Day 8: Farmer friends

Here's a secret about me: I've always wanted to live on a farm.

Maybe it's the wonder I experienced from visits to my Grandpa Dragseth's farm or stories my Mom told from her farm-grown childhood or images from Little House on the Prairie. Maybe it's the idea of wide open spaces, the beautiful outdoors, a close family and simplicity. Whatever it is, I've always believed that I would love farm-living -- I'm almost blind to the fact it would be alot of hard work and that the extrovert in me would probably grow a bit lonely.

Somehow in college I became friends with quite a few farmers: Brent, Troy, Nathan, Gary, Paul, Ron and others. It's not that my alma-mater was full of farmers, but somehow the few who were there intersected with my circle of city kids who thought the country was cool. My best friend in college was Christine -- who wasn't really a farmer but she sure is a country girl who knows how to ride horses. Two of our closest guy-friends were Gary from Nebraska and Nathan from Colorado and after college they both returned home and continue to work on their family farms. Many adventures were had with these friends: road-trips to Gary & Nathan's football games, visits to Gary's farm over Easter our junior year and to Nathan's farm the summer before our senior year, a few rodeos, many horse-back riding adventures with Christine's family's horses, late night study sessions, playing rook, going to buck-movies, timberwolves games, Twins games, and even the final four. Through it all the farm-influence of these three friends in undeniable (& I'm not just talking about my brief love for country music which was heavily influenced by these friends).


I was acutely aware of the beauty of these friendships and when I graduated I wrote out a list of experiences we shared which started with this: "Gary, Christine & Nate - I thought I would write down some of the memories we all shared at college. You three were my best friends at NWC. I learned a lot from each of you and I know you all influenced many of my opinions and major choices in life." Before we all split ways in late 1992, the four of us wrote out five year predictions - to be opened in September 1997 (yes, I still have the original copies of these predictions). How did I ever talk the farm-boys into that? Since then the four of us have intersected just three times -- at Gary & Shauna's wedding in 1994, at Christine & Corey's wedding in 1997 and a random connection at Christine's parents home in Nebraska in 2000 when all of us were close-enough to each other to connect... and that was 10 years ago!

Yes, my life and college experience was influenced by these farmer friends. And, I'm so glad it was.