What Is a Typical Day on the Farm?

The other day I was asked what a typical day was like on our farm.  As I thought about this question I had to laugh inside because there isn’t a way to describe a typical day on our farm.  Every day is different on our farm.  We can start our morning with a list of tasks we want to complete and before we make it out of the house, that list can get changed.  I’m not sure if I even know what a typical day is supposed to be like.   

Yesterday is a perfect example.  I left the house yesterday morning at 7:00 am as the kids were walking down the driveway to catch the school bus.  Kevin was checking the cattle in the pastures to see if we had any new arrivals during the night.  After that, he planned to head to the field to harvest corn for the rest of the day. 

I headed to the feed mill with the intent of settling corn purchases made over the weekend.  Then I was going to enter production records into the computer for our hogs, and pay bills.  At 3:00 I was going to take pizzas to Rachelle’s school to feed the softball girls before their big game at 5:00 pm.  Before the game started at 5:00 I was going to run a few production record reports for the sows giving birth in the next month.   Then I was going to pick up our son and head to Rachelle’s game.  It was going to be a busy and productive day.  By 8:23 am though my day was completely changed and my plans were thrown out the window. 

Rachelle called me from school saying her wrist and hand were hurting from an injury she received in the softball game the prior night.  Her coach really felt like we needed to get an x-ray to make sure she didn’t break any bones.  We headed to the ER for x-rays which was a 75 mile drive.  Meanwhile, back at the feed mill my work lay untouched on my desk.  Around 11:30 we got the good news that Rachelle had no broken bones.  I made it back to my desk by 1:00 pm where I finally started to reconcile my corn deliveries until it was time to be a pizza delivery girl. 

By the time I made it back to the mill I discovered we had a break down on the drag system that takes ingredient deliveries to the over head storage bins.  A phone call was made to Kevin to bring him out of the field to help us fix the drag.  While the guys were working on the drag, we had two feed trucks arrive that needed to be loaded.  I loaded the trucks while the guys worked quickly to fix the breakdown.   Kevin was pulling in the drive as we completed the repairs to the drag system.  Unfortunately he left the field for no reason because our break down wasn’t as bad as we had anticipated.  Oops!   

By 5:00 last night, I had only accomplished one of the tasks I had set out to do yesterday.  As I watched Rachelle’s team play their game, I was already making a mental list of everything I needed to accomplish today.  And at the top of my list was everything I didn’t get done yesterday.  

Kevin arrived home about 10:00 last night and I re-heated pizza for him to eat.  His day had gone almost according to his plan which is very rare.  I then gave him a play by play report of Rachelle’s softball game.  He was thrilled to hear she had her first HOME RUN but of course he was disappointed he missed seeing it.  That is unfortunately the one thing that is pretty TYPICAL on the farm; Dad doesn’t get to leave work early to watch the softball games or baseball games!