Note from Ashley: I have known Abigail and her family since before she had kids. It has been fun to watch her farm and family grow over the years. We got robots a few months after them so it has been easy to keep in touch and have lots to discuss. If you want to follow along with her farm and family you can follow them on their Lemajaru Dairy Farm Facebook Page.
I will never be super woman. I do not seem to posses enough arms, eyes, and brains to keep up these days with little ones running around on the farm; three to be precise. I have to remind myself of this fact daily. It’s true I am not the woman I was before I had children let alone before I chose farming as my sole occupation. A child-free life is now a distant memory for my husband and I. Number 1 is turning 5 the end of this month.
These days my life revolves around the family and is constant laundry, cleaning, toddler songs, playing with blocks and tractors and reading, usually another farm story. Somewhere in the midst of running after the 5, 3, and 10 month old farming occurs. It’s nothing like how it use to be or how I may have envisioned it. There are things that I have to admit I can’t do. It’s sometimes frustrating. I prefer, however, to dwell on what I can still do as a farm wife, mother, and daughter.
Photo courtesy of Abigail O’Farrell
I can wear the baby. Those handy baby carriers are this farm mother’s best friend along with the portable infant car seat. All three of my little ones have ridden around in a Moby wrap for the first year of their life. Both devices have allowed me to breed cows, sort cattle, fetch cows to the robot, clean stalls, scrape poop (by hand and with skidsteer), do copious amounts of bookwork for both the cows and accounting, push up cow feed, long tractor rides, rock picking (not fun), stacking square bales (one beer and you’r e done after the day), delivered calves, mowed hay and occasionally vaccinated or treated one or two head of cattle, and more. Things don’t happen as fast or as timely, but they do eventually get done, at least what needs to be done. Sometimes, I need a break and I am grateful for my Mom’s. Both my Mother and Mother-In-Law do help watch the boys to give me a break. As the boys grow older their Daddy and Uncles will watch them during long tractor rides and I am sure this will continue.
Photo courtesy of Abigail O’Farrell
When I was a new Mom I wondered how to make everything work. I felt overwhelmed. I felt frustrated. I was scared. I was sore. Routines would develop to be changed by the demanding new baby. A new routine would develop and I grew to accept the constant change as normal. My husband and I survived number one to this point. We survived number two with the start up of a new robotic milking facility when he was only two weeks old. We will survive number three and any subsequent children that we may have. To all the new Moms, we are not superwoman, we are farm woman that become farm Moms. We will never be the same after having the baby; we will adapt, adjust, and continue to farm and thrive. Yes, thrive!
Photo courtesy of Abigail O’Farrell
Today we have many resources in which to turn to for support. We have our traditional core family, our husband, our siblings, and our parents but we also have both social networks of Mom’s online and in our local communities. Many communities have Mothers of Preschoolers support groups (MOP’s) that we can be a part of to socialize without children, vent, and recharge our drained bodies. Online, there are a multitude of forums that we can be part of that can support us as farm women and mother’s you just have to join.
My mother has a wonderful quote adapted from Ruth Hamilton that hangs on the wall heading up the stairs of the old farm house. It sums up this age beautifully. As mothers when we feel we can no longer cope with life and the new baby just remember…
“Cleaning and scrubbing can wait ‘til tomorrow, for babies grow up, we’ve learned to our sorrow…So quiet down, cobwebs, dust, go to sleep…I’m rocking my baby, and babies don’t keep.”
Abigail O’Farrell
