Family. Family you choose or that chooses you. That was Bill and Marge. Friends and family since 1968. For all those years we would stop at Bill and Marge’s farm any time of day, any day of the week, and be welcomed. The kids could feed the chickens. We admired the gardens. We watched the cows, pigs, and sheep. The kids might get a ride on Bill’s tractor. If we stayed very long, we got fed. The farm was close to us, just outside Broomfield, Colorado while we lived in Lousiville, so we stopped there a lot. Once in a while we got them to come to our house for burgers on the grill. Later, Bill and Marge relocated to a farm outside Wheatland, Wyoming. Visiting there, looking around, we couldn’t tell that we weren’t still at the Colorado farm. They seemed that much the same to us. Any trip north in the bus, even if we didn’t stop to visit, we could watch the fields for their farm and sometimes spot Bill out plowing or planting in the fields and honk the air horn to say hello.
Bill is gone now, and Marge is off the farm. Their son Don works it, in addition to his own. We drove to Wheatland for a visit with Marge today. She lives in town at the senior housing.
Always good to see Marge and catch each other up on how our families are doing. We watched for the farm from the freeway as we were driving back south to Colorado. We saw Don out in the field driving the tractor plowing. We honked a hello.