I have just been going through all the comments from the last few weeks (and FINALLY answering them!) and i found this one from Ashley…
“Hey Cathryn, I’m a newly wed farmers wife and SO happy I stumbled upon your blog. I hope to be able to keep in contact with you and get some advice from you on this craziness I’ve married into!
My husband is in his second year of farming, although he grew up helping his dad and grandfather on the farm as a child. Jarrett (My husband) and I were married on September 1, 2012. Personally I’ve never been around the farming community so I’ve had to make some MAJOR adjustments to this lifestyle.
Hope to keep in contact with you!!”
oh ashley, ashley, ashley…
welcome to the farm life. it is like nothing you have ever been a part of before. i wish i had some words of wisdom to pass on, but uh, i don’t.
just take each day at a time, no two will ever be alike.
know that your man loves you, but the farm will always come first. it is his life and your family’s bread and butter, and he will have to pick it over anything else forever. it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you or that he wants to pick the farm (in fact it will probably break his heart a million times even if he never says so), so support him and love him and don’t make him choose because you and your trip to get groceries together will lose every time.
but when you can, go with him in the tractor, listen to him introduce you to each cow and why he picked that bull, or how the crops are looking. you won’t care or understand what the heck he is talking about, but just watch his face as he talks and you will get it. the pride will shine and you will fall in love all over again. for you picked a man who has decided to live his life doing something bigger than he is and he will be a good man for it.
make sure you find friends in the same boat as you, they will be your rocks as you learn to live this farmer’s wife life. no one else will understand, your city friends or even your mom or sisters won’t get it if they don’t live it. and they will still have advice for you. farm husbands are a different breed from city husbands. the same rules don’t apply.
wait to have kids, you can’t give them back once they show up, and so take these short few years of just you and your husband and learn each other’s ways and quirks. there will be a steep learning curve.
you don’t have to know it all at once. but for now. make sure you ALWAYS do up any gate THE SAME WAY you found it. try to keep on top of the laundry (it can get scary) and take moments to absorb your new life. the smell of fresh-cut hay, how WHITE new calves are, the birds waking you up in the mornings and the silence that only farm life has.
thanks sooo much for writing me and i hope we do keep in touch!! us farm wives need to stick together!!!
and for all you fabulous farm wives out there…any other advice?!
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