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YOU KNOW YOU'RE A FARM KID WHEN... 55 signs from our corn and cattle farm in Nebraska by Lindsey, 13 (with help from my brothers, whether I wanted it or not)

Hi! I'm Lindsey. I'm 13 and in 8th grade, and I live on a corn and cattle farm in Nebraska with my mom and dad, my grandpa (he lives in the old house across the yard), about ninety cows and their calves, two dogs, a lot of barn cats, and my brothers, Robert, who is 15, and Curtis, who is 10. This summer I showed my steer Tank (a black baldy) at the county fair and he got a purple ribbon! So I was in a really good mood in August and I started writing down all the ways you can tell somebody grew up on a farm. Then Robert read it over my shoulder and said I forgot about fifty things, and Curtis said I spelled auger wrong (I didn't), and it turned into the whole family's project. Their comments are in [blue brackets]. I let them keep the ones that are funny. Chores · School · The Fair · Weather · Food · The Farm Truck · Town Kids · Farm Words · YOUR Signs!

CHORES You know you're a farm kid when... 1. Your alarm clock moos. 2. You've done more work by 6:30 in the morning than most people do before lunch. 3. You own two pairs of shoes, school shoes and chore boots, and you like the chore boots better. 4. You can tell which calf is bawling from inside the house. 5. Your mom makes you take your boots off on the porch, and your socks, and one time your jeans. [Robert: That was ONE time and it was a really bad mud day.] 6. You know every cow by her ear tag number, but you can't remember your locker combination. 7. You have broken the ice on the stock tank before breakfast. 8. Somebody says "everybody pitch in" and you go looking for a pitchfork. 9. You know exactly how far you can carry a five-gallon bucket of water before your arm falls off. [Curtis: 47 steps. I counted.] 10. Your chores have chores.

SCHOOL 11. The bus comes at 6:40 and you've already been up for an hour and a half. 12. The bus ride is 50 minutes each way and you know every mailbox on the route, and whose dog is going to chase it. 13. Your class has eleven kids in it and four of them are your cousins. 14. You almost missed school for harvest. [Robert: Mom says you can't put "almost." Lindsey: I did put almost. That's the point.] 15. Your science fair project was about which feed makes calves gain faster, and the calves were the best part of the whole science fair. 16. School gets called off for snow and you still have to go out and feed. 17. Your brother got his blue FFA jacket last year and he wears it to church. [Robert: It's a nice jacket.] 18. Your teacher asks how big an acre is, and every hand that goes up belongs to a farm kid.

THE COUNTY FAIR 19. Fair week is the best week of the year, even better than Christmas. [Curtis: Nothing is better than Christmas.] (Curtis is ten.) 20. You have washed your steer more times this summer than you have washed your own hair. 21. You have used a blow dryer, but only on a steer. 22. You've slept on a cot in the cattle barn and it was the best sleep you ever had. 23. You got a purple ribbon and you were happier than if you got an A on your report card. [Robert: She got both. She's going to tell you that.] I got both. 24. You cried at the sale ring, and then you used the check to buy next year's calf. 25. You can smell the funnel cakes from the cattle barn, which, if you've been in a cattle barn, you know is a big deal. 26. Your mom calls the first week of August "fair laundry week." 27. You have a lucky show shirt and it is NOT getting washed till after your class. [Mom said to put that it IS getting washed. Lindsey says it isn't.]

WEATHER 28. Your dad watches the sky more than he watches TV. 29. You know what a wall cloud is, and you know to go to the basement when you see one. 30. When hail goes over in July, everybody at the supper table gets quiet, and nobody has to say why. 31. You have fed cattle in a blizzard holding on to a rope from the house to the barn. 32. You think thirty miles an hour is "a little breezy." 33. Rain in July is the best news anybody can tell you. 34. The whole church prays for rain in July and for it to quit in October. 35. You can smell rain coming before the TV weatherman says one word about it. [Curtis: Grandpa's knee can too.]

