“So I’m a city girl. I was allergic to everything with the farm. And I was told to never marry a farmer because I have asthma. God has a great sense of humor, and I’ve been a farm wife almost 34 years.”
Susan Hayhurst is an Indiana author, and she shares those farm wife experiences in a new book. She partnered with Beth Gormong near Indianapolis to write the recently released Growing the Fruit of the Spirit: 100 Devotionals for Farm Families. Throughout the book, Hayhurst and Gormong share their experiences of growing up in the city and moving to the country when they married farmers.
“Whether it’s taking sack dinners and everybody crowding in the combine in fall, when the kids were little and eating with dad while he’s driving and the kids all curled up on the floor of the combine and telling him about their school day, to going to farm shows as a family or conferences or livestock shows, just taking the time. When you get it, either as a husband and wife or with your kids, it’s really precious.”
Gormong says the devotional helps farm families through the challenges they face.
“It’s good for a farm family to know that they’re not alone, that other people have similar struggles. We hope that the book itself will be an encouragement for families to talk about things, to read together, to find ways through the stories just to come together and be able to handle their own difficulties.”
Both women say that life on the farm took some getting used to. They said one major adjustment was planning out their shopping trips.
“You learn to think ahead, plan ahead, be wise with your purchases because you may not get to town for a while,” Gormong says. “Learn to make do when you don’t have things because you can’t just pop out and get something or if you’re tired of cooking you can’t just order a pizza and have it delivered.”
The authors encourage others to share information and ask questions.
“When somebody outside of the ag community joins the family, whether it be a wife or a husband, they don’t know what they don’t know. Both sides need to understand that there is this gulf. A bridge needs to be built. You love each other, but you don’t understand each other.”
“And if you feel you’re getting shut down on asking questions, you keep on asking them. We have to learn to adapt and bloom where we’re planted and find where we fit in, and we’ve each found ways that we fit in to our farming families.”
Below, hear Elise Koning’s full conversation with the authors at the 2023 Ag Women Engage Conference in Terre Haute, Indiana. You can order Growing the Fruit of the Spirit: 100 Devotionals for Farm Families from Amazon.
