My "Rustic Dream Syndrome"

I just finished reading this blog post by Amanda Dusick over at Crappy Pictures. She is hilarious!

http://crappypictures.com/crappy-family-goes-country-fair/

Her trip to a small town county fair reminded me of my childhood and how many hours I spent preparing for our own version of the county fair. We showed goats one year, then realized how much work that really was. We quickly returned to our more "genteel" crafts. I went to the State Fair three times- once for floral arrangement, once for a speech a friend and I gave, and once for my yeast bread. All three trips to the State Fair were traumatic.

When I took my flower arranging, I almost missed the entire thing as we couldn't find parking. When I took the bread, the judge cut into a HUGE air bubble. The speech was a disaster as I dropped the clippable microphone near the sewing machine and no one could hear anything I said. Wow.

Still I treasure my memories of small town childhood. There are definitely some negatives to small town life, but I choose to remember the wonderful times.

At our county fair one year a farmer's son turned his Jeep Wrangler into a tub on wheels. I'm still not sure how he accomplished that, but boy was it fun.

I remember spending hours caring for fruits and vegetables from planting to weeding and picking. Then pickling, canning, or freezing the abundance. My favorite day of the year was "corn picking day" where we spent the whole day picking an acre of corn, shucking, silking and prepping for freezing. The best part was the big pot of corn on the cob for dinner that night. There is still nothing better than fresh corn on the cob.

All these memories stir in me what Amber in her blog post refers to as "rustic dream syndrome". I remember how much I enjoyed my own childhood and wish that for my own son. The reality was, I reaped the benefit of a lot of adult work, and I'm not sure I'm really interested in doing all that adult work myself. Plus, my grandparents had the benefit of around 20 extended family members to show up when needed.

So, for today, we visit the State Fair and the county fair and pick apples and pumpkins and berries and what have you. We hit the farmer's market and eventually, I will teach my boys to prep fresh food for canning and pickling and freezing, but in amounts that we could actually store, rather than enough to feed entire neighborhoods. I want them to appreciate my rural upbringing as well, even if I don't want to relive it for myself.