This is the first part of my new series "Farmers Daughter." ..

This is the first part of my new series "Farmers Daughter." This is a spicy one ;) This pic is me at 20 back on the farm, with a girlfriend of mine taking the pics....more on that later... Hope you enjoy!

PART 1

Prologue:

This summer, I learned 3 things:
The farm will never look the same to me again….ever.
I didn’t know you could use a fork lift for that.
“Fuck around and find out” is my new favorite phrase.

Chapter 1:

“Why the hell do you care?! I told you I was going home for the summer and I don’t care what YOU do! We. Are. On. A. Break!”

“I don’t get why it has to be a break! What are you gonna do? Like, are we broken up?”

“No! I mean, yeah, I guess so! You’re gonna do whatever you wanna do anyway, and now you’re 100% FREE to do so. I’m going to do the same!”

“What does that mean?!”

“I don’t know, exactly. I just mean that it doesn’t matter. You do you, and I’ll do me. Then we can sit and talk about everything again at the end of summer and see where we’re at OK?”

Why do I always feel like I’m talking to an idiot?

“Ok. I’ll probably come home a few times too and alternate between staying with my dad and my mom. Maybe we can talk sometime then.”

“Ughhhh…..ok, maybe. I gotta go, I’m almost home. Please stop calling me all the time about the same shit. I’m sick of it.”

“Fine.”

“Great. Bye.”

I flip my phone shut and throw it on the seat next to me. I take a deep breath to calm my frustration. That was my boyfr— I mean, ex-boyfriend, Brad. We’ve dated since early high school and now go to the same college together, but I swear to God he’s gone backwards in the “growing up” department. Or more likely, maybe I’ve just outgrown him. Long story short, we’ve been a shitshow for the last couple of years and keep doing this “break” thing, like it ever makes things better. It’s me who instigated this break (or rather, ALL the breaks), and I know it’s just because I wanna be a little naughty this summer, and I haven’t found the balls to call the whole thing off for good, but I also can’t stand him 90% of the time anymore. I’m hoping this summer helps me clear my head and commit one way or the other. I’ve been “spoken for” for most of 5 years now and I’ve tried to use our breaks as experimentation times, and boy did I during this past year! But those are stories for another time.
Now…now it’s time to get away from campus and enjoy the countryside I grew up in. Maybe briefly reconnect with a few old crushes from high school, just to taunt them with how much I’ve changed. Show them what they missed out on. Not that I want them now. Hell no. As former high school star athletes, they’re all washed-up, starting to get fat and are seemingly stuck in that godforsaken town. But I wanted them to want me, once upon a time. You see, living out in the country makes you a bit of an outsider in my small town. I wasn’t in the “cool club” since I wasn’t a “townie” and to be honest, they weren’t actually cool AT ALL. I wanted nothing to do with their drinking, shoplifting, mean-girl ways. I was too much of a goody-two-shoes to even remotely desire that. I wouldn’t have joined their ridiculous circle, even if I lived in town and they begged me to. But as it went for some of my crushes, their friends wouldn’t have allowed them to date me. The circle must stay within the circle. That’s how I started dating Brad. He wasn’t one of my original crushes, but I was his, and he left the circle in order to pursue me, which earned him some serious brownie points, only to jump into another ridiculous circle in college that I can’t stand. (Ok, don’t go down that road now, Fiona.)
Back to these old crushes. Sure they may have seen me as athletic and hot or whatever back then….but now….now I’m a D1 college athlete and I’ve got the body to show for it. All the running and workouts have made me leaner than ever and the weight training has toned up my abs and legs, filled out my ass and kept my tits extra-perky. And now I have a bit more swagger. Can a girl have swagger? Maybe sass? Ever since spring break and my trip to Padre Island, I’ve stepped out of my goody-two-shoes self a little and have been exploring a riskier, freer side. I’m still not a law-breaker, of course, but rules are a bit more bendable now, in my opinion.
I can see my parents house up on the hill about a mile ahead. There’s nothing but pastures and cornfields out here, so you can see and hear a car coming from at least 2 miles down the road. I cross the small creek bridge and climb the steep hill that leads right up to our driveway. Everything looks the same as I remember. Our 1970’s two-story farmhouse still has its beige siding and brown roof. The front porch is a bit worse-for-wear, nothing a little paint couldn’t fix, but it’s still solid. Our giant front yard looks like it needs to be mowed and I bet my parents saved that for me. They know I love using the riding mower. I put my headphones on, pop a cd into my Sony Discman and just zone out for 2 hours and nobody bothers me since I’m doing something useful. Maybe I’ll tackle that this week.
The driveway is long, and up ahead, past the house which sits on the right, the driveway splits. The right fork leads straight to an old, tall, hay barn, and I can see a rack wagon backed into it with “square” hay bales stacked high on it and a few barn cats chasing each other around. Although they’re actually rectangular, they still call those square bales as opposed to those huge round bales you see either scattered around giant fields like big forgotten Easter eggs, or wrapped in white plastic and lined up to look like giant marshmallows. Those are fun to jump around on and I always enjoyed it as a kid when I had to tag along to the hayfields with my mom to deliver lunches to my dad and his “hired men”. That’s what they’re called around here. Not employees, but hired men.
The left fork in the driveway leads up a slight hill and ends at the big machine shed where my dad keeps some of his tractors, machine parts, tools and stacks of grain and feed. The trash burn barrel sits several yards in front of it. Growing up, for a little while I thought everyone burned their trash. But then I learned that I just had mainly country friends, and that wasn’t something “townies” did. There is also an island of grass between the forks in the driveway where a small shed sits with what looks like attached carports that mainly store some old broken cars and a wagon full of firewood we use in the fireplace in the winter.
And finally, there’s a hog house off to the side of the left fork, before the machine shed, that used to house pigs when I was a kid, but my dad sold those years ago and now it’s another storage shed. It's a shed city around here.
I pull onto the extra concrete pad my dad put in next to the house, so as to keep the area in front of the garage clear for my parents car to get in and out and put the car in park. I’m sure my mom saw me coming down the road 3 miles ago, so I’m surprised she’s not already standing at the front door waiting for me. Oh wait, yes she is. She’s waving through the sidelight beaming like a kid on Christmas.
I step out of the car, stretch my legs and deeply inhale the scent of dirt, hay and lilacs from the nearby bushes. As excited as I was to get out of this place, it sure does feel good to be back for a little while. I start to round the car to open the trunk and get my things out, nostalgically scanning across the property along the way, when my eye catches someone in the hay barn, standing by the corner of that hay wagon, watching me.
It’s Frank, my dad’s longest-employed hired man. He’s probably been helping at this farm for 20 years or so. Long enough that I don’t remember a time he wasn’t working here. Since he’s looking right at me, unmoving, I lift my arm and give a country wave to him. You know, where you don’t actually wave, but just hold a couple of fingers up loosely and do a little head-nod at the same time. He responds with a quick but slight head-nod himself, turns on his heels and disappears deeper into the hay barn. Was that a greeting? Or did he not expect me to see him staring at me and I caught him off-guard? He looked uncomfortable at my noticing him, which is strange since he’s known me my whole life. I hear the front door open and although it’s only been like 10 seconds, I can tell my mom can’t wait any longer for me to come in, so I grab one of my bags and head in. I’ll come get the rest later. I keep my eyes on the barn as I climb the steps and cross the front porch to the door, and I swear I can still see him standing there staring, but this time he’s back in the shadows.