Family Farm Friday #32: Real Housewives

"The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it." ~Roseanne Barr

So my friend Crystal (you see me thanking her a lot...she has a great blog that I totally recommend following!) alerted me to an article written by Patrick Dorinson talked about REAL American Housewives....not those rich [non-blog friendly word] ladies on the reality tv shows, but real farm and ranch wives. He explained that these women are some of the hardest working in America. Having been raised by a grandma, a mom, and lots of other women who fit right into this category, I can't help but agree.

My Gran was the toughest lady I know. She grew up on her family's ranch where they operated a gas station near Caprock, New Mexico during the Great Depression. (This would be the same ranch we've had in the family for 100 years that you read about before). She learned to work hard and not to give up, and it was a lesson she never forgot.

She was as stubborn as the day is long. She was in college when WWII began and she decided to leave New Mexico State University and head for San Francisco to build airplanes. That's right, Gran was Rosie the Riveter. And her dad was NOT happy about this decision, but she went anyway. When she came home, she finished her degree, got a good job, and then met my grandpa. They were married when she was older....I think about 30 or so. (See, there is still hope for me.....I'm genetically a late bloomer!!) They bought the farm where I grew up and had two boys. Gran worked as a teacher by day and a farmer/mother by night. Talk about having multiple jobs.

Then, when she was in her late forties, tragedy struck. My grandpa died of a heart attack, leaving her with a farm to run and two teenage boys to raise. Lots of people told her she should sell the farm and move to town. She did exactly the opposite. She put her head down, went to work, and kept the farm going. She left not only a farm, but a legacy and an example of a woman who could make it through anything and accomplish whatever she put her mind to.

My mom didn't grow up on a farm, but when she married my dad, she became a farm wife right away. Like Gran, my mom worked as a teacher for 35 years and came home at night to help take care of chores and raise my brother and me. A lot of nights when I get home from work, I just plop on the couch and can't imagine moving. Not my mom. I hardly remember sitting down when I was a kid. She had too much to do.

From packing lunches to going to ball games to trudging through the field with irrigation tubes, to sitting in the kitchen floor blow drying a frozen baby calf, (and don't forget scanning pictures for my blog because I don't have them in digital version) my mom was always going. And maybe her life isn't flashy and glamorous like the ladies on tv, but you know what? She worked hard and made a difference in the lives of a lot of people and in the end, I sure think that's more important.

There are plenty of other examples I could list. When the article talks about how these women "treat each other's children as if they were their own" he's not lying. I have said repeatedly that it took much more than a village to raise me....and a big part of that village was made up of farm and ranch mama's that were like family to me.

So here's to America's Real Housewives, and to the hope that one day, I'll become just like all the ones who raised me!