Day 1: Appreciate the Little Things

I can’t believe it’s already November 1st and time to start the 30 Days blog challenge! I’ve been thinking about what I plan to share with you this month for awhile and I’m excited to finally see it come together. The 30 things I will be sharing this month are in no particular order, although some will be tied to special events taking place in our family this month.

I sometimes describe myself as a farmer’s daughter grown up to be a farmer’s wife, and now that I am raising my own farmer’s daughter there are many things I hope to share with her that I’ve learned and experienced over the years. I hope this blog series becomes something she can look back on someday and realize that yes, she did learn all these things and more from her father and me. If she can, I’ll feel as though I’ve done something right as a mother.

I’d like to start off Day One with this picture:

Yes, it’s a blue Ball jar. No, it’s not an old one, it’s one of the new “vintage” reproductions. Yes, it’s sitting on my kitchen windowsill, and yes, it’s about half full of rocks.

These rocks are nothing out of the ordinary. Most came from our driveway, although a few came home with us from vacation last summer. Some are small, some are bigger. Some are shiny, some are dull, some are smooth, some rough.

But these rocks hold a special place in my heart and on my windowsill because of whose little hand they were once clutched in.

You see, when Little C was first learning how to walk, it seemed as though she maintained her balance better when she was holding on to something, even if that something offered no realistic support. We’d walk out of the house and she’d cry out “Rocks!” and carefully select one or two for each hand and carry them around happily as we tended to the garden or went out to see Daddy working in the shed.

Invariably, these rocks often found their way into the house and something in my mother’s heart couldn’t just throw them back outside. So I started the jar. Her first “collection,” as it were.

Watching her show so much excitement over plain old rocks, something I barely even notice until one finds its way into my shoe, reminded me that I need to slow down and appreciate all the little things in life. In farming, we sometimes focus on the big things – finishing harvest, praying for rain to come or to stop, keeping our livestock safe and healthy – that the little things fall through the cracks. The beautiful deep, dark green of a cornfield in July. The first ear of hot, buttered sweet corn fresh from the field. The curl in a newborn piglet’s tail. The first day in the spring you can go out without a jacket, and the first day in fall you need one. And even the patterns on a rock from the driveway.

Little C, my little farm girl, I hope you will always appreciate the little things around you.

 

Thanks for reading along! If you’re intrigued by this concept, take a peek at some others who are doing the same thing:

• The Pinke Post: 30 Days of Women in Agriculture
• Standing out in the Field: 30 Days of Faces Behind Your Food
• Prairie Californian: 30 Days of Food
• Becoming Texan: 30 Days of Texas Panhandle Agriculture
• AgTechTalk: 30 Days of Ag Tech
• Sowing Bountifully: 30 Days with a Small Town Girl on a Big 10 Campus
• Mackinson Dairy Farm: 30 Days of Dairy
• Cows, Corn and Communications: 30 Days of Dairy Farm Life Blessings
• Morning Joy Farm: 30 Days of Agriculture – The Agriculture Book List
• Holbrook Honey and Hop Yard: 30 Days of Preparation for the Future
• Minnesota Farm Living: 30 Days of All Things Minnesota Agriculture
• Beyond the Pasture: 30 Days of Lessons I Learned on the Farm
• Kellie for Ag: 30 Songs about Raising Cattle
• Homestead Hill Farm: 30 Days of Lessons from the Farm
• Montana Stockgrowers Association Blog: 10 Things to Know About Beef Cattle
• Country Girl Creations: 30 Things I Want My Farm Girl to Know
• Life of a Future Farmer: 30 Days of Thoughts of a Future Farmer
• Black Ink Blog: Nice to Meat Ya: 30 Days of People You Ought to Know in the Quality Beef Business
• Farver Farms: 30 Days of Dirt Roads
• Carolyn CAREs Blog: 30 Things I Love
• Confessions of a Suburbanite Agvocate: 30 Days in the Life of an Ag Comm Student
• The Velvet Farmer: 30 Days from the View of a Agriculture Student
• Agriculture: A Way of Life: Series Name
• Cox Farm: 30 Things That Farming Has Taught Me
• Walking the Off-Beaten Path: 30 Days of Farming: It’s a Balancing Act
• The Magic Farmhouse: 30 Days of Illinois Farms and Food
• The Farmer’s Wifee: 30 Days of Farm Thanks

And the original 30 Days blog: My Generation