The first day of spring brought one of God’s chosen ones to the first day of her new life.

This hard-working neighbor lady would have (at one time) loved nothing more than to step out into the spring sun, feel its warmth and anticipate all that was to come before she had to trudge through the snowbanks again to get to the pigs and dairy cows at chore time.

She was one of a kind to us, but certainly not in her day. She grew up in a time when almost everyone lived and worked on the farm, and continued that lifestyle into their “forever.”

As a young girl, she met a cute guy who was a hired man in the neighborhood. They married and began their lives together on the farm, making their own dreams come true by working hard, keeping to themselves, living simply, and simply minding their own business.

She helped with all things on the farm — from running the baler to tending the pigs and their beloved dairy cows. She knew each cow by name, and knew which one “likes to be scratched right here” during milking time, or which one “likes just a little extra hay.”

She explained these important things to my husband as he was learning how to do their chores during the one time (we think) they ever left the farm — for their son’s wedding out of state. Her patient husband winked at my husband and said to her, “I believe you’re telling him just a little more than he needs to know.”

But nothing doing — she was going to make sure someone else cared for her “girls” just as well as she did, 365 days a year for decades, showing up every time without fail.

I read her obituary with fascination. She enjoyed cooking and baking, especially making fudge, which she gifted to many, including our sons. She made a mean chocolate pudding. She enjoyed making pies from apples, pumpkin and rhubarb, making use of what they grew on their farm; along with baking apple bread, chocolate sweets, and making sauces from apples and rhubarb. She gathered asparagus and preserved fruits and vegetables from the garden.

This true outdoorsperson cared for her yard, vegetable garden, flowers, apple and evergreen trees, and enjoyed feeding and observing songbirds and pheasants.

She even trained the family’s dogs to herd, jump fences and hunt, and journaled daily for 35 years about the farm, also trying to predict weather patterns and seasons.

Who knew she had time to teach Sunday school and lead the high school youth group, and that she helped found and lead a girls’ 4-H club? Her days always full, she had to make the time for things important to her off the farm.

I secretly snickered once when she — a woman so devoted to the hard work of a farm and raising a family, asked me incredulously, “What do women who live in town DO all day?”

She disciplined their children the way people did back then, too. She pointed out a yardstick that was above the living room doorway.

“You see that yardstick? I used it, too,” she said forcefully and with big, serious eyes.

I knew. My backside saw a little of that action as a child, too.

When she breathed her last at 99, I think her age and her weight had to have been the same, but she didn’t look any different than she had all of her life because I’m pretty sure she never sat down. When she moved into assisted living, she just wanted to be back on the farm, wearing those old familiar blue jeans that took her back to a life she loved … and missed.

Her love of the farm was authentic, and was as close to her as her own breath. Her husband passed 12 years before her, and when she lost him, she was lost, too.

She was one of God’s many “chosen” to spend her life on the farm, yet still one of a kind in today’s world, which seems like it has just moved on. Her life stood as a powerful link to the past and a billboard depicting that true, genuine happiness comes from within.

I’ll think of her often … maybe especially whenever I see a yardstick.

No matter what she was doing, I’m pretty sure she usually meant business.

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