Everyday Farm Clothes

When we view the everyday as an opportunity rather than a drudgery to make it through, we have already succeeded in elevating our everydays, and when such a practice becomes habituated, more extraordinary moments are savored each and every day.

-Shannon Ables-

When I read this quote from Grateful Living’s Word for the Day on Tuesday, the word everyday grabbed my memory and started taking a walk. The first thing that came to my mind was the everyday clothes that we wore growing up on the farm. Farm life requires wardrobe changes for the sake of cleanliness and safety. Good clothes were good clothes. You wore those to school, church, to visit cousins, and on special occasions. Every day on the farm, we wore everyday clothes. They may have served as good clothes once, and were now finishing out their existence in a new capacity. Or they may have been bought new to become immediate everyday work clothes.

Everyday clothes might be worn on the people of varied ages helping move hay bales from loaded wagons into the barn. You definitely wanted long pants for that job. Or worn by the ones gathering eggs, mowing a portion of the yard, weeding in the garden, or carrying milk to the milkhouse. They were a no-brainer when you got the always sought after job of cleaning cow manure out of the gutters in our dairy barn. Everyday clothes started our days with us and ended them with us. In the summer, they often spent the whole day with us. They may have been doing the dirty work, literally, but they were cared for and respected.

Even as I write this, I can pull up images of some of those everyday clothes I wore. I also see Dad in his striped-bib overalls heading out to a field on a tractor and Mom in her everyday pants walking out the back door to the clotheslines or the garden. I can almost smell the freshly baled hay, the milk still warm from the cows, and the Kool-Aid that we got to have on those afternoons when we were baling hay. I can taste the hot meal that Mom had ready to put on the table when we all came in from taking care of our various jobs. And, yes, I can smell the manure. You didn’t need to go looking for that smell. It found you. It was a necessary part of farm life. We understood that. Just like we understood the cycle of life of animals raised, crops grown, garden produce ripening, and the changing seasons. What blessings! I remain a proud Iowa farm girl, everyday clothes and all.

So thank you Shannon Ables, for using the word everyday, sparking memories and inspiring this essay. Read more about the everyday in every day in this post from November, 2024. Words are so rich and carry so much for us. Memories are so profound and bring fresh emotions to our hearts and souls. In every day, I try to appreciate the everyday. Everyday is full of treasures and gratefulness. Living gratefully makes all the difference.

Here is a farm photo from my favorite season-fall. Fall on the farm. I can smell this corn, ready for harvest.