Excerpts from "Farm life for City kids"

This is a couple of excerpts from my short story based on farm life for city kids, I hope you enjoy it.

Living on a farm isn't all work, as my kids soon discovered. They anticipated hard, laborious work, but soon learned that living on a farm can be fun as well. Suddenly the television did not seem so important. Sure the Saturday morning cartoons still play an important role in their growth and development, but all of a sudden the out of doors was luring them away from that as well. Ordinarily I would wake up on Saturday mornings to the noise of three children fighting over a remote, or which channel to watch, or even more frustrating, which character did they wish to see outwit the other the most - the road runner or the coyote? Occasionally the morning fight was over which child ate the other child's share of froot loops. Since moving to the country, the fights seem to have dissipated. Now when I wake in the early hours of a sunny Saturday, I hear silence. Wondering if an alien abduction has occurred, I creep about the upper level of our 15 room house peering out windows wondering which direction the children have gone in today. Most often I would see my son, dressed in full army uniform borrowed from his step father's hand-me-downs, B.B. gun tucked under his arm, in hot pursuit of a nasty little pigeon. Normally I would frown on this, but lately the pigeons are outnumbering the farm animals, and they have been entertaining themselves by playing that game called "bombs away". Tired of pigeons pooping on my head and my hay, I approved the hunting expeditions. At the price of hay today, a few lost pigeons certainly were understandable. My only rule, one shot, one kill. I did not like the little bombers, but I did not want them to suffer.
Looking out another window, I see my daughter brushing her horse, enjoying a moment of peace and companionship. The horse munching at my lawn, my daughter dreamily brushing her black silky mane, maybe she is using the horse to mow the lawn so she does not have to. I don't care, as long as it gets done; it makes no difference if the horse decorates the lawn with a few recycled hay plops. My youngest is most likely to be firmly planted in front of the tele, munching away on a dry bowl of froot loops, most likely mine, watching every cartoon program available. Our rule is if you are going to let your mind rot, at least do it folding laundry. Some days she folds laundry, other days, she sits with a pile of laundry in front of her and one item in her hand in case she gets "caught", so she can suddenly pick the item up and fold it. She thinks I fall for that one, but after she picked up the same item several times that day, I figured her out. Oh well. Running a farm is very busy, and hard work, and you have to learn to pick your battles, and fighting over laundry is not my idea of a battle worth fighting over. The animals don't care if my clothes are wrinkled.

My daughters love the idea that they can shoot a bow and arrow. Andrea has gotten pretty good at it, and laughs that she is better than the boys in her school. Andrea has always enjoyed doing things better than the boys, and used to wear her lime green t-shirt nearly everyday to express that thought. It said, "You pick the toys, I'll beat the boys" and she often got scolded by her father for using the phrase, "boys drool, girls rule". She was always my competitive one. Now her little sister has inherited those sentiments.

Another form of entertainment on the farm is mud wrestling in the spring. Of course when you think of mud wrestling you think of two people, but in reality, on the farm mud wrestling usually involves a child attempting to catch a lamb or goat. In the spring when the mud is at a premium and the rain never stops, it is inevitable that a lamb will escape the fencing seeking that first luscious blade of grass. All hands on deck are required when in pursuit of a lamb capable of performing triple flips in midair. I thought cats were amazing at falling and landing on their feet, well this one little lamb made our cat look clumsy. Combine five humans chasing an agile lamb in a muddy yard, and you have an out and out mud fight. The kind where every one involved except the lamb is covered with mud from head to toe. The shower takes a beating that day; as it is too cold to hose off outside.