05/12/2026
The heroes of the farm are not any one person but the efforts of the family that make it all work.
My tractor drive in the Tulip Time parade:
The nods of the older generation of women who SAW me, who were and are me, who smiled and waved and nodded with a well done. They held their head and shoulders high, as if it were an honor to them. Because it was. It was all I could do to hold it together as I drove down the street. Our job never fits any one peg-we are mothers and farmers and vets and gardeners. We are business owners and friends, wives and sisters. We are doing all of the things that no one sees, day in and day out, and do not expect nor need acknowledged because we just weren’t woven that way. But Saturday, it was soul healing for me. I don’t have many words for it, maybe I will someday and maybe this is a scootch of it, but it was.
My earliest memories are riding my grandpa Roy’s international tractors and the safety and love of my grandma Doris on their farm in northeast Missouri. They instilled in me to use what you have, be grateful for it all and that we never regret our silence.
My grandpa was born in 1915, my grandma in 1921. They saw the world change in their lifetime more than probably any other generation. I treasure the many conversations about that very thing-their lives through it all. One thing they never did was complain. They lived through some very, VERY challenging things and yet when they spoke of them it was always from an angle of “seeing the good”. I believe in order to move forward we all need to look back.
