When we were growing up we lived less than an hour away from my Mother’s parents.  I remember many trips down to the farm where she grew up, the four of us packed into the back of a station wagon, Mom bringing along something to add to the family dinner.

We were always excited to run around the farm’s barns, play with the barn cats, pick the black raspberries behind Grandpa’s workshop, watch the piglets, ride the tractor with our Uncle.  When we got bigger we each got to spend a week at the farm, staying overnight in Grandma’s guest room, sneaking her crumb cookies, spending hours with the cats or reading on the porch swing.

Sometimes we were even useful, helping to fill the hayloft with bales of hay, or feeding the hogs along with my Uncle.  Mostly I’m sure we were just underfoot; city kids who didn’t know much about farming who slowed the work down.  But my uncle just kept grinning, cracking jokes, letting us drive the tractor, climb fences, scratch the back of a mama pig.

We were always happy to get to the farm and always sad to leave.  I had the same series of feelings as I wandered among the barns this week.  They and the house and Grandpa’s workshop were so full of memories.

And as my cousin asked me questions about what it was like on the farm all those years ago I began to remember more.  Did I remember back when they had cows on the farm?  Were they beef or milk?  I have faint memories of each cow being in it’s own stall.  I might even remember my Uncle milking the cow and squirting milk to a barn cat.

But I might have seen that in a movie too.  I’m not sure.

I distinctly remember collecting two eggs from under the chickens when I was five.  It was cold out and I had a snowsuit on and mittens.  I was carefully walking back to the house, one egg in each hand when a big dog ran up and jumped on me.  I smashed the eggs in my hands and the dog licked the fresh egg off my mittens.

When I was a teenager, staying with my Grandma for a week in the summer I’d practice my clarinet up in the hayloft even though we weren’t supposed to climb up there.  The sound was pretty cool in the big empty barn.  I’m not sure the barn cats totally appreciated the entertainment.

I remember driving down the lane standing in front of my Uncle on the old tractor, thinking I was steering when I probably wasn’t.  I remember having to stand with all my weight on the clutch in order to switch gears.   I remember him deliberately distracting me so I’d look over to the left at the cows in the next farm, then he’d move the steering wheel and we’d drive off the tracks in the lane and he’d tell me I better pay attention!  Then we’d laugh.

We laughed a lot on that farm.  I think all those peals of laughter are still caught inside the barn walls today.  As I stood there remembering the bull and the cats and the cows and the pigs I could almost hear them again.  It was good to visit the farm.

I like to think the farm was glad to see us too.