"It Keeps Me Turning Home..."

It is amazing how smells can take you back to another place… Today, I was walking out of the office and a diesel truck drove past. Its smutty exhaust attacked my olfactory sense and I was transported back to the farm. It brought me back to one particular day when I was doing my “girl’s work” of leveling out peanut wagons.


Our old tractors were creeping by pulling peanut pickers, my brother Wesley was “setting” wagons and I was sweating like a mule, thigh deep in peanuts with a shovel. Trying to convince myself that there were no snakes in the trailer with me.

Not a very glamorous memory—but a good memory none the less.

I love farm life--and farm memories!

You see, to call our farm a peanut “operation” might be a stretch. Yes we farm. We have peanuts. We “operate” tractors. But in my mind—operation sounds HUGE—and at the time we were still using two-row peanut pickers.

But the great thing about memories is size doesn’t matter. I can still see, clear as day, those tractors and Lilliston pickers creeping their way down the row from the top of that peanut wagon. It’s a good memory—it’s helped me through many hard times. Remembering my family and our way of life has kept me grounded throughout all my adventures. Remembering the long hours my grandpa and uncle put in on the farm makes me appreciate the life I live as well as the food I eat.

But enough reminiscing.

I had another moment of transportation last week—this time I actually went somewhere: home!

I spent the holiday weekend with my family: cooking out, eating, going to movies, eating, singing around the piano, eating, playing with the baby… and did I mention eating?

It's not a family get together with out Bluebell Ice Cream!

Holidays around my house ALWAYS include massive amounts of food. What can I say—EVERYONE in my family knows how to cook! (Well—my skills are questionable) So we spent the weekend enjoying good meals and lots of friends and family at the house.

My uber-cool niece

I also spent my weekend checking out the crops. I was impressed to see how great my fiancé’s dry land cotton looked as well as the peanuts. However the corn—was not what I expected. I guess I forgot that North Florida/Lower Alabama aren’t exactly part of the Corn Belt—and it showed. The lack of rain on our sandy soil had really taken its toll. Overall though, I was thrilled to see the progress of ours and our neighbor’s peanut and cotton crops. (The beans I saw didn’t look half bad either!)

Deltapine Cotton--Florida

FL07 Peantus--Alabama

I’ve only got a few weeks of my internship here in the Midwest left—and though I enjoyed being home, I missed my STL friends… and corn—really tall, lush green corn.

I never thought I’d say that.

Until next time—keep it between the ditches

PS--If you haven't heard the new song by David Nail, "Turning Home" you should check it out!

Someone Pass Me a Mood Ring

So this weekend has been an emotional roller coaster ride--from being so happy that I'm practically dancing while driving down I-270 to crying as I was driving around looking at farms and looking for antique shops. I'm such a sap-- a very homesick sap. (Someone pass me a mood ring.) While I cannot always control my emotions (I can be SUCH a girl sometimes) I don't have to let them control me.

Sometimes it's just nice to feel--anything-- after staring at a computer screen all week, worrying about other peoples problems and making it moment to moment--it is nice to feel emotional, like I've finally turned off autopilot or hit the brakes to turn off the cruise control. I can think and feel again. Emotions--happy, sad, elated, devastated-- remind me I am alive.

However, while all this "emotional being alive" crap sounds wonderful-- if you don't control where your emotions take you just like you practice self control in other areas of you life, you are going to be one miserable chicka blubbering on some winding back road looking at corn.

Yes, I was pretty pathetic Saturday.

The day had gone beautifully--I didn't get lost, found some awesome stores and had Rocky Road Chocolate Candy-(perfection!) but all of the sudden my crack-head, bi-polar emotional system went into overdrive and I remembered how MUCH I missed people back home--you know the kind of folks that you just sit around and shoot the breeze with--not even folks close to me. Well, the next thing you know I'm a blubbering mess, 800 miles away from home and my life sucks and wah, wah, wah, sob, sob, sob.

After, I got home, had some homemade chicken 'n rice and time to reflect--I realized that my overly dramatic sorrowful woe-is-me afternoon was self induced. I couldn't help what I was feeling--but I didn't have to let my feeling lead me around like I was a cow with a twitch in my nose. I thought back to what someone told me earlier this week-- "Attitudes are like flat tires--you won't get anywhere unless you change it."

So, I started thinking about everything going on in my life--since my move:
I have awesome co-workers and a job that I love.
I have hilarious friends from church that are more fun than Snipe hunting with a Yankee.
I am getting to do something I've wanted to do my ENTIRE life-- live "out West"-- and while this sure ain't Montana--it's been an amazing experience!
And God has provided a way to pay for all of this, given me a supportive family and fiance and answered my prayer SO MANY of my prayers this week--that it has given me hope--it's good to know he hasn't given up on me.


What right did I have to be sad?

That's right none.

Now, that that's all out there--here are some picture from my lovely adventures:

Corn--Jerseyville area--already has ear development and tasseling!

The river flooder the road ahead and was knocking on these folk's front door!

Homesick? Not really...

It never ceases to amaze me how I can miss home SO MUCH one moment and fall in love with another place the next.




There are TONS of things I miss about home: peanuts, walking barefoot down dirt roads, the Chattahoochee River, the sound of the wind singing in the pine trees... there are a lifetime of memories living in the land, the land I was raised on. Some days I miss it so much I physically hurt.



This past weekend though, I had the chance to visit my roommate’s Illinois farm. It was there, standing on her back porch that I fell in love... again.



The land stretched out before me farther than any I had ever seen before--it was as if the sky was twice the size of the sky at home. The corn rows were never ending. Barely visible, in the distance, were wind turbines.

Yep, I was sold.



I spent the rest of the weekend dodging rain showers, hanging out with her family and enjoying Midwest delicacies (AKA Pork Burgers--why hasn't the South figured this one out yet?!) I realized that it wasn't so much that Florida dirt that I missed but the community and care of agriculture life; the knowledge that things are not as bad as they seem, especially when there's cake at home and family to laugh with. I missed knowing that people pay attention to what others do (yes, I suppose I miss small town gossip a bit) and truly care about their well being.



Let me just tell you folks, that can be hard to come by in the city... unless maybe you were raised there.



There's just something about farm life that makes living and growing up a reckless-safe adventure. An oxymoron, I know... reckless in the fact that you have the freedom to be innovative, to build a better mouse trap, to find a way to get just as much work done using a simpler method. Reckless-- because there is a whole wild world to explore and it starts at your back porch. Reckless--because life dependent on nature has to be, it's anything but reliable.



Farm life is also safe. I remember coming home so cotton-pickin' mad that all I wanted to do was go fast... and most of the time my grandparents (Ma and Pa--no one really has "grandparents" in the South) kept me grounded. I was hard headed and stubborn, but their love cultivated me into the person I am today. (Along with the rest of the "village") They didn't always understand my restlessness or my love for FFA or accept the fact that I enjoy driving tractors and showing cows... but they were always there. They always knew what to say (not always when to stop but that's a different story... =)



It was this weekend I realized why I was homesick. I missed the reckless/safe life I had been privileged to live at home. It has made me more determined than ever to return to it, and offer it as a gift to my kids one day.



So, to answer the 4,329 questions from Facebook: No, I have no big city notions. I like the farm just fine--and I hope to be back there for good in about a year =)



Love y'all all

J