Summertime: Life Down on the Good Old Family Farm

When I was a kid, and believe me, that was a long time ago. My parents offered my brothers and myself one of those unique experiences of life.

We were able to spend two weeks each summer on a real live working farm.

Growing up, my mother had a caregiver from Highland, Illinois. Her name was Eleanor Felhauer, and she was a registered nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Highland. Believe me, when a family takes up farming, they do other things to make ends meet.

Eleanor would regularly baby sit the Baer boys on weekends and when my parents would travel out of town.

Somewhere the conversation led to city boys spending some time on a working farm. We jumped at that opportunity.

Going to a farm for two weeks is a big deal when a kid thinks camping out means checking into a Holiday Inn or fishing is selecting an item off the menu at Red Lobster.

Highland, if you don’t know is some 40 miles east of downtown St. Louis, straight out the interstate. But it wasn’t in the olden-golden days. Seems like it took us hours to get there traveling the backroads of Belleville, St. Jacob, Breese and other dots on the road.

Eleanor’s Husband Irwin “Mickey” Felhauer grew up in this farming community, made up almost exclusively of German and Swiss stock. Mickey played baseball with Red Schoendienst who grew up in nearby Germantown. They were life-long friends.

Life on a farm was exciting for three pre-teen boys. Up at four in the morning, we had a big farm breakfast and went out to milk the cows and tend to the crops. Mickey had electric milking machines and a tractor that rode two (one on the fender).

Once the cows were milked, he would make a daily run to town (the farm was on a rural route, some 10 miles from Highland) to deliver the product to the local dairy. There, he always stopped at the corner IGA to pick up a few things and the boys always got a fudgesicle. We always rode in the chilled back of the box truck.

It was not always work and no play. There was a basketball hoop nailed to the old red barn. We played baseball on the dusty circular driveway out front. Often, we would fish his fully-stocked lake or even hunt in the back woods.

Weekends usually meant more play and less work. We rode our bikes down his dusty drive for miles and went to town for quilting festivals and sometimes took in a movie at the local drive in theater.

Even to this day, when I drive by a farmers field in Chesterfield or St. Charles County, I still think about the good times on the Felhauer’s farm and how it must have been for the parents and their daughters. I knew enough to realize it was never easy. They were subject to the whims of Mother Nature, whether it be too much or too little rain, or oppresive summer heat that could ruin most of the crops.

However I never heard the Felhauer’s utter a single word of complaint. Farming was their way of life, just had it had been for generations who handed it down to them before.

I’m really glad, as a kid, I got to experience life on a farm, even if it was only for a couple of weeks at a time.