Fun on the Farm

By Nancy McLoughlin

Hard work? YUCK! Shoveling poop? ICK! Waiting for
plants to grow? B-O-R-I-N-G! Yes, BUT take a closer look.
Put on your scientist glasses, your adventurers hat, and
your detective gloves, and come along for the discovery
of things you never dreamed about. Have real live fun,
exciting adventures, and the chance to build dreams, share
some laughter, and find unexpected surprises. Learn how
to work with others, what happens when you bully or are
bullied, how to develop patience, fix problems, and how to
keep going when you just dont want to. Want to see the
good, the bad and the gross? Take a peek and have some
Fun on the Farm.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781449721084

Nancy McLoughlin

Nancy McLoughlin, while attending numerous seminars on people skills, never received a satisfactory answer on why some people achieve success in life and others don’t. As she prayed, studied God’s word, and worked closely with struggling adults and children, the missing piece became clear. She discovered that many unsuccessful people share the same issue: a lazy mind protected by stubbornness. Ms. McLoughlin’s book describes a lazy mind, what causes it, and how it produces a stubborn refusal to engage in any kind of positive change that requires effort. Fortunately, there is a cure for a lazy mind, and Nancy details it in the final chapter of “The Art of Stubbornness.” Nancy McLoughlin, a retired school teacher and manager in a pharmaceutical company, lives in Augusta, Georgia where she currently assumes the role of daily caregiver for five of her grandchildren.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

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My Farm-version of a Vacation

It is Monday morning already, and I have to have my rough draft ready to turn in to my language arts teacher by Friday. Since I am the only one in our class who lives on a farm, I decide to write my essay on the fun I enjoy each day on my family’s farm. The problem is that I don’t know where to start or what my classmates would want to hear about. Because this essay will be most of our grade for the third quarter, it has to be at least fifteen pages long. It also has to thoroughly cover the subject matter. To add to my stress, the teacher tells us that if our essays are good enough, she will enter them in the county writing contest with the chance to earn prize money.

I sit in my seat writing little notes to myself of things I could talk about in my essay and then wadding them up and throwing them away because they sound dumb. Who wants to hear about feeding or milking cows? Who cares how early I have to wake up to do all my barn chores before I get ready for school? Who wants to hear about scraping manure out of the gutters behind the cows? Nothing fun or entertaining is coming to my mind, so I whisper to my friend, Shelly, Please help me come up with some ideas. My mind is completely blank!

Shelly has stayed overnight with me several times and helped out on the farm. She says, Write about bringing in the hay on your farm. That’s lots of fun!

What a great idea, I respond, and began writing as fast as I can in the time left in the class period.

I have to start this story by letting you in on a secret about my parents. They have very little money - like almost none! Because we’re kind of poor, we don’t get to go on regular family vacations. I know! What a bummer! Instead, my dad takes his yearly two-week vacation time in July so we can gather in the hay on our 120-acre farm. Actually, I like haying season so much that it’s become one of my favorite holidays, right along with Christmas and my birthday!

As those two weeks in July come closer, my whole family begins to hope for beautiful, warm weather with no hint of rain. We check the extended weather forecast, and we try to think anti-rain thoughts. My dad starts looking over all the equipment needed for the haying process (we put up loose hay instead of baling it) to make sure it’s in good working condition. I help him as much as I can by running errands for him. Every morning I sneak out of the house as quietly as possible hoping no one else hears me, so I can be the first one at his side offering to help. It’s way more fun to help him than to have to do chores in the house. My dad checks everything to see if it needs to be oiled, and I hold the oiling can ready to hand it to him when he needs it. He also feels the teeth on the mower and sharpens them if they’re the least bit dull. I can’t help him file knife blades, which are what the teeth on the mower are, but I can hand him a bottle of water when he gets thirsty. He scrutinizes everything else and tests various parts to make sure they work perfectly. His inspection includes the tractor, mower, rake, hay wagons, and hay loader.

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As he directs me, I move levers and handles back and forth on the machinery making sure they work. I also tug on the ropes as my dad checks the pulleys to make sure they’ll hold up under the weight of hay being pulled up into the hayloft. One day, just before vacation, I wake up to hear my mom saying we need to sweep out the hayloft so everything will be ready for the hay to be stored there. I race through getting dressed and eating breakfast so I can get the best push broom. As I climb up the ladder as fast as I can go, I hear a sweeping sound. My dumb brother has beaten me to that broom! The other brooms don’t work very well, so I wait until he turns the other way, snatch the broom, and jet to the other side of the huge hayloft. We race around and around the pillars and posts holding the roof up, until he’s too exhausted to run any more, and I become the proud winner of the broom! Well, that is, until my older sister takes it away from me. Since she’s bigger than me, I give up in defeat and grab another broom. By the end of the day, in spite of all the dust, the hayloft is swept clean.

Finally, the first day of my dad’s vacation arrives. By this time, the grass in the fields is two to three feet high and we kids can no longer play in it for fear of trampling it down. I’m always sorry when that part of our fun is over for another year because running and hiding in a field full of hay is great fun. If I sit on the ground, no one can find me unless they practically stumble over me. It’s a great place to play hide-and-seek. However, if we play in it when it’s too tall, the grass won’t stand up again so it can be cut down when my dad starts mowing.

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My siblings and I do have one little path through the field, though, where we run, as free as a breeze, down to our swimming hole in the creek. My dad kind of looks