I'm still laughing at the people who thought the only reason we were getting married was because I was pregnant. HAHA!!
BTW I'm not pregnant and never have been.
The last two years might have been the most trying two years of my (our) life, particularly the first year. Prior to being married, Andy and I did not live together so everything was an adjustment. Looking back at how far we have came in the last two years, I don't think I could appreciate our marriage now had we not had those difficult few months to begin with.
I'm stubborn, he is stubborn and together we are double stubborn. I didn't back down and neither did he. The way I see it, one of two things can come out of being double stubborn: it can get the best of you or you can persevere, be greater than your problems and become fearless. That's what we did.
I grew up in a very "typical" family, Mom got home about 5 every day and Dad got home shortly after, she made dinner, and we ate about seven and were calmed down and in bed by 9 or 10.
WELL...
That is not how our life works. I remember being so mad because Andy wasn't home to eat dinner (at 7 p.m.), well he was in the field or working and it just didn't work like that so I learned to cook dinner around when he would be home, even if that meant 9, 10, 11, midnight or 1 a.m.
Did I mention we got married in the summer? If your significant other farms, consider summer THE ABSOLUTE WORST time of the year to get married. Don't question that statement, just don't do it.
He is busy, he works for a living, he makes his own paycheck so you do whatcha gotta do. If that means staying in the field or the shop all night, missing or being late to family get togethers or dinners, or spending your first anniversary planting corn; you just do it.
This use to really bother me, but I've learned that it shouldn't. There are far worse things I could get upset about and I know he is able to do what he loves to provide for us and, seriously....how could I argue with that? I can't, but I did, and now I don't. It's not worth it, and why should I?
I've learned lots of important lessons in the last two years...
No place is too far, no conditions are too bad. We have truck, will travel.
Need a combine hauled from western Kansas in the middle of January? No problem, we'll get it.
One Friday night (middle of January), Andy and I packed up the 1991 Kenworth Semi with blankets, CD's, gloves, hats, boots, soda, the Rand McNally, hooked up the Lowboy and with his parents behind us also pulling a trailer, set off for Ness City Kansas to pick up a combine and header that one of our friends had purchased. Off we went and back we came.
Is your wife stuck at her work place (30+) miles away in a snow, rain, sleet, or wind storm? No problem, I'll be there as soon as I can get there.
Does your wife have a flat tire (also at work) in the pouring down rain that she needs fixed? No problem, I'll be there in an hour.
Need alf-alfa from Michigan in the middle of August? Okay let's load up the semi and go. While we're up there, we spot a combine header while on the trip and make a second trip two weeks later to retrieve it.
No. Big. Deal.
If you don't want to be stuck doing something for the rest of your life, don't prove competent.
Prior to marrying Andy, my main source of transportation had been an automatic, front wheel drive sedan (see previous posts for my experiences driving manuals). I had driven my Dad's truck a few times but mostly my car. I had never driven a tractor, or combine, pulled a trailer, pulled a hay flipper trailer, mowed hay, raked hay, stacked hay, hauled hay, or disced a field. In fact, I'm confident most people in my family thought I would never be capable of doing those things. But, guess what? I CAN and I am pretty dang good at it!!
While sometimes these tasks seem like boring "chores" I am so thankful my husband and his dad had enough patience to teach me and have enough confidence in me to let me do these things on a regular basis, without supervision.
However, they may never ask me to stack hay again and I'm okay with that.
The other day I backed a 28ft trailer in it's "spot" correctly, THE FIRST TIME. I came out of the truck screaming with excitement.
Speaking of trucks and other things that have air conditioning....
Duct tape doesn't fix these things, Freon does. Whoever said duct tape fixes everything, obviously never had their air conditioning quit on them in their tractor in the middle of a hayfield, without cell phone service, on a Sunday evening in July. I have news for them, duct tape doesn't fix that. Freon does! No place in El Dorado Springs sells Freon at 6 p.m. on a Sunday night in the middle of July, they sell duct tape but NOT Freon and their air will NOT blow cold just by "putting some duct tape on it."
Chances are if your home air conditioning isn't "blowing cold," Freon will cure that too. Yep, been down that hot, humid, and sweaty road too.
Freon was not in my vocabulary prior to being a Dawson, I had no idea what it was. Actually I still don't really know what it is, but I DO know it makes your air blow cold and it is vital to any successful marriage.
While we are still on the subject of trucks...
A truck is a truck, is a truck, is a truck.....right? Wrong.
There ARE differences. An F-150 is not the same as an F-250 which is also not the same as an F-350 and well, we are only interested in F-350's. Did you also know there are differences in tonnage? A 1/2 ton pickup is not the same as 3/4 ton which is also not the same as a 1 ton and we are only interested in a 1 ton.
To break it down for you:
F-150 = 1/2 ton = not capable of holding a generator, two tool boxes, welder, a 100 gallon fuel barrel, AND pulling a gooseneck trailer.
F-250 = 3/4 ton = capable of holding a generator, two tool boxes, welder, a 100 gallon fuel barrel but NOT capable of pulling a gooseneck trailer at the same time.
