Storms of life

"We all have life storms, and when we get the rough times and we recover from them, we should celebrate that we got through it. No matter how bad it may seem, there's always something beautiful that you can find." ~Mattie Stepanek

It landed just feet from the house.

A storm swept through our area last night, forever changing my parents’ property. 

Thankfully, no livestock or lives were lost, and the homes were undamaged. But a bit of our history was lost.

In the midst of the wind, my parents lost two sheds, one we called a tractor shed and one we called the camper shed, because that was the biggest items they respectively housed. My mom’s car was damaged because of debris and trailer sitting on a rental property was blown about.

[That one was very lucky; the trailer was there when my folks bought the land. It was picked up, fell apart, and landed mere feet from the house itself.]

I think the most heartbreaking part for my mom, and I know for myself, was the “tractor shed.”

The camper shed, with the camper and backhoe inside.

It’s been there as long as I can remember. My mom thinks it was built in the 1970s, but we know it was my grandparents who put the shed there. It had a room to the side that we used to “strip” tobacco, back when the farm was used to grow tobacco, about 15 years ago.

I still remember that room. My dad had used it as a bit of a work room, sometimes in the winter, and mostly for storage. It had this awesome door, with a different sort of wooden handle. I loved that door and that handle.

That shed, while probably not worth a lot financially speaking, is more of a personal loss. It’s one of the remaining connections to my grandparents on that farm, remembering my mamaw and my late papaw spending hours, days in the space working up tobacco alongside a few friends and neighbors, some they paid and some there just to help. I was never old enough for that job; we stopped raising tobacco just before I got there.

All that remains of the "stripping room"
in the old shed.

Even so, there was something familiar and cozy about that old room. It still smelled the same and I remember the hours spent there. That was a cold weather job, done after the tobacco was harvested in the fall and had time to hang dry. A lot of work went into that. A lot of love and work.

It wasn’t the love of the tobacco that did it — I don’t much recall that my papaw ever touched the stuff — it was the love of the land. He loved being out there, working the land, making something, growing something with his own hands. I loved spending time following him around. I was his little shadow. Even though I couldn’t do the work, I was there, trying my darndest to be in whatever he was doing.

Sometimes he would take me with him when he went to sell the tobacco at the warehouse, too. Most of those buildings don’t exist any more; they’ve been torn down for the sake of progress or converted to something more useful.

Next door to my parents’ property, my cousin’s property sustained some similar damage when the roof blew off the “milking parlor” where the family had milked their holsteins for … well, a long time. It’s been a few years since the parlor was used for that purpose.

I remember those days, too. My little cousin Stephanie and I would sneak in there, it was often wet, and usually smelled like manure. But it didn’t bother us, because we were farm girls; we were used to manure. That’s just how the country smells. I honestly never helped in the milking process, but Steph would.

It’s funny how you forget things. I certainly hadn’t thought about the parlor or the stripping room in a long time, but here I sit writing those words and memories come flooding back.

Papaw in his shed.

To add insult to mom and dad’s injury, overnight another storm swept through and, in the absence of the shed to protect it, a tree was blown down onto an old car my dad had stored there. It was his car, from his much younger days. He’s never been able to part with it.

I guess we all have to part with things in some way eventually.

We aren’t sure yet what the insurance will determine of the damage on either farm and we are truly lucky that no one was hurt. It certainly could have ended differently. I’m not sure how my family will rebuild, but I’m sure they will in some way. Because we’re farming stock and that makes us stubborn.

It also makes us thankful. We know how much mother nature affects our lives, more than a lot, simply because of how dependent we are on her for the grass for livestock, the hay to feed them in the winter, and especially for the veggies put in the ground. It’s been a few years since my folks planted much, and certainly nothing on the scale that we used to, but those memories linger on.

Beyond all of this, we all have faith. That’s the most important part. We are all firm believers in God and I’m sure He will see us through this. Somehow, He’ll use this to help us move beyond.

We just have to lean in to him.

In fact, in the midst of the storm, a new life was launched; one of dad's cows had a baby calf. I think they're going to name her "Stormy."