Author: Lili LeGardeur

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

Life as Older Parents

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.

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…

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…