# Funny how the years change your perspective...



## Husker (Jun 8, 2011)

When I was a kid growing up in rural Nebraska, my family shared a large garden, about 1/2 acre, with another neighbor. Dang, I hated that thing. The worst punishment I could be given was to spend the morning in the garden weeding. My parents had cherry and apple trees also -- I had a great disdain for having to pick those cherries every year. 

Fast forward 30 years -- we are in the process of buying some land. Looking forward to having a large garden again. Maybe even throw some fruit trees on it. Heck, I just bought my first Bell Blue book. My kids are going to hate it.


----------



## neldarez (Apr 10, 2011)

Husker said:


> When I was a kid growing up in rural Nebraska, my family shared a large garden, about 1/2 acre, with another neighbor. Dang, I hated that thing. The worst punishment I could be given was to spend the morning in the garden weeding. My parents had cherry and apple trees also -- I had a great disdain for having to pick those cherries every year.
> 
> Fast forward 30 years -- we are in the process of buying some land. Looking forward to having a large garden again. Maybe even throw some fruit trees on it. Heck, I just bought my first Bell Blue book. My kids are going to hate it.


too funny, sounds like most of our lives........won't it be awesome if your kids just love it..........quickly becoming into alignment with new life, adventure and possibilities............yep, that's what we want for them, discovery and a change of pace! Glad you are able to do this, it rekindles things in people when they get back outside to work in the dirt, trees, etc....... good luck for you and your family.........:congrat:


----------



## Jezcruzen (Oct 21, 2008)

I can relate. As a young boy I only had distain for the raw cow's milk in the "ice box" (as my grandmother called the frig) and the homemade butter. And I much preferred "store bought" bread than those biscuits baked early each morning and used for every meal that day. Sure miss it now!


----------



## Jason (Jul 25, 2009)

I live on what was until 2000 an active dairy farm. I hated it as a kid. Being tied to the cows made me miss a lot of stuff and I hated the cows for it. Now that I'm grown and 11 years removed, I'd give anything to be able to earn a living off the land, milking and managing a dairy farm. I have a good job that I do like, but if I could milk cows again I would in a second. We quit because we were a small scale farm and there were no other dairy farms around us so nobody would haul our milk.

That said, we do still run beef cows once in a while and we have chickens and rabbits. We still raise and sell crops, mainly hay and some corn and small grain. My son (just turned 3) loves riding in the tractors and helping with the animals and I really hope that since we aren't tied to the land as much that my boy likes it more than I did. 

You hit the nail on the head, Husker. Typing this out brought up a bunch of old (good) memories and I'm happy that it did. Thanks!


----------



## stayingthegame (Mar 22, 2011)

I think that most kids "hate the way they were raised. My dd's boyfriend has a two year old. She is helping raise him. the other day she was laughing about what he had done and what she told him, when she says she found her self saying the same thing her parents had said to her. "If you do that again you won't sit down for a week!" she told me she suddenly felt just like us. the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.:2thumb::2thumb:


----------



## IndigoLight (Apr 15, 2010)

Husker said:


> When I was a kid growing up in rural Nebraska, my family shared a large garden, about 1/2 acre, with another neighbor. Dang, I hated that thing. The worst punishment I could be given was to spend the morning in the garden weeding. My parents had cherry and apple trees also -- I had a great disdain for having to pick those cherries every year.
> 
> Fast forward 30 years -- we are in the process of buying some land. Looking forward to having a large garden again. Maybe even throw some fruit trees on it. Heck, I just bought my first Bell Blue book. My kids are going to hate it.


Oh, Husker, you are so right 
I spent early years of my life outside of the US, and it was a necessity in most places to have a garden and/or a potato field. I hated that I had to work there. Hated it. Planting and weeding, collecting and preserving. Yuck! 
I could've been dancing or reading a book instead 

Fast forward 30 years - I am in the same boat you are. I long for a garden and feel that working the land will be very beneficial for my mental and physical health, it will be a spiritual workout as well, not to mention the yummy "fruit" it will provide. Hoping to start my garden this fall. 
Garlic will be my first crop. You can't have too much garlic, eh? :beercheer:

Thank you for starting this thread :thumbraise:


----------



## Meerkat (May 31, 2011)

The city slicker part of em misses the candy stores where they rolled taffy and made fudge.Where escalators seemed high tech in Sears and Robuck,no malls.
You were safe going to the threatre and walking the downtown streets at night or catching a bus home.
Living part time in the country where you felt free just runnign through the woods and fishing and swimming in your own lake.Getting down on your knees and drinking from a clear cold natural spring.
Never milked cows,but lived next door to dairy farm where they would 'visit'when breaking down our fences,us kids always liked to seethem,can't say the same for mama.


