The relationship between a father and his daughter is special. Little girls want to have their dad sitting in the bleachers at every basketball game or track meet from kindergarten to college. Whatever the passion, little girls want their dads to be there, to cheer them on, and to hear them say “I am so proud of you!”
In many families, the little ballerina can’t wait to show her daddy what she has learned because it’s something her big brother has never dreamed of doing. The basketball player practices hours of lay-ups and free throws to prove that she is better than her football playing brother.
Farm families are different. My family was different. I could play basketball and shop till-I-drop just like every other girl I knew. But on the farm, I wasn’t just daddy’s little girl, I insisted on doing just as much as my brother. I wanted to be treated just like the boys and would not have it any other way.
It doesn’t matter if you just got home from gymnastics or the salon, when you return to the farm and it’s time for chores, all bets are off. As a girl, I was expected to carry the full feed buckets just like my brother did, and I was expected to sort cattle, no matter how badly I wanted to be on the other side of the fence. A farm father will treat his daughters just like his sons because the work has got to be done and there is no time to sit and look pretty.
In a world that constantly separates males from females like they are two very different things, with different abilities and the need for special treatment, the farm inevitably, ignores all of that. Farm fathers ignore all of that. Whether you spend your morning milking cows or raking hay, all farm kids are expected to hold their own.
In life, a girl needs her dad for so many reasons, but on the farm I needed my dad to open the barn door as I carried in a 50-pound bag of feed or to operate the head shoot as I helped my brother work cattle. These things just don’t happen anywhere.
On the farm, the relationship between a father and his daughter is different. Different because fathers will treat daughters just like they treat their sons. If there is work to be done on the farm, everyone, no matter their gender, is responsible for getting it done.
To a farm daughter there is no greater feeling than to be treated just like everyone else. Breaking a nail and getting a little mud in my hair was just in a day’s work for this farm daughter. And I don’t think dad would have had it any other way.
Source: Farm and Ranch Jobs
