Willow’s Memories
Imagine growing up on a goat farm. It probably wasn’t as dreamy as you might think.
Our daughter, Willow, typed-up a few of her memories for this post. If you want to read more stories of Willow’s growing up on the farm add your words of encouragement in the comments.
Growing up on Quillisascut Farm has definitely shaped the person I am today. At a young age I learned the cycle of life and death by observing and helping Rick and Lora Lea with raising the animals, planting and harvesting the garden, and butchering the meat that we ate. Initially, my parents were apprehensive about their young daughter watching a goat be alive one moment and then killed and butchered the next. Yet, when they saw the sudden curiosity in my eyes as I picked up a goat head, they knew from then on they had nothing to worry about. Not only was I not scared or disgusted to watch an animal butchered but I was also learning a valuable lesson on anatomy at a young age.
When my parents butchered chickens they would show me what the heart, gizzard, lungs, or liver looked like and where they were located inside the chicken.When Lora Lea cooked liver and onions for dinner, my friends and I would get really excited, which surprised my parents since most children plug their noses to the sheer idea of eating liver and onions.
Besides understanding life and death on the farm,
I also have a sense of what tastes good on the palette. I remember warm summer nights we would eat fresh corn and tomatoes picked right from the vine for dinner. For dessert Grandma Daisy would make peach pie made from the peach trees in our garden. No produce from the grocery store can even compare to the freshness of these dinners. It’s like eating a piece of sunshine with droplets of the morning’s dew melting in your mouth.
Great parents
Willow I love your reflections of growing up on the farm! Your description of eating the fresh produce from the garden, a”piece of sunshine with droplets of the morning’s dew melting in your mouth,” is wonderful! Thank you for sharing!
Write some more, Willow – except it makes tears come to this old grandma’s eyes.
Lovely memories!
More please! :)
I can’t think of a better way to grow up, and with such wonderful parents :). I’m sure you have some good animal stories and some drawings to go with them . I still have one of your hand drawn Christmas cards, it’s a treasure.
Lovely….more!
Loved reading this, Willow! I was raised on a dairy farm, until the age of 12. There are so many memories of eating straight from the garden…especially a tomato, hot from the sun, with juice dripping down my face. Going into the dark chicken house to get the eggs and the Saturday afternoons of butchering the chickens; foot tub of boiling water and all in a circle as we plucked feathers with the tiniest feathers flitting around in the sunlight. There are so many more; the milking shed and watching the cows licking on a salt block while playing in the hayloft, walking on the levee of the canal to reach the river to fish, blackberry picking and playing in the chinaball tree…Gardening was something to behold; Daddy would do the digging, Mama the raking to even the rows, and each child had a job…one would make the holes, one put in the seed, one cover the seed and one pat the dirt over the seed and the final one would pat the dirt with the head of the hoe. I love reading about Quillisascut Days and I am grateful for the time spent on the farm…thank you.