I was heartened with warm fuzzies looking over the kind and nostalgic comments to my blog post yesterday about farm schooling.  What a delight to see so many wonderful memories and parallel lessons.  Thank you all.

             To keep this thread alive, I'll share one more story about farm lessons.  Nearly 30 years ago a family approached us about their 13 year old son, Sam, working with us for the summer.  It turns out they had 3 sons and they had done this as kind of a rite of passage into teenager-hood and quasi-adulthood for the older two.  But the neighbor farmer they'd worked with had retired and they needed a new base for their last son to have the same experience.  They were absolutely convinced that the farm summer for each of their sons yielded tremendous benefits.

             Our son Daniel was only 11 at the time and it seemed like a stretch at to add this 13 year-old to our labor force but we agreed to do it.  His Mom or Dad brought him to the farm each morning, lunch box in hand.  The whole idea was to get a real life experience, on a farm, working for someone else.  They picked him up between 4 and 5 p.m. each day.

             Two vivid memories stick out.  The first was when we had an event and stored some food in our neighbor's small basement walk-in cooler.  He was an avid hunter and installed the cooler to hang deer in during the hunting season.  I sent Daniel  (11) and Sam (13) down to the neighbor's to pick up the food.  Daniel drove our pickup truck down there (about 1/3 of a mile on a dirt road) and when they returned, both boys were laughing hysterically. 

             I asked them what was so funny, and they replied that as they started down the road, Sam asked innocently enough "Do you have a driver's license?"  Any 13 year-old riding with an 11-year old would want to know, right?  Of course, Daniel replied that he did not and so they began conniving answers in case a Deputy Sheriff stopped them.  They decided the best answer as to why Daniel (11) was driving was because Sam (13) was too young for a license.  This answer hit their funny bone and they laughed about it the rest of the day.  It's the kind of slapstick you'd expect.

             The second memory involved digging a post hole in a place with lots of rocks.  Digging a post hole in nice dirt is fun, but rocks present a real challenge.  You have to pry them out with a digging iron.  It was a hot day and Sam and I were struggling to get this hole dug.  I showed him how to use the digging bar, to pry the rocks out, and he worked at it like a trooper.  We were both soaked with sweat at the end, but we got the hole dug and post tamped in.

             Earlier, as we'd gotten our tools together for the post hole project,  Sam had no clue what a digging iron was.  He'd never encountered one.  But by the time we finished, not only did he know--intimately--what it was, he also knew how to operate it.  He was prouder than a peacock that day, accomplishing a difficult task and getting acquainted with a digging iron.  I remember well thinking to myself what a privilege to watch him grow into a man that day.  I felt sorry for his father, that I had that privilege and his father missed out.  Any parent would have been proud of his perseverance and effort.  I, not his father, had the honor of watching him grow that day, and I've never forgotten it. 

             I have that same feeling today with our stewards and apprentices, watching them gain skill and confidence in visceral participation with food and farming. Sam is now a successful financial guru, not a farmer.  But whenever we see each other, he glows with fond memories of the summer he became a man.

             Do you think the parents of these 3 boys were abusive or loving?

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