Family

When most writers talk about their family; parents, children, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins are mentioned. Those who tend to be more colorful and descriptive with their stories, speak of family trees, branches and roots. Well this blog post is all about family, but I am going to talk about neighbors, gravel roads, church, the school bus, 4H and FFA. That's my 'farm mom' version of family. Both the Farmer and myself have great big, large loving families who we are blessed to have in our lives. But we have some more family that add to our blessings exponentially. It's our Tulip family. What's our Tulip family you might ask?
Well, they are the people we go to church with, our kids are in 4H and FFA with, ride the same school bus, show cattle, wrestle or play football, and the list goes on and on. Its the person we call when we have more sweet corn to pick than we will ever want to put up in the freezer. The person who calls from town and wants to know should they bring your kids home as well from whatever the days event is. Its the person who when you get done a day or so before them with harvest, instead of putting the combine and trucks away you move to their field and help them get done or vice-versa.
A few weeks ago our little farm girl was hurt in an accident. She was helping put up square bales of hay and ended up falling off the wagon and the tires ran over her. She is lucky and blessed, as are we, that she only has a broken bone in her shoulder to heal. As we were gathering up to head to the hospital, myself in the ambulance with her and the Farmer following, the Tulip family took over.
While we were tending to our sweet JH at the hospital, there were family members showing up at the farm. There were, at one point, my boys say, 11 people in our hay loft stacking hay. I think at least 3 crews-worth picking up the bales. And the women came and cooked food for all the guys who were working. The accident happened as the first load was coming out of the field. When the baling was done, the counter was on 1429. That soon into the job, I was just beginning to cook the food for the crew. The family stepped in and took care of the business at hand.
Before we could even get to the hospital, the church prayer chain had started. Social media lit up with questions of 'Whats happening?' I was both busy enough worrying about what we would find out and fielding texts and calls that I hadn't posted anything and of course my phone charge died moments after getting to the hospital. We let a few folks know and spoke with our boys who were at home. But we were reassured each and every time to take care of JH, they had things well in hand.
Boy did they. When I was finally able to get the chance to contact others, the work at home had been done. All that was left was to nurse our little girl back to health and return calls, and well wishes that poured into every crack and crevice.
In this world of instantly knowing everything, sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes not. In this instance, I believe the prayers of our loved ones, were the prevailing reason that we brought our sweet girl home, just a day later. She was showered with flowers, balloons, cards, treats and so much more. If I started trying to list all of it, I would surely miss someone. So I would just like to say, thank you EVERYONE. You have no idea what everything you did meant to our family. You bless us.

Counting my blessings,
From Tulip~
KH
:)