Blue Faerie Farm

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day Weekend. Ours was good, although they haven't been the same for us since my Grandmother passed a few years ago. We always used to go to her place in Southeastern West Virginia for a family reunion over Memorial Day Weekend. It wasn't anything fancy, just whoever from the family and friends that could be there sitting around telling stories, remembering things passed. We usually ended up going over to the local Baptist Church Homecoming potluck supper on the lawn. For a church with a congregation of 20, they put on a spread that always attracted at least 50 folks.

It was my grandparents that got me interested in farming in the first place. When I was a kid, we would spend a week of vacation up there every year. When I was 4 or 5 they bought 40 acres or so up in the mountains near all of the old family homesteads. Early on we would camp out and spend the days clearing the field and grubbing stumps. Later on, they would always have a HUGE (well for a kid from the city anyway) vegetable garden. We would plant, pull weeds, dig potatos and enjoy whatever was in season.

To this day I remember my grandad refusing to pick corn until the water was boiling. From the first ear the came off the stalk, it was a breakneck race to get them in the water. If you dropped an ear on the way back to the house, you just left it, cause there just wasn't time to stop and pick it up! I also remember the first time we loaded up a whole mess of fresh harvest that we had toiled all day to gather and put it into the car. I couldn't understand why we were going to give all of those wonderful vegetables away after we worked so hard to pick them, but it didn't take too many years for me to understand after repeated trips to older family and friends who couldn't manage to do for themselves any more.

Thinking back on the stories, the laughter, the lessons learned brings a smile to my face every time. I guess if Memorial Day is all about remembering, ours really was pretty good.