The Farm

When I sought advice for this blog post I was encouraged to write about something I love. Coincidentally, the next day I headed nine hours north on route 81 to the place I love most, my childhood home. Recently, my mom needed help after surgery. I packed my husband and 3 kids in the car and headed to our 100 acre family farm in Northern Virginia. When I pulled into the long dirt and gravel driveway, where I learned to ride a bike nearly 30 years ago, I breathed an audible sigh of relief. I’m home.

Simple pleasures abound on the farm. Every morning we traipse down to the barn to feed the cattle and chickens with my dad. My girls proudly collect eggs in my father’s hat and share their henbit with the hens (chickens love to eat the purple weed). Breakfast is coffee on the front porch overlooking the farm while munching on toast with homemade bread, grape jelly made from our grapes, and deep yellow scrambled eggs from my father’s hens. My daughters pick daffodils and henbit in the yard to make bouquets for Grandma. Later, they fly kites and jump between large round bales of hay in the front field. Every afternoon the girls’ child – sized fishing poles are bowed in half from weighty bass or blue gill hooked in the farm pond.

I’d rather be on the farm than anywhere. I love this place. It reminds me that simple pleasures are the best. It’s good for my soul. The little girl with the ruby red slippers had it right, there’s no place like home.

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Henbit