To the editor:
Being a farm kid is a wild adventure. I know because I’m one. I grew up on a dairy farm in the small town of New Sweden. Being a farm kid is many things. It’s getting up at 5 so you can do the chores before school. It’s sweating over the garden half the afternoon so you can have a salad for dinner. Being a farm kid is jumping into a stream to cool off.
Being a farm kid is all about hard work. In the summertime we always go to the County Fair. We rush around doing chores all morning so we can spend the afternoon at the fair. My brothers and I enter the pig scramble and when we get a pig we raise it up. We feed it all the scraps from the kitchen. Eventually, it has to go in the freezer. Then we eat pork for four months.
When you are a farmer you have to wait your turn and work to get what you want. Farming is never the easy way out. It’s often the hardest way. But as they say, “The hard way’s the best way!”
Farm kids are tough. We aren’t afraid of work and we have to do our share. We try our best to be resourceful because that’s what farming’s about. We save all the kitchen scraps to give to the pigs. At school the bus driver/janitor puts a bucket out for all the kids to dump their scraps. Then he takes it and feeds it to his pigs.
To be a farmer you have to know your stuff. You almost have to be born a farm kid. You don’t just become one because you want to. I was out in the hay field when I was 5 years old. I was driving when I was 11. My brother, who’s tall enough, started when he was 8 or 9. Driving a tractor is just part of the farm kid life. We get to help sow grain, and make hay. One time, our teacher drove his tractor to school!
Being a farm kid is about hard work. To be a farm kid you can’t just sit on your butt all day and hope someone else will do everything for you. You have to get up and try hard.
Being a farm kid can also be quite fun. You do all sorts of cool things with animals and you get plenty of stories to tell your friends. Being a farm kid is like having your own personal story gold mine. All in all, I think being a farm kid is a blast.
Anya O’Meara
New Sweden
