The true rural way of life

People who have money and little to no morals deliver a unique set of challenges to those around them.

One big issue to wrestle with is that in small towns we are raised to trust just about anyone we come into contact with. This happens in churches, on main street, in schools, in civic organizations...basically anywhere that anything goes on in a small town, you are looking at a group of people who all trust one another. Often we trust implicitly. It is just implied in our day-to-day way of life.

I'll say it again so this point is not lost: if you see a group of people hanging out in a small town, doing anything in any location such as at a bar, a church, a church basement, a church sanctuary, cheering at a football game, gathered at a picnic at the park, etc...there is a high probability that what you are seeing and witnessing is a group of people who all trust one another.

I come from the farm. While I do enjoy being around people, I certainly am extremely comfortable sitting in a tractor tilling the soil, cutting and baling hay, spraying fence line, picking rock and planting crops. Working in dirt, getting your hands dirty, practicing the best animal husbandry that you possibly can...that is the stuff that puts me at ease.

I am very blessed to have a childhood on a dairy farm, plus to have spent part of my adult life working and living on that same farm.

When you're just a straight up farmer working in a rural area like Norway Lake Township, rural Sunburg, it is very easy to be at peace with everyone around you and everyone you come into contact with. Neighbors help neighbors. We do anything for one another. When my dad was killed in January 2005, the countryside rallied for my mom, my family and our family farm. It was a tragic but truly unforgettable part of my life. Seeing neighbors helping neighbors and giving anything and everything in support of one another is a thing of pure beauty. It's difficult to put it into words and describe it to anyone who's unfamiliar with the natural camaraderie of living in the setting of rural Norway Lake Township.

When we were in the middle of the trauma of mourning my dad's death while continuing to operate the dairy farm, help from neighbors came our way in many ways. We didn't have someone sitting at the end of the driveway "vetting" the people who stopped by to help or those who came to just give well wishes. We didn't look with one OUNCE of mistrust to the motivations behind a neighbor coming by to help get the farm work done. We trusted. We do that implicitly in a rural setting like Norway Lake Township.

The farm auction that we held a couple years after dad died was interesting because during the auction we caught someone who I believe was a shady character snooping around in our dairy barn. The dairy barn was NOT anything near the auction slab. It was mostly a machinery auction. The dairy barn was closed up and off limits. Of course, we didn't have a pad lock on our dairy barn service door, that's just not something you worry about in our rural area. So it was a bit unsettling to catch who I believe was a dirt bag just wanting to snoop around and see what we had in the barn that was NOT up for auction.

It was a bad experience for me to be a part of, although it didn't dampen my family's spirits coming from what was a very, very successful auction (courtesy of Ziemer Auction Service of New London! Thanks, Mark!)

As you can be sure, I have more to say, but for now I will leave it at that and call it a night.

Camaraderie: mutual trust and friendship among people who spend a lot of time together.