Visiting the Country Was NOT My Idea of Fun...Until...

Since my blog title is in the form of a question, I decided that my first post would be to answer this question: who put the country in this girl?
When I was a little girl, my two brothers and I had to go visit Grandma and Grandpa for a couple of weeks every year during summer break. In a nutshell, they were not the warm, fuzzy kind of grandparents that some children have had the honor of being kin to and simply put, we were city kids. There were too many rules and very little to do on 50 acres with a single-wide mobile home. I'll make mention that both brothers were diagnosed with A.D.D. We couldn't play in the woods on account of poison ivy, rattle snakes and badgers. We could play hide & seek in the corn field. This was fun the first few times. However, like everything else to a kid, it got boring pretty quick. Throwing pebbles into the stream to scare the frogs was fun until my brothers started killing the frogs by throwing the pebbles at them too hard. Mom found out and was hopping mad so we never were allowed to play in the stream again. Year after year, Grandma kept promising an in-ground pool and a tree swing. The spot she chose for the pool still sits as a patch of grass. The country was hot, dry, too quiet and BORING. With these memories to go by, one would wonder how I fell in love with the country life.
During one of our summertime visits, Grandma introduced us to the kids up the road who were relatively the same age as us, all three were girls. Let me tell you, they were full fledged, true blue farmgirls! Their daddy was a farmer. Farmer John was his name. I don't recall what exactly his specialty was. Didn't care. All I cared about was from that summer on, life was good in the country!
We'd walk the dry, dusty dirt road about a quarter mile up to their house. The last part of the trek was a giant hill in the road that we had to conquer. Their farm house sat at the top of this hill.
They had everything! Chickens, pigs, cows, lots and lots of barn cats, a hay loft and yes, even a swimming pool! I thought we were in Paradise!
We'd climb into the hay loft & lay around up on the bales of hay. There was almost always a mama cat up there who'd had her kittens in a pile of loose hay. It was always a treat to play with the new babies.
We'd tease the pigs by sticking our feet into the fence. Just as they'd come to chomp on our toes, we'd pull 'em out.
The chickens were free range & ran all over the yard. We'd chase after them just for fun.
The cow pasture holds the best memories for me. It had several apple trees in it. Not like the apples you can buy in the store. We called them farm apples because we'd only find them on the farm. They were green and very tart. We'd climb those trees, sit in the branches and eat them-as many as we wanted, despite the farmer's wife. She'd always warn us that if we ate them, we'd have digestive issues later (keeping it clean here). I don't recall ever having any issues. Maybe she just didn't like the idea of 6 kids climbing the trees and eating all her apples!
There was a low area that was always wet & very muddy. We'd muck around in it with bare feet & let ourselves sink until the mud was up to our knees. Then we'd go to the stream that ran through the pasture and wash off. The water was so clear and cold that we couldn't resist scooping it up in our cupped hands and drinking it too.
We'd chase the cows. Looking back, I think about how stupid this was. I don't even know if there was a bull in that herd. We felt like we were invincible by chasing away this herd of beasts. We never did cow tip.
When we got bored, which didn't seem to happen often, we'd head across the street to Farmer Jack's farm. We'd steal the sunflower seeds from the top-heavy flowers and play with his dogs and cats. Farmer Jack was a crop farmer so he didn't have any livestock. I suppose this fact kept us out of trouble.
The girls had bikes. We'd take the bikes out to the road and take turns gliding down the big hill, forgetting that we had to walk the bike back up the hill on account it was too steep to ride up it. Still, it was fun.
Oh, those were the days...the lazy, hazy days of summer on the farm. These were the magical times that kept me wanting to move out to the country. These days, I'm not 'out' in the country per say. I live in a very small rural town. The country is walking distance from my front door. Until I can have a piece of it, I'll keep loving it from a distance and from a distant memory.