Herd About It?

by Ana Grarian

This morning I hopped out of bed early to bake a cake, make some frosting and get dinner ready to pop into the oven when I get home from work this afternoon. Time for a real farm dinner with the gathered family.

Being in an apartment I don’t usually get up early. Especially on a Sunday it is important to keep quiet so the lanlord and neighbors can sleep. As I am a morning person this is a bummer.

When I was a kid, Sunday mornings meant waking to hear my mother puttering in the kitchen. She would be in her housecoat, all ready to go to church except for changing into her good dress and taking out her curlers.

Usually she would be practicing whatever the choir would be singing that day, her pleasant soprano weaving around the clatter of pots and pans while she got Sunday dinner ready to for the oven, often roast beef, a ham or my favorite a pork roast. Potatoes would be cut up in a pan of cold water waiting to be cooked at noon, or maybe baking in the slow oven with the meat.

Later at the farm my kids would listen to this while hubby and I were in the barn, milking cows, feeding calves etc. We would come into the house not just to a clean kitchen with dinner just started in the oven but also fresh coffee cake. Mom had a special cake with sliced apples and crumb topping she often made.

I’d head for a shower and clean clothes while she served breakfast. Then while chugging my coffee and snitching pieces of cake we’d both finish getting the kids ready ( I can still see them in those frilly little girl dresses I loved) and head off for church. Grampa and Dad usually worshiped at the glowing alter of modernity, but sometimes there was field work to get started, or manure to spread.

For a while we had the grandkids at the farm on Sunday morning. First chores, pancake breakfast and then church. In the summer there was the prerequisite dunk in the pool too. Keeping up with the two of them was a hoot, let me tell you. Summer Sundays was chores, pool, breakfast, church, pool, lunch, pool, nap (please!), pool, chores, dinner, pool – drop happily exhausted into bed.

Those were the good days. I miss the hecticness sometimes. It’s hard to get started in the morning when there isn’t anything really pressing to get done. I hate starting work in the middle of the day (10am). It sort of hangs over my morning and then eats up the best part of the day. Oh well. I am happy to have a job in these pressing times. Perhaps soon I’ll have farm chores again …..