----------



## ComputerGuy (Dec 10, 2010)

You all had it made. I enjoyed when I visited by cousins in Missouri.

Me I had a terrible upbringing. No cows, horses, I saw those on TV. I grew up in Central California. It was terrible, surfing, skateboarding riding pools, etc.

Going to parties, smoking the 'erb...LOL


----------



## The_Blob (Dec 24, 2008)

Meerkat said:


> Never milked cows,but lived next door to dairy farm where they would 'visit'when breaking down our fences,us kids always liked to seethem,can't say the same for mama.


hahaha a few times a year that would happen & we would have a back yard full of cows, good thing we had an Old English Sheepdog back then 

we would have to go down to the farm and tell the Mennonites in person because they had no phone then


----------



## BillM (Dec 29, 2010)

*How about*



stayingthegame said:


> I think that most kids "hate the way they were raised. My dd's boyfriend has a two year old. She is helping raise him. the other day she was laughing about what he had done and what she told him, when she says she found her self saying the same thing her parents had said to her. "If you do that again you won't sit down for a week!" she told me she suddenly felt just like us. the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.:2thumb::2thumb:


How about, "I'll skin you within an inch of your life" or "I'll beat you like a rented mule"?

My personal faviorite was when they told me, "Next time it will be twice as bad". I wondered what that would be like !

:2thumb:


----------



## Meerkat (May 31, 2011)

The_Blob said:


> hahaha a few times a year that would happen & we would have a back yard full of cows, good thing we had an Old English Sheepdog back then
> 
> we would have to go down to the farm and tell the Mennonites in person because they had no phone then


 LOL,our neighbor had a phone but did'nt like us complaining about his cows.They would break down our dam that backed up our 10 acre lake that was fed by natural springs which are all long gone now from over population.
I also loved the city too.We had apts and houses there from granddaddy who owned lots of real estate in Atlanta area.Atlanta was a beautiful city.So was Stone Mountain.Both of which are danger zones now,thanks to liberals and RINOS who put almost whole state on welfare of some from or another.


----------



## IndigoLight (Apr 15, 2010)

ComputerGuy said:


> Me, I had a terrible upbringing.


:lolsmash:


----------



## crazychickenlady (Jun 30, 2011)

Ahhh, memories!  The only thing I hated was picking beans. Probably because we had a half dozen rows that were like 100' long. 

Haying it got old and bringing in the firewood too, but that never seemed as bad as picking beans.

I loved! We had horses, cows, pigs, chickens, ducks...nothin' better for a kid!


----------



## Jason (Jul 25, 2009)

We heated with wood when I was a kid. I never minded cutting firewood. In fact, now my folks heat with oil but I heat my house with wood, via an outdoor wood burner. I deal with firewood in the fall, winter, and spring-too much other stuff going on in the summer to deal with wood. Plus, it's good winter exercise and there are less bugs/snakes/ miscellaneous nasties to deal with when it's cold outside.


----------



## Meerkat (May 31, 2011)

crazychickenlady said:


> Ahhh, memories!  The only thing I hated was picking beans. Probably because we had a half dozen rows that were like 100' long.
> 
> Haying it got old and bringing in the firewood too, but that never seemed as bad as picking beans.
> 
> I loved! We had horses, cows, pigs, chickens, ducks...nothin' better for a kid!


 I hated hauling water uphill from the well,it was only 125'deep but still hard to pull up the bske with that pully.And if you EVER let that handle loose with a full bucket of water,you had a bad injury,usually elbows or wrist.:gaah:.

No beans or garden,we bought from farmers market or grocery stores.


----------



## Meerkat (May 31, 2011)

Jason said:


> We heated with wood when I was a kid. I never minded cutting firewood. In fact, now my folks heat with oil but I heat my house with wood, via an outdoor wood burner. I deal with firewood in the fall, winter, and spring-too much other stuff going on in the summer to deal with wood. Plus, it's good winter exercise and there are less bugs/snakes/ miscellaneous nasties to deal with when it's cold outside.


 We had a fire place in every room of the old house,except kitchen,bath.Sometimes we used coal to heat and cook.


----------



## gypsysue (Mar 27, 2010)

I didn't mind helping with firewood cutting, but I hated our garden and I hated living in the country. I swore I'd never raise my kids in the middle of nowhere or make them work in a garden.

