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We are all aware of the way the world is right now … the story can be seen everywhere. There’s pain at the gas pump, food costs have escalated, there are so many challenges for doing business and even just maintaining a household.

A couple of weeks ago, a middle-aged friend of mine told me "it might just get to the point that me and the Mrs. will have to get ourselves a steer, plant a garden, and live the life we used to many years ago. We can survive, we know what to do if we have to. It might not even be that bad. We didn't think a thing of it, living that way, back then."

That got me thinking about being younger and how that was really the way we lived. We were self-sufficient in a lot of ways, we worked hard, yet life was at a slower pace somehow. And yes, I suppose my family was poor … but we didn't know it. We made do and felt rich.

Sure, I grew up in a tiny house with eight other people. The folks stacked bunk beds in minute rooms and we packed in. But you know, we were never cold during the winter because somebody always had their feet in your back and those little people generated enough heat to warm the arctic. Plus, we were never alone and no one even had the opportunity to become afraid of the dark.

What we grew during the summertime was the staple of our diet all year long. I can't say I loved every second in the garden, in the field, the patch or whatever … but that work created bonds between us kids and the adults we learned from. So many hours of picking strawberries and freezing them in Cool Whip containers. So many cobs of corn to be husked and cut, blanched and put in the freezer. I've already written about the bean snippin' … and there were countless days spent canning as many jars of tomato products as possible. My mother would make everything under the sun from tomatoes … whole, juice, sauce, spaghetti sauce and thankfully only once, ketchup (Heinz won out in the end because Mom's was runny and horrific). I still remember us kids standing on folding chairs along the kitchen counter, turning the handles of those metal colanders, separating out the seeds and skins. And then having Grandma Onie call every day at 4:30 p.m., to see if she canned more than we did because somehow it became a competition.

And there were the literal acres that we'd plant into potatoes … a horrifying amount. Sure, it wasn't that big of a deal to plant them … Dad would bring out the farm equipment, create the rows, and our own ragtag line of young chaingangers would walk along, placing the seed potatoes with the adults constantly reminding us they had to be "eye-side up." The bad part was when it was time to dig the darn things … we ate as much dirt as Dad dug and lugged so many pounds into the cellar our backs felt as bad as Grandpa Andy claimed his was. But for the rest of the year, when it was time to make supper, all we had to do was grab an ice cream bucket and head down into the cave to collect the spuds.

Chickens were also a nightmare … cute when they were little, mean when they were alive and disgusting when they were dead. But again, we didn't have to worry about the cost … the corn came from the field, Dad ground it into feed, we fed them, we killed them, we cleaned them. In the end, we always had what we needed in the poultry division.

Having a dairy farm meant two other things … beef and milk. Dad would pick a steer and the big boy would have his own, special pen by the cattle chute. Every night and morning, we kids would tend to his needs and haphazardly name him. That was a sad protocol … because eventually, our pet would get big enough that Dad would say he "had to be moved." And for some reason, we never saw that animal again … not in the pasture with the other cattle or in the feed yard. He just mysteriously disappeared "to that other place" … and a few weeks later, we would be summoned to help carry parcels wrapped in white butcher paper to the freezers in Grandma's basement, which were marked with words like "steak" or "hamburger" or "rump roast." But a few months after that, we got ourselves a new, young steer to name, feed and dote upon. Oh, the mysterious cycle.

The flow of milk was constant … after all, that's what we did for a living. Mom would call us from the barn and ask how much milk we had in the refrigerator. After it was determined whether we needed a gallon or two, she'd fill a container, bring it home, skim the cream off the top and pasteurize it herself on the stove. We made ice cream the old fashioned way (during the winter, using snow) with a hand-crank … and we entertained our friends from school when they'd stay overnight and marvel that our milk had a light hint of green color in the summer (because of all the brome the cows were eating during the day).

And there was always "bread day" … generally on Saturdays. Mom had a stash of yeast that sat in the upper lefthand corner of the main cupboards … the metal container would come down and she'd work her magic. Eventually, I learned how to make bread on my own, so she could move on to other tasks. We'd mix and knead, mix and knead, form and cut, raise, rise, bake . . . and then freeze enough to keep us alive for a week or more. What's ironic is that as children, we got excited when we'd run out of homemade bread and Mom had to resort to Wonder for a few days … but today, as adults, we'd kill for a loaf of homemade bread once in a while.

Even our clothes was generated in the home, because Mom made everything we owned (with the exception of shoes, socks and underwear) until we got into our teenage years. And while she was not a candidate for "Project Runway," she was pretty good at the craft. Sure, sometimes hems weren't necessarily straight, and zippers didn't zag quite right, but it was cool picking out the different types of fabric for our own clothes, or make suggestions about how she could alter a pattern to make it more "our style." We had matching outfits for our dolls, made from the leftover scraps … and we saw our favorite garments recycled into quilts that some of us still have today.

We rode bikes and walked across the pasture between our house and the main farm; when it came time to go to town, we consolidated every errand into one trip; and the folks even got us a small motorcycle to ride seven miles to piano lessons on Saturday mornings after I got a little older. I'm sure fuel was an issue for the folks who still had to operate machinery and other vehicles, but I can't say us kids created that much of an energy vacuum because our country school was only two miles away.

It was a lot of work. It was survival, but we also thrived. And looking back, I guess we could have been considered poor. But we didn't know it … we always felt rich.

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