Were You Raised in a Barn?

Years ago,  a young friend from town taunted our kids with the phrase, "Were you raised in a barn?"  My daughter rolled her eyes and replied with disdain, "Well, yeah!"  We all burst out laughing.

Farm kids spend a lot of time in barns.  In fact you could say that they learn a lot of life's lessons in that fragrant, dim interior. 

Early on the barn becomes a favorite playground.  Little kids push tractors around in the soft dirt of barn floors that has been pounded into powder by the passing of the tractor tires.  Loose grain, bits of hay, and grass become imaginary fodder for vast imaginary fields of animals.  My daughter spent hours in the hay loft listening for the mew of kittens as she hunted the old barn cat's hidden litter. In the quiet darkness, spliced by sunbeams streaming through the barn siding, she would dream of future hopes and heartfelt desires.  Fortunes were made and lost in intense card games played on the bottom of an overturned 5-gallon bucket.  Every barn manages to boast a basketball goal that becomes the focus of NBA quality, highly contested games of Horse.

Barns teach you to take care of your things.  The same little ones that push their tractors happily around on their dust farms, quickly learn that those little tractors have to be put safely out of the alley-way or they will be flattened by the return of the real tractors. The same way, their older brothers and sisters learn that show sticks and buckets left out of place inevitably fall prey to a passing cow or returning piece of field equipment. The same way they learn that while 4-wheelers are fun to ride, if they aren't properly cared for, it means a lot of extra trips carrying buckets and hay bales without them.

It's through barn chores that farm kids learn about the meaning of responsibility.  Early on our kids were the ones that had to go to the barn each morning before school to feed and care for their show heifers.  They learned time-management in figuring how to sleep every extra minute and still get their chores done and have time to get ready for school.  Of course, there was always the morning that they discovered that one of the heifers had escaped the lot and had to be driven back to the barn.  Thus, a 15 minute job became 30 minutes, meaning less time to get ready.  My daughter used to say that all her friends thought she overslept when she would show up at school with her hair thrown into a pony tail. 

They learned problem solving along with organizational skills.  To save time in the mornings they decided to fill the feed buckets the night before only to discover the buckets dumped by the nighttime raids of raccoons.   To protect the feed buckets from the raccoons,  they then learned to put them in a box or barrel with a lid.

They learned to delegate and cooperate.  They learned to prioritize the most urgent chores.  They learned to take orders and to give concise and explicit instructions.  Our daughter taught her Dad a little about that.  He was a great one for telling her "Take this bucket, through that gate and feed those cows."  "Daddy", she would wail, "there are five gates, into three lots, all with cows!!   Be specific!"  She swore one day she would paint each gate a different color. Not a bad solution.

Quiet nights waiting for the arrival of a new baby calf,  teach you patience and how to be still.  You learn about birth and about death in barns.  You learn about miracles, failures, satisfaction, and disappointment.  You learn that your parents are people, who sometimes get frustrated and yell.  Then sometimes they don't yell, they just hug you close and let you cry.  You learn to keep on when you are tired but the job isn't finished.  You learn the satisfaction of keeping on until the job is done. 

You learn the pride of being able to answer, "Yes, we were raised in a barn."