Family Farm Friday #51: That's Being a Neighbor

"I won't forget that Sunday, when God filled the neighborhood. It might have been a little old fashioned, but done us all some good." ~Conway Twitty, Me and My Neighbor

First off, I have to tell you that I'm super excited because my Family Farm Friday blogs have been featured on a list of examples of good "agvocacy" blogs! So exciting....and because I read most of the other blogs on that list, I'm super flattered to be included with such great bloggers!

Okay for today's post, this really will be the last post about the grass fire that you've read about here and here.

At church last week, the priest said that God does not do evil things, but that He will use the evil things that we do in order to further his perfect plan. Have you noticed that sometimes, actually I think a lot of times, we are reminded how good people are when bad things happen? People come out of the woodwork and show kindness and concern and compassion. This made me look back on the last couple of weeks. Our neighbors and surrounding communities did just that after the fire.

Once word spread about the fire, it was like an AT&T switchboard at our house. We got so many phone calls from friends just making sure we were okay. We got calls from the local feedlot saying that if we needed a place to put cattle, we could bring them over and they would not charge us any board, and that we could just pay cost for feed. We got a call from a local businessman who offered to bring out his crew to help repair any fences that needed to be fixed right away. A waitress at the hometown restaurant offered to help anyone with a place to stay if houses did end up being lost. One man showed up at our house to apologize that he was not able to respond to the fire when the department was paged.

(The photo above is of our fire deparment a LONG time ago--40 years or so? Even today I could tell you stories about just about every one of these men and of what they've meant to my family over the years.)

I'm here to tell you, I don't think that any community does a better job of pulling together after a crisis than small town America. I think that one of the biggest reasons for this is that we all know each other, and we have known each other for years. We know everything about each other---we remember when good things happened and everyone celebrated, and we remember when tragedy has struck and everyone showed up to mourn (and bring a pie and an enchillada casserole...because that's what you do). You've read a little about this before. When you grow up going through things with other people in that way, it's not something you forget. Chalk up another one to small town life.