Patience, Patience and More Patience. This is what you need to be a farmer or a wife of a farmer. Farming is one of those careers where you are the boss but only of yourself. You can't set up meetings with the rain and you can't plug temperatures into your forecast. You can only watch the weather and get up in the morning early to get things going hopefully, before the weather gets you. You have to have patience if you are going to make this lifestyle work. That also goes for the wife of a farmer.
You would think that growing up on a farm would have prepared me to have patience. But guess what, ...it didn't! I understood what my dad was doing when he wasn't at home and when my mom would say load up so we could take food to the field. I guess what it really boils down to is the fact that I was a kid and all I was really worried about was what I was going to play next. I can also say that even when I was dating my husband, I still didn't get what farming entailed. It wasn't until we were married that I learned what real patience was about.
If you don't know me, I am pretty strong headed and strong willed so patience wasn't my strong suit. When I want something or think I need something, I go for it full steam ahead. No one can tell me how to do anything. I have to figure things out myself (just ask my parents)! Well I thought that when I got married that my husband would be home at 6 to eat dinner with me. That he would be home on the weekends and that we would do lots of fun things as a couple. Well all of those things that I expected didn't happen except for one. We did lots of fun couple stuff like ride the tractor, help fix fence and help lay out pipe for flood irrigation (I know that is what you all call fun, NOT). My patience for doing these things became short lived and my strong will kicked in. I couldn't understand how he couldn't make time for me or for us. After a lot of discussion and a lot of tears, I can honestly say I have now grown patient and a lot less strong willed.
I now have patience for not being able to eat with my husband at 6, him being home on the weekends or even doing now fun family adventures when I want to. I have learned to be understanding by when I start to feel frusterated with things not going my way, stopping and realizing that now this is our only lively hood. I could get away from thinking about all the things that I thought the farm was taking away from me when I was at work because I had other things to focus on. But when we decided that this stay at home mom thing was going to happen, I had to take a second look at what was going on around me. Whether or not I was working I should have seen my husbands drive to do everything he could to make this not only a lifestyle but a life.
I know that I am still not perfect and there are probably days when my husband wished I would stop calling him to ask about plans for the up coming weekend, but I now try very hard to be patient and wait. Because when he does come home to hang out with us we have more fun than even I know what to do with.
So to all my girl friends, don't feel too frusterated if you grew up and a farm and still don't feel like you quite get it. Patience and understanding of the farm will come and if you need an ear, while you are waiting on those things, you know where to find me!
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