Being a farmer’s wife means sacrificing a lot, working really hard, growing lots of food, preserving lots of food, cooking wholesome home grown food and being stuck on the farm all summer. You feel like you are doing good, rewarding  even though some people don’t appreciate it and complain about the price. In my opinion, then move on and go buy your food at the grocery store where you can get it cheaper and eat chemical ridden and engineered food. On other days, I feel trapped by what feels like a money sucking farm. We can’t go very far away during the spring, summer or fall because everyday there is irrigating, feeding animals, planting, harvesting or all five at once. It truly feels like a trap by late summer!

It means cooking a meal for a whole crew of helpers for harvest, going out to help with harvest, serving the food, clean up, then going back out to harvest rest the day. It means a full day of canning and preserving fruits and vegetables, then cooking a meal for your hungry family when you are exhausted wanting to simply sit down and put your feet up. It means sweeping your house three times a day because there this so much dirt and mud for the whole family to get into and no one will obey the rule of leaving shoes outside. It means maintaining a yard and garden on your own and then helping with the farm work. It also means the farmer’s wife will be sitting on the porch or deck by herself with no one to spend that special time with or to enjoy the view of some of your hard work with because when the farmer sits down he falls asleep. So he keeps going until well after dark and then collapses into bed. It means not having someone to talk to when you need to talk because the farmer is in the field, on the phone or sleeping. It means not spending a much time together even though you are on the same farm. There is no quitting time or weekend days off on a farm! For this farmer’s wife, it means working my tail off all summer with no vacation and then homeschooling for nine months before we start the whole vicious cycle over again. That means no real easy going down time for me, which leads to burnout and a grumpy wife some days.

Being a farmer’s wife means working twice as hard as the farmer himself because she has all the inside duties and is also the one and only farm hand. I don’t think the farmer even realizes how hard the farm wife works even though he has been told several times. We farm wives or at least this one would like to be appreciated more than just hearing, “I appreciate what you do.” This farm wife wants to be a princess for awhile! Some days I would feel like a princess to have something as simple as a clothes dryer to use instead of having to line dry all the clothes. This farm wife wants to be the one being taken care of instead of doing the taking care of! Especially since it’s my birthday!
Note to Readers: I love my farm life and my husband, but farm work can be hard on a person. Especially when your birthday turns into just another long, hard day of work on the farm.