FOOD 36. The beef in your freezer came from about a quarter mile away. 37. You eat dinner at noon and supper at night, and town kids think you have it backwards. 38. You've eaten a whole meal on a tailgate in the middle of a field during harvest. 39. Sweet corn season means the whole family on the porch shucking, and a hundred bags in the freezer by dark. [Robert: 112 bags this year.] 40. There has been Kool-Aid at every family reunion of your whole life. (It was invented in Hastings, Nebraska. You knew that already, probably.) 41. Your mom can feed a harvest crew of six out of one Crock-Pot and a loaf of bread. 42. You think fast food means eating a sandwich standing up in the shop.

THE FARM TRUCK 43. You learned to drive in a hayfield before you could see over the steering wheel. 44. The farm truck has one door that opens, and it's not your side. 45. There is a hole in the floor of the farm truck, and you can watch the road go by. 46. The dashboard holds ear tags, fencing pliers, a calf bottle, three seed corn caps and a pair of Grandpa's reading glasses that nobody is allowed to touch. 47. The radio in the farm truck gets one station, and it is the cattle market report. [Curtis: And the Husker game on Saturdays.] 48. You wave at every car that goes by, and every one of them waves back with one finger up off the steering wheel. 49. The farm truck has been "about to die" for six years.

TOWN KIDS (We like town kids! My best friend is one. They just do things different.) 50. A town kid asked you if your cows were boys or girls, and you had to sit down for the answer. [Robert: Be nice.] I AM being nice. I explained the whole thing. She said thanks. 51. You go to a sleepover in town and wake up at 5:30 anyway, and lie there being quiet until everybody else wakes up at nine. 52. Your town friends think a weekend on the farm is the most fun ever, and it is, up until chores. 53. A town kid asks if you get bored out here and you don't even know where to start. 54. "Going to town" is an event, and you change your shirt for it. 55. You wouldn't trade with a town kid for anything, and they'd probably say the same thing about you, and that's okay.

FARM WORDS TOWN KIDS DON'T KNOW (a dictionary, so the town kids can keep up) Heifer (HEFF-er): a young girl cow that hasn't had a calf yet. Once she has one, she's a cow. Steer: a boy calf being raised for beef. Like Tank. He will never be a bull. Don't ask. [Curtis: Ask me, I'll tell you.] [Mom: No he won't.] Black baldy: a black cow with a white face. Half Angus, half Hereford. The best kind. (My opinion.) Swather: the machine that cuts hay and lays it down in a row to dry. Grandpa calls it a windrower. Same thing. Windrow: the row the swather leaves. Auger (AW-gur, Curtis): a big long screw inside a tube that carries the corn up into the bin. Stay away from it when it's running. I mean it. Chore boots: the boots you do chores in. They live on the porch and are never, ever allowed in the house. Stock tank: a big round metal tank the cattle drink out of. In winter you break the ice. In summer the dogs get in it. Bunk: the long feeder the cattle eat out of. Not a bed. Pivot: center pivot irrigation, the long sprinkler on wheels that goes around and around the field. From an airplane, Nebraska looks like it's covered in green circles. That's why. PTO: power take-off, the spinning shaft on the back of the tractor that runs other machines. You do not go anywhere near it when it's running. Ever. My dad says that's the only rule on the farm he'll never laugh about. Combine: the giant machine that picks the corn, shells it and spits out the rest. It's pronounced COM-bine, not com-BINE, unless you're talking about combining things, which we aren't. Sale barn: where cattle get bought and sold. There's always pie in the cafe. Calving season: late winter and spring, when the calves come. Everybody's tired. Nobody's grumpy, though, because calves.

ARE YOU A FARM KID TOO? Send me your signs and I'll put the best ones on the Signs YOU Sent In page! [email protected] You are farm kid number (or town kid, that's okay too) Last updated Saturday, September 18, 1999 Harvest is starting, so I might not update again till November. Sorry!