darth Vader to a man-eating crocodile in the Amazon jungle, can be LOUD.

A LOUD eight-year-old boy and an 80-year-old Grandmother don’t always coexist easily. When Grandma wants to relax and fall asleep in her comfortable chair in the living room and Harry wants to battle wither skeletons on the carpet…well, things can get tense.

Harry often says, “All Grandma does is yell at me.” Well, she isn’t really yelling, but she does speak in a very stern tone saying, “Play quietly!” She doesn't understand that saving the world from an alien invasion can’t really be accomplished “quietly.”

There are innumerable experiences that wouldn’t have been, had we still been living in the big city.  We do miss city life, where there is more opportunity and accessibility to so many things.  I’m not suggesting that a child can’t live a full, rich life in a city.  But as a single parent with a full-time job, it would have been very different for us. I would have been sharing my parenting of Harry with some other kind of caregiver.

Rural farm life has given Harry the freedom to run with abandon around a big yard, to jump and to climb, to lay under the stars on a blanket in the barnyard in complete darkness watching meteors streak across the sky.

He’s been able to sled in that same barnyard and snowshoe through and explore Grandma’s Big Woods. To build a snow fort, igloo style, in the front yard and a tree fort (without the tree) in the backyard. To learn tricks on his favorite rope swing, to enjoy parades with elephants and giraffes at the annual Barnum & Bailey Circus parade, to go to festivals and fairs, to hike and to chase wild turkeys and track a doe with her newborn fawn.

 

Clocking hours on the rope swing.

He found a shed (deer antlers) the first time he went looking. That, by the way, totally frustrated his Uncle Tommy who shed hunts as a hobby and knows how difficult it is to find discarded antlers.

Harry has been fascinated by and in sheer wonder of so many animals that we’ve encountered like a Bald Eagle (only feet away) trying to lift a raccoon carcass off the road, a white tailed buck (that would have been a grand prize giant shed) or countless other creatures like rabbits, skunks, snakes, guinea fowl, fallow deer, pileated woodpeckers, songbirds, raccoons, badgers, groundhogs, moles and voles, frogs and toads.

He has gone from a near paralyzing fear of chickens to venturing into the coop to “pet” his feathered friends and gather eggs.

 

Collecting eggs from his chicken friends.

Harry has learned the value of a quiet walk in the woods and fresh air to breathe (except during late spring when the liquid manure trucks are rumbling past the house.) He ‘s learned about crops, farming and planting trees to renew the forest.  He’s ridden a tractor and a combine, high above the corn during harvest and learned to put up hay. He’s watched, intrigued, as vegetables and flowers sprouted from the ground in our little garden. He’s learned to ride a bike (well, almost!)

Knee high by the Fourth of July, a common saying of corn farmers in the Midwest.

Just after his first ride, ever, in a combine...

Harry’s learned to ski and snowshoe. He’s been the first to make tracks in the snow after an overnight storm and to see how the snow leaves a sparkling blanket over the pine forest. He likes to just lie down on the grass, his head on my shoulders, to watch the clouds drift overhead while watching for shapes of dragons and castles.

He’s learned that people don’t actually “put dead animals in the walls,” but mount the head and shoulders of a prize deer as a trophy. As an aside…there are a lot of dead animals on the walls of Wisconsin!

All these things are experiential and educational and will make Harry a well-rounded person. He’ll remember these things as he continues to grow in what is a very diverse, amazing and sometimes challenging world.

My rural upbringing and my big city living as an adult, gave me a perspective and knowledge that I don’t think I would have, had I done one without the other. Having both in my background has certainly influenced the way I see the world.

We are grateful for all these things and most importantly grateful for our time together and for all the adventures we have had.

Here, for now, Harry and I are thriving in a safe, nurturing, and sometimes LOUD environment.  

 

Just another day in Wisconsin.