 Erin wearing a scarf she knitted. | Erin (2010) by Mary (Grandma) This is my story about Erin who is fifteen. (2010) I'm writing about her, not because I love her more than our other seven grand- children, but because our journal is about the farm, and she's a farm girl. Erin's middle name is Jane, and so is my mother's. I have told her multiple times how I wish my mother, her great grandmother, could have known her. They have a lot in common. I remember how Erin, before age three, would sit and meticulously change her baby doll's clothes, little buttons and all. I've never seen a young child who could manage that. When she was older, I taught her how to crochet. After she barely learned the various stitches, she took off on her own. Crocheting and knitting is now in style with the young girls, and I seldom see Erin sitting without doing one or the other - just like my mom. Another thing that enters into my story is how Erin and her older sister, Allison, played 'horse' forever. They read horse books, collected horses, made horse blankets, and galloped around the house like horses even when they seemed too old for such play. I told the girls when they were little that if they wanted a puppy, they should ask for a horse, and then they would probably get a puppy. Well, eventually they got both. The surprise came when they took riding lessons. Allison discovered she didn't care so much for a real horse, after all. At least not to ride. She wasn't an 'outdoors' girl. Erin, however, could spend hours all alone with their horse, Zip, who was boarded nearby. |
When Erin got older, she joined 4-H, and also had the opportunity to help a neighbor girl train and show sheep and chickens at the fair. Then, she bought her own chickens and started an egg business.
Erin works hard, is very smart and creative, and is also fortunate to have parents who find it important that she follow her bent. She gets to spend the last three years of high school living on our farm doing what she loves. She brought along thirty baby chickens and three sheep to liven up the place. Zip no longer needs boarding, and Erin can ride him in vast open spaces at anytime.
Erin is thinking about having a business someday of raising her own fiber, and processing it from beginning to end. Even if she doesn't start the business, she can't wait to knit a sweater out of wool that came from her very own sheep.
How can I tell Erin is a 'real' farm girl? Well, I've seen her out in the pasture with a shovel, filling up a wheelbarrow with Zip's huge piles of poo, and pushing the heavy load quite a distance to a place behind the corn crib. I would grow tired of that in less than a week, but she never complains.
No, you can't make a child love the farm, it is just born in them, and Erin's a farm girl.
The move
