My Christmas Eve Wish

There’s one thing just about anyone in rural America will tell you—life’s tough for family farmers.

If we’re not getting whiplash from commodity prices, we’re busting our fuel budgets, worrying about the weather or nursing old equipment in hopes it lasts one more year.

On top of that, we’re usually juggling two full-time jobs: the farm and whatever outside work pays the bills. I should say three jobs. Most of us have kids, and somewhere in there we’re trying to give them that wonderful farm-fresh childhood we remember—the one that keeps us on the land, trying to make it all work.

That’s what was going through my mind anyway one cold Christmas Eve a few years back. I was sitting in my UPS truck in the late evening dark, watching snow swirl down on a small Wisconsin town and sipping a cup of coffee from my thermos.

I’d spent the day delivering holiday packages. Every time a door opened pouring forth delicious Christmas smells and the sounds of laughter, I’d felt a pang of regret. How many Christmas Eves had I spent this way, apart from my boys, Ross and Joey? Too many.

But delivering packages for UPS was the only way I knew to keep my farm running. The small towns in my corner of Wisconsin were all mom-and-pop shops losing ground to big-box stores and farmers giving up after years of struggle.

I wouldn’t have to give up. Not as long as I kept my job. But that meant missing more than Christmas Eve. I was a single mom. My UPS route could take up to 11 hours. My mom helped take care of the boys, who were three and five, when I had a shift like that. But I knew something was missing.

The whole reason I’d saved money since I started with UPS straight out of high school was to buy a farm and give my kids the kind of childhood I’d had. My parents’ farm had been paradise, one long adventure of working the land, diving in the swimming hole and heading to town for shopping on Saturdays and church on Sundays followed by, best of all, a trip to the creamery.

Mm, nothing like fresh, homemade ice cream on a hot summer day.

So far I’d only made a start on that dream. The hundred-acre spread I’d bought was five minutes from where I’d grown up, steeped in family history—homesteaded by my great, great, great grandparents Christian and Ella Sibjornson, who emigrated from Norway in the 1850s, and later owned by my uncle.

After he retired and sold the place to me, I spent years fixing barns and rebuilding fences around dairy pasture. By the end of a decade the farm was producing, and I was including the kids whenever I could. Basically, though, I was a UPS deliverywoman moonlighting as a farmer.