Green Acre Dreams

(The pictures today are not mine. They are swiped without permission off the net - hey at least I'm honest.)

I was just stepping out of the shower after mowing the yard yesterday morning, when I heard my Mom in the house calling to me. I wasn't too surprised since all three of my boys had spent the night with her the night before, however I knew she was leaving early to pick Tristan up so I wondered what was going on. She asked if I would be interested in coming with all the boys to pick up some milk from a local farm. I had a lot on my to do list (clean the boys' rooms, type up VBS scripts, clean up out back, plant sunflowers), but how could I resist the lure of a REAL farm?

We drove just out of the city and at the end of a country road there sat a little farm house with all the things I grew up with; huge barn for the animals, giant shed for the tractors and equipment, fence rows of differing kinds in all directions around landscape and, most of all, animals. The boys were so excited about just seeing the big Percherons in the field by the house. The farmer's wife was very kind and took the boys on a tour. We went into the shed where two Jersey calves were keeping each other company.

Since it was a dairy, and they don't use any hormones on their cows, the babies were bottle fed and one was very tame. The other was scared to death of the wiggly-giggly people that had taken the barn by storm. Mom showed the boys how the babies liked to suck on fingers. Only Austin would brave a try. The lady of the house then took us all out into a field where the Percherons were grazing and they came right up, happy for a pat on the nose and more than willing to let four little boys rub on them. It was so fun. We passed the beehives and got to see an empty box. There were bird feeders hung from the trees and a particularly large tree had a plank and rope swing from a low branch.

As we left Austin looked over at me and said, "Mom, NOW I know why you want a farm."

Is there anything better in this world than being loved AND understood? I only hope that one day I'll get my Green Acres and that the boys will still be young enough to enjoy it as much as I did growing up.