Today I was outside working around the yard and finishing up our landscaping project.
The sounds and smells around the farm got me thinking about my Great Grandma and Grandpa Beelar.
Our family would gather at their farm in mid summer for what we called "haying season" not far from our farm.
Those days are some of my best memories.
My grandma Beelar would always be in the kitchen wearing an apron.
Her counters would be overflowing with everything from fresh bread and all sorts of dishes to colored pictures that one of her many grand and great-grand kids made for her.
Her hands were small, covered in wrinkles and always soft.
Her nails filed to a soft curve.
Her kitchen table was long and stretched the length of the dining room.
I can just picture all her 8 kids gathered around it with their backs up against the windows that faced out towards where her car was always parked.
Down the center of the plastic tablecloth covered table was always the same.
Fig Newtons, sugar bowl, butter, jam, honey, note cards and bread; fresh of course.
I can still hear the creak of the spring on the wood screened door before it slammed shut against the door frame as we ran inside.
She would tell us "shut the screen you'll let the flies in"
We were always greeted with a smile and a hug, but not before she wiped her hands on her apron.
The old farmhouse always smelled like burning wood from their wall sized open fireplace.
The fireplace was enormous to me and was made of big flat stones.
Grandpa Beelars chair was right next to the fireplace. It is where he read the paper and took short naps. He would hold us on his lap and I'll never forget the day he sat in his chair resting with a tiny Jameson in his lap; his first Great Great Grandson.
He loved sitting there next to the blazing hot fire and did so until his last day in that house.
During hay season my Grandpa Beelar would be down in the fields driving a tractor or a hay truck.
He was a man of short stature with a pointy nose and a bald head, but his hands were the size of a dinner plate.
His knuckles were gnarled and big; a sign of hard work.
He wore long sleeved collar shirts and Ben Davis pants.
He smelled like diesel.
He was never too busy to give us a ride on the tractor or to let us sit on his lap and "drive" the hay truck.
We spent many days riding on top of the hay loaded high up in the truck. We would head down the dusty driveway and up to the barn where my cousins and I would jump down off the truck and climb to the tippy top of the barn so we could throw the rock salt on the freshly stacked bales.
We of course always had to taste the salt as we were tossing it around.
It never tasted good, but that didn't stop us from tasting it year after year.
Those fields were the same ones he walked out to the day his daughter; my grandma died.
Grandpa Beelar was a man of few words, but that day he uttered the words "you should never have to bury one of your kids".
I wonder if he found comfort in the fields that so many precious memories were made in.
I don't remember a time when our entire family wasn't there for hay season.
My mom, her brothers and uncles would buck bales way up into the truck.
My brother, cousins and I would run from field to field.
Some cousins would swim in the slough.
Never a care in the world. We played for hours and hours together.
My Grandma Ethel and her sisters would help their mom, Grandma Beelar, cook up a feast for the hay crew.
We always had so much food.
I remember one time there was a huge pot of corn on the cob.
The pot was bigger than anything I had ever seen.
It was the only thing I ate for dinner.
Bright yellow smothered in butter, salt and pepper.
There was also always fresh bread.
Crusty and brown on the outside with a top so round and perfect.
Soft and white on the inside.
Now that I am older I wish I could go back and spend more time at The Beelar farm.
In a fleeting moment I grew up.
Gone are the days of carefree moments of running from field to field, skipping rocks in the slough, sneaking upstairs in the house because Grandma didn't want us up there, climbing high up in the hay mound, riding around on the tractor with Grandpa.
Gone are the days of the screen door slamming as we turn the corner and greet Grandma Beelar arms ready for a hug.
These are all things that I haven't thought about in a long long time. Isn't is funny how a smell or a sound can perk up a memory that is tucked safely in your heart?
I think that Grandpa and Grandma Beelar would be proud of the job we are doing raising our kids on the farm and I hope our kids have as many fond memories of pulling on their barn boots, running in the fields, and all the other fun things we get to do on the farm.
Blessed is me...
