Edgerton, MN
(August 20 - 23)
It is a rainy, chilly afternoon in Rapid City, SD, perfect for sipping hot coffee in a coffee shop. Not perfect for hiking in
Custer State Park like we planned. So I am sitting in a
Dunn Brothers, which according to my beloved sister is the best place for blog posting. Here’s hoping for some inspiration.
Sunday evening, August 20, we arrived Uncle Arlin and Aunt Linda’s farm in
Edgerton, MN. What lied in store for the next few days was an intensive crash course in farm education for the city slicker in-law.
Uncle Arlin and Aunt Linda received us with a generous warmth and welcomed us into their lives for the short time we were there. Let me begin by saying that they are great people with a really neat family. They still share meals around the table together. Their home is filled with the inviting aromas of home-cooked food and the gentle draw of outstretched love. They linger together in the living room in the evening, after long days of exhausting work. They drop everything to chase wandering cows together. In short, they share life with a willing “togetherness” that is hard to find in our society.
Uncle Arlin is a farm jack-of-all-trades, with a hand in corn and soy bean fields, stock cattle, raising steer, and raising hogs. His days start at 6:00 AM in the hog house and end with the 10 o’clock evening news. That’s not a lot of sleep, according to my calculations, but he doesn’t complain.
If Uncle Arlin and Aunt Linda were surprised by my ignorance, they didn’t show a drop of it as they patiently answered my endless questions about corn, cows and silos. They did respond with an appropriate dose of incredulity, however, when I asked to “do chores” with them on Tuesday afternoon. Honestly though, how many chances will I have to do chores?
And so, on the appointed afternoon, armed with coveralls and nifty rubber boots, I piled into the chores car (a battered, aged Corolla) with Aaron and Aunt Linda. We fed and inspected pigs, amidst a stench unlike anything I have yet experienced.
We fed and watered stock cattle and young Holsteins. I sauntered in my boots in my best effort to look like a natural. Aaron chuckled and snapped lots of pictures.
By the time we got home from chores, my stomach was raging with hunger. Showers are required before entry into the house is permitted. Post-showers, dinner preparations were well underway with the freshly butchered pork chops on their way in from the grill when some neighbors pulled in with the news that the cows we had just fed had escaped their yard and were wandering free. Drop everything. Uncle Arlin, Devon and Aaron disappeared on a rescue mission. Dinner waited. And waited. Thanks cows.
In the end though, it was hearty and scrumptious and well worth the wait.
My farm experience was rounded out with a generous helping of fresh bacon, a night of star gazing in Edgerton’s thick darkness, pizza pies over a campfire, and a climb up a silo. It was the tallest silo in the world. Taller than the leaning tower of Piza. And it was terrible windy at the top. If I’d gotten blown off, I’d have landed on Mount Rainier. I thought I might die. But I didn’t; I was just really shaky and very impressed with myself.
Did you know?:
They eat five times a day here. No joke. Breakfast - Lunch - Dinner - Lunch - Supper.
- Alyssa
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