My first trip to a farm was in 1982 as part of a school field trip. On a warm spring day, my classmates and I crawled through a hay maze, marveled at baby pigs, and exchanged our licked-clean popsicle sticks for 30 seconds upon a horse’s back.
Fifteen years later I took my next trip to a farm…only this time I went with a group of college friends instead of first graders and we exchanged our (licked-clean) popsicles sticks for combine rides. My friend, Erica, invited a group of college friends including me to spend a weekend on her family farm near the Kentucky-Tennessee border. We all knew and loved Erica as the girl who had to be taught how to pay for gas (she was accustomed to ‘free’ gas from the farm’s pump) and called grocery carts ‘buggies’. We had to know about the place from which she hailed.
Our 2-car caravan headed south on a crisp autumn morning. Along the way we observed a fall festival, a memorial to Jefferson Davis, and more red dirt than I had ever seen in my life. We were welcomed to the family farm by a ferocious beast family dog named Teddy. “Don’t worry,” Erica assured us, “He wouldn’t hurt a flea. He just likes to try to bite the bumpers off of cars.” I opted to keep my distance from ’sweet’ Teddy that weekend.
Our first bona fide farm activity was taking turns riding in the combine with Erica’s younger brother. He was only 16 at the time, but clearly had been operating heavy equipment for quite some time. “Gets kind of messy when you get a deer,” he observed stoically. I quickly suppressed that mental image.
Dinner that evening was more than a meal. Truly it was a feast. Erica’s mother prepared enough food for an army, and we showed our appreciation by eating accordingly. I wouldn’t even care to guess how many sticks of butter (real butter, not margarine) went into that meal. When you’ve become accustomed to eating ramen noodles at your dorm desk for a meal, the opportunity to eat a home-cooked meal at a real dining room table with a family is golden.
Erica’s brother entertained us with his hidden talen of clucking (yes, like a chicken). Erica’s little sister couldn’t wait for dinner to be over so that she could return to the basement to her beloved roller skates. Erica’s mother won our hearts with her sweet southern charm and crystal-blue eyes, and her father won my heart by calling me “the first cotton-pickin’ Hoosier” he ever liked. A high compliment indeed. In short, her family was a hit and we quickly surmised where the credit lay for Erica’s warmth and vivacity.
Autumn nights in Kentucky were made for bonfires, and I was made for autumn nights in Kentucky. On a whim, I looked up that night and was amazed by what I saw– stars. A lot of stars…tiny stars and constellations previously unknown due to street lights, city lights, air pollution, etc. I looked upward for a long time knowing it might be the last time I saw some of those stars for quite some time (sadly, I was right about that).
The chance of our group slipping into Erica’s church the next morning unnoticed was virtually zero. Thankfully, we were just as welcomed there as we were in Erica’s home. I’m inclined to like any church where the pastor’s wife is named Kitty. I can’t really explain that inclination.
Church was followed by (surprise) food, and food was followed by sad farewells. I had the pleasure of returning to the farm several times throughout my college career and once after. I look back on those visits fondly…each time remembering clucks at the dinner table and secret stars on a chilly autumn night.