Life On The Highway
Surprising and sometimes unwanted visitors are not uncommon.
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Surprising and sometimes unwanted visitors are not uncommon.
What happens when farm kids grow up?
Sacrificing fashion for function on the farm
A farmer boy’s first time hunting takes an unexpected turn.
A mom worries if she’s depriving her children of nostalgic experiences on the farm.
Regional differences and similarities
Accentuating the positives
A clandestine online search
Life as Older Parents
In search of a sense of place
Appeasing a city slicker on the farm
A Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer unexpectedly shows up at the farm in the middle of a storm, and the family dog steals the show.
Small towns can be intimate in ways you might not expect.
I squeeze myself into a tiny chair next to a knee-high table. It’s the same Pre-K classroom where, it seems like only yesterday, my sons were cutting out Valentines with safety scissors and napping on Kindermats. Beside me is our…
It’s not all cherry pie, but there are many reasons to be thankful for rural life.
The good old days of ghouls and goblins
Putting inheritance money to good use.
Keeping the weight off is harder here
The Truth About Farmhouses
When life takes a break
An Anniversary
"Lazarus, come forth!"
Coming to terms with sounding “country”
Baseball in the country
A farm wife makes peace with leaving Atlanta
I have fond yet vaguely disturbing memories of the college student who – devoid of a job or any income – charged not one but two pairs of expensive cowboy boots to a credit card in a single afternoon. I…
The hay harvest is a stressful time
I once gave a friend a few quotes for a parenting article she was doing for a women’s magazine. Because the magazine discouraged its writers from interviewing other writers as its “real parents,” she described me as “a farmer’s wife.”…
… and that’s what worries their mothers.
Dealing with life in a real small town
Every once in a while, when I hear about the exciting, fun-filled adventures of some friend in the city, I feel a twinge of envy.My last gig before farm wife, you see, was as a single 20-something magazine writer in…
Any day now, I will open up our local newspaper and see the photo that never fails to dredge up the same old mixed emotions. Staring out at me from amongst the gray columns will be a child dressed entirely…
I had chickens when chickens weren’t cool.
On days when I think I’ll go stark raving mad if I have to fold one more load of laundry or unload the dishwasher one more time, I’ll think back to a September afternoon five years ago.It was about two…
Whenever anyone mentions overboard, animal-loving do-gooders, my husband’s father tells the story about me and the skunks.It occurred shortly after I arrived here from Atlanta, lugging all my starry-eyed notions about cute little furry creatures and –– if you asked…
My paternal grandparents in South Alabama died a few months apart when I was 8. My family had never lived any closer to their farm than a four-and-a-half-hour drive, so we saw them maybe a few times a year. As…
The myth of rural tranquility
Last summer’s Cash for Clunkers program sure got the old wheels turning around here. Not that we were seriously in the market for a new ride. It’s just that “cash” and “clunkers” are two words guaranteed to make any farmer’s…
Playing Fair
Looking back, I must have believed life would always be like my first weekend at the river.It was July 1990, approximately six weeks after my future husband and I met on a Florida beach. In honor of my first visit…
Gardening – Farm-style
The boys and I have been reading Little House on the Prairie. They don’t seem to notice any similarities between themselves and the pioneering Ingalls children, but me and that Mrs. Ingalls? We could talk. We could definitely talk.Take the…
For my husband’s birthday last October, I ordered the memoir by former LSU football player John Ed Bradley, It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium. For purposes of secrecy, I had the gift shipped to me at my neighbors’ address. I…
Lulu Snoop I recently took our puppy to the veterinarian. Also in the waiting room were two other people with their pets –– a stately golden retriever obediently sitting there and a cute little pooch patiently resting in his kennel.And…
I was raised in the city by a former farm boy, but, to his chagrin, my father’s farm-forged values were not always enthusiastically embraced by his citified offspring. It drove my daddy to distraction, for instance, that his teenaged daughters…
If you were looking for our farm 10 years ago, it would have been hard to tell where our place ended and the next began. Back then, this was dairy country. The view was nearly one continuous vista of forestland…
I’m standing in a concrete pit, eyeball-to-udder with a big black and white lady named No. 418. In my hand is a device resembling a robotic spider. It has a palm-sized, stainless steel body with four black rubber tubes extending…
One morning I found a crumpled sticky note on which our 7-year-old son had scribbled this ardent petition to God or Santa Claus or most likely, me – the parent perceived to be the biggest pushover:“I wish I had a…
Sometimes life on a hay farm feels like a cross between Winslow Homer and a Norman Rockwell painting. Like one Saturday not long ago … (Cue swirly flashback sequence.)Mathew and Andy BienvenuMelissa Bienvenu photographI’m at the wheel of our battered…
Ed. note: With this issue we introduce a new column, “The Rural Life” by Melissa H. Bienvenu. Ms. Bienvenu (no relation to food writer Marcelle Bienvenu), lives with her husband and family on a farm near Franklington in Washington Parish.…