Dear Mom,

You are the first farm wife I ever knew. And now that I have been one for decades, I can only understand in part all you went through to do your job.

Coming from the east coast to (eventually) northwest Iowa — and living in town all of your childhood — you knew nothing of life on the farm until you married Dad.

Yours was a gutsy decision. Learning how to be a farmer’s wife was a sink-or-swim proposition for you. But you eventually got the hang of it.

You were the woman of the farm, and your contribution mattered. You didn’t have a job outside the home because your job was the home … and seven kids … and all the things Dad needed you to do. It was a big job that rarely offered you time off just to be you.

You helped bring forth a brood of children to not only help Dad get the farm work done, but also to help you in the house … not that we girls did it very willingly, as you know.

It was no easy task to cook and clean for a family of nine. And many of those years were before microwaves, automatic washing machines, clothes dryers, cake mixes, sewing machines with mending arms, and artificial Christmas trees. You must have swept acres of dirt out of your house because of that south wind that blew it all in.

And when you had to wash “sick” laundry, there was plenty of it to do, since when one person got the flu, most everyone else followed. Then there were measles, mumps and chickenpox … times seven.

Looking back, I have wondered who took care of you when you were sick?

You made more than 150 birthday cakes in your years on the farm. And it doesn’t account for any birthday cakes made for you, which I don’t often remember us doing.

I now understand your quiet panic that time you burned the steaks you were grilling for supper. You knew Dad wouldn’t be happy, and you quietly ordered them to be taken out to the grove, while you found something else for the main entree. Without as much as a microwave.

So many times you must have wanted to escape, but that wasn’t easy to do either.

Even family vacations were not that much fun for you, because camping was the only way you could do that. I remember you saying, “The first thing I had to do was sweep the mouse poop out of the camper.” Then you had to stock it with all the essentials — food, bedding, cooking utensils, dishes, towels, etc. You said, “All that did was take my job and put it on wheels.”

And yet, I never knew you didn’t like camping until you told me.

It’s been said that a smart person knows to delegate the work. You did that when you gave me the job of rinsing out my baby brother’s soiled diapers. I’m pretty sure I was snarky about it then, but when my husband and I couldn’t afford disposable diapers when our twins came along, I wasn’t afraid to use cloth diapers and get my hands dirty rinsing them out.

You were a genius.

Quietly amid all the work you had to do to keep the farm going, society — and even your family — often overlooked your true value. There are many things that would not have happened had your work on the farm not been done … the never-ending pile of blue jeans you ended, which saved a ton of money; lunches and meals for crews when there were “extras” there for dinner — even with last-minute notice sometimes; running to town to get tractor parts and groceries; doctor and dentist visits; Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas mornings, Fourth of July fireworks outings, hanging clothes on an endless clothesline, three meals a day, cleaning chickens; clean flannel sheets all winter long, tending to our illnesses and injuries, and your discipline so we wouldn’t grow up to be the ungrateful brats we sometimes were at home.

Your job as a farm wife and mother was hard, never-ending and thankless.

But now I say thank you for being my first example of how to be a farmer’s wife.

And thank you for being my beautiful angel on earth … even if your wings were a little dirty from that south wind. You’ve carried that look very well.

Karen Schwaller writes from her grain and livestock farm near Milford, Iowa. She can be reached at kschwaller@evertek.net