Fast-forward 35 years, plus or minus, and here we are, way out in the sticks with a big garden and orchard! The kids were in their teens when we moved here, so they weren't all that excited. Fled to the city as soon as they were old enough, and some of them are trickling back to the country now, and the ones left in town are dabbling with gardens and canning.


----------



## kyhoti (Nov 16, 2008)

I never understood why the old folks liked those ugly vegetables from the garden instead of the pretty ones from the store. What was so great about the root beer in the basement that I couldn't get some from the store? And why do they bother with the corn liquor, it's nothing but trouble? Why did we spend all the time on berries from the woods? Why bother to fish when there's Gortons Fishsticks in the freezer? Why bother doing all the work of cutting firewood when we could just bump up the thermostat? Why bother cooking when McDonald's was so cheap? Boy, was I a dummy. Luckily for my kids, they ask those questions, and I tell them. Sometimes they may not like the answers, but at least they know my reasons (and are taught how to do it). It was "old hat" to the old folks, so they never bothered to explain. At best, we got "Hmph. Young people these days. Hmph." I just wish I could grow as many ugly veggies as they used to from that tiny corner of dirt. Sadly, they're all with their maker now, and I'm reinventing the wheel.


----------



## gypsysue (Mar 27, 2010)

kyhoti, you have a way with words. What you just wrote is wonderful.


----------



## kejmack (May 17, 2011)

gypsysue said:


> I swore I'd never raise my kids in the middle of nowhere or make them work in a garden.


Absolute child abuse!!! LOL I remember one time the social worker told me that I could not force my foster kids to work around the farm. Really? And who else is going to take them. Our home was the "last resort" for these kids anyway. They were the kids who had been kicked out of other foster homes. The same social worker also thought it was abusive that we did not own a tv. She complained about it every time she came by, but I knew those kids were "stuck" with me because she didn't have any other placements for them. LOL

Think of how great the world would be if all kids have to pick beans and weed a few rows in a garden.


----------



## Emerald (Jun 14, 2010)

I grew up eating veggies from the garden-hated weeding, but loved hunting materhorn worms.. My mom and dad said that my skill was worth not weeding! lol
But I also hated picking bush beans- it did take forever and you never found them all! I grow only pole beans as there is less bending over...Plus they seem to produce much more than the bush beans did. I do get the grand daughter(who just turned three) to pick the low beans for me... but she picks them all, small and big!lol
I think back to the days when I was young and would sneak the salt shaker out to the garden with the hose and pick the tomatoes and cucumbers and just wash them a tad and eat them with the salt all warm from the sun and the juice dripping down my chin! then as an adult who worked full time and had to buy my produce the disappointment in the flavor from what I remembered... I took to haunting the dirt roads and small hand printed signs that said "homegrown tomatoes and produce" just to get something that tasted proper. I rarely found it. 
then we bought my family home and started a garden and I really didn't know doodly about heirloom veggies then.. while the home grown tomatoes I grew were better than the store bought ones by miles they still didn't have the flavor I was looking for... so about 15 or so years ago I read an article about the "old becoming new again" and it was about heirlooms... I went in search of a few of the old standby heirlooms and became totally addicted. I started with brandywine and Rutgers and green zebra! There it was the flavor I grew up with! I now grow mainly heirlooms and while they sometimes do not produce the abundance of produce that the hybrids do the flavor is worth the compromise.

It also for some reason reminds me of my Grandma and Grandpa-they lived on a lake and we all fished when ever I could get extra worms! I remember the stories that my Grandma told me of the "Great Depression" about how the best and cheapest form of protein for them was the cans of salmon-Great Gran knew about 30 different ways to make it(or so gramma said) My Gramma would dutifully take me out on the pontoon boat with grampa and we would fish and grampa would clean them and gramma cooked them all up for us every Friday with fresh biscuits... as I grew older I heard stories about the salmon and how gramma absolutely hated fish after having to eat it for years(or so she said) but since she loved us she still fished and cooked it and I don't recall her ever saying that she didn't like it or want to do it.. 
While fishing with my grand daughter a couple weekends ago I had the strangest Déjà vu while pinching a big old night-crawler in pieces for the hook.. it was as if I was taken back to the lake with gramma and grandpa and watching my gramma pinching those big old night crawlers in pieces with her long manicured fingernails.. It was as if she was right there patting me on the back and letting me know that family was still right here with us all.


----------



## goshengirl (Dec 18, 2010)

These are the best stories. Thanks, everyone.


----------



## IndigoLight (Apr 15, 2010)

Beautiful post, Emerald! Especially the ending :kiss:
I too, used to spend my childhood summers in a hammock with a good book, lots of homegrown tomatoes and a salt shaker


----------