F-350 = 1 ton = capable of doing all of the above things simultaneously! BINGO!!
AND if we are in the market for the above F-350 we will exhaust all search engines, truck dealerships on this side of the Mississippi, and craigslist searches within 500 miles. However 501 miles is NOT out of the question either.
Seek and we will find.
But if we drive to Girard, KS on a Sunday night to look at a promising Craigslist option and it turns out to be a flop, that's okay. That just means we get to waste another Saturday night, road tripping to new places, and giving us an excuse to locate the nearest Dairy Queen.
BTW did you know that Dairy Queen, Sonic, and McDonald's will give free ice cream cups to your four-legged friends traveling with you? They do, it's tried and true.
While we are still on the subject of trucks and anything else mechanical...
My husband is a genius!
He can diagnose a mechanical issue over the phone. He crawls up inside combines. He splits tractors into two pieces like it's his job, AND puts them back together into one piece. It's amazing.
Need a tractor started that hasn't ran in ten years? No problem, give him a 12 pack of Coke (not beer) and a roll of Copenhagen and $45 an hour and he will have it going in NO time.
He can also put Freon in your air conditioner.
When purchasing something from your local parts store, ALWAYS have your husband specify unit of purchase...
I've always paid someone to change my oil, it's not my thing and it's just easier.
The first time I had Andy change my oil (because it's more his thing than my thing), he told me to go to O'Reilly's and get oil and a oil filter. Easy enough, right? Wrong.
When you go to O'Reilly's to get oil to replenish what has been changed, you will need more than one quart. Chances are, you will need 4-5 quarts and you will get a strange look and a laugh from your significant other when you show up with one quart of oil and a oil filter and say "Okay, I'm ready to have my oil changed."
Chances are, you will be making another trip into town to buy another 3-4 quarts of oil.
By that time you will have driven 60 miles back and fourth to town purchasing oil and oil filters (costing about $25 + mileage) and it would have just been easier to have someone else do it.
However, I never question his intentions because I know he just wanted to change my oil.
AND when your husband or significant other is trying to "grease up" any tractor or combine prior to hay season or harvest time and they send you to town for red Mystik grease tubes, he doesn't mean one, red, Mystik grease tube, he means a case. You can also expect to receive the same strange look and laugh you received when purchasing the one quart of oil to have your oil changed.
Be on good term's with the local parts store..
In the summer time they will be your best friend and if you are nice to them, they will go above and beyond to get you to spend a small fortune with them.
Which sounds awful but knowing the parts and equipment salesman at your local John Deere dealership will come in handy when you have to go pickup a fuel solenoid for a tractor at 4:50 on a Friday afternoon that your husband desperately needs to get out of the field before it starts raining at midnight. It's amazing the lengths they will go too. They will even put the parts in their mailbox on the side of 7 highway or in a bucket on the west side of their building for you to pickup after they have closed. OR they will get on their phone with your husband to further clarify what it is he is needing to see that you get everything the first time.
One would think that if you come home with the wrong part the first time, they won't send you back a second time to exchange it. Wrong. YOU will make as many trips as necessary for your husband to have the right parts to keep him from leaving the field and you will enjoy every bit of that radio reception on each of the 90 mile round trips.
Lastly,
Your home is what you make it...
The first year of our marriage we lived in a pretty nice rental house with lots of room, but still a house. Since that year, we have bought a single wide mobile home to put on our land after our rental house sold.
We live in trailer, I call em' how I see em', it is what it is. We live in a trailer.
This is the day they moved it in.
At first, that was so hard for me to fathom. I would never call this anything but a mobile home, but it's a trailer.
Who really cares what I call it? It's my home, it's our home, this is where we live. This is where I love to come home to every night, this is where I cook dinner, clean house, this is where I keep things that are important to me. This is our home.
Now, it is nothing fancy. We don't have a front porch, but we do have a back door and back porch, one of which anyone is welcome to come into.
We don't have fancy landscaping, in fact our yard might have more rocks in it than the gravel road that runs in front of it but I don't care.
I feel like we have worked our whole lives to live in this trailer. We own it and the land that it sits on and we worked our tails off for both.
I remember the night we moved the house onto the land, we ( Andy, I, my parents, his parents, and friends) worked until 11 p.m. trying to get the electricity hooked up. I remember how excited I was to see that first light flicker, I remember how accomplished I felt, how prideful I was of that one flickering light in our dining room. Prior to that light flicker, there had not been electricity on that land since we had owned it. That flickering light was a sign of a goal we had accomplished.
This is the first light flicker.
The day they drilled the well on our farm.
This is the pond that sets right behind our house.
I feel like we have accomplished so much in the last two years but have so much more to accomplish. Andy and I are always putting our heads together and coming up with more stuff we would like to do and figuring out what we have to do to accomplish it, it's so fun but so humbling and gratifying when we do.
The best part about accomplishing goals is seeing all of the hard work, late nights, emotional episodes, missed family dinners, and disagreements pay off. It's a feeling hard to describe.
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