Summer on the Farm
Farm Life

As a kid, summers on the farm seemed to last forever. The first few weeks of summer holidays were spent with sleepovers at gramma’s house, pyjama parties, late night movies, and sleeping in till noon. There was always endless grass to cut, with push mowers that were hard to start. Once you got them going, you just kept cutting around and around until they ran out of gas.

By mid August I would be looking forward to going back to school and hanging with my friends again. Living on a farm can seem a bit lonely at times.

During the summer there was plenty of chores to be had. We had sheds to paint and gardens to weed. The weeding alone could take all summer, as with a huge country-style garden, the weeds would be endless.

During the fall, baling comes to mind. My job would often be to drive the tractor while my brothers walked beside and tossed the bales onto a flat wagon. From there they would be up-loaded to the top of the barn with some kinda pulley system. One brother would put them onto the auger and the other would be manning the hay-loft to stack them in position.

As the bales were coming up the trolley, the hay-loft brother would be building all sorts of paths, hideaways and forts throughout the loft. It became quite a labyrinth of hidden passageways, tunnels and secret hideouts. It was a great place to play and spend hours with the cats. It was a place where your imagination could run rampant. Over the course of the winter, as the bales got used up, so did your secret fort.

I often wondered if my dad knew what was going on, or why he couldn’t get as many bales in the loft as he had imagined. Or perhaps he just left well enough alone, as the bales got stacked away and the kids had their secret place to play.