I'm the King of the Castle

​I’m not sure what it is about tall piles: snow stacks, dirt piles, hay stacks, manure mountains, …  but most of my childhood was spent chasing my sister to the top of anything (or trying to!).  So many years have gone by and we don’t chase each other to the top anymore, shouting, “I’m the King of the Castle…You’re the dirty rascal.”  Now, we are content being equal and being Queens of the castle (or dirty rascals) together!  

​It must be a child thing…  My grade two class visited the farm a couple weeks ago and spent most of the day climbing anything they were able to – fences, gates, round bales, tall pieces of equipment they weren’t allowed on.  I did everything to keep them away from the poop piles and the backs of horses.  They all live in the city and have never visited a real working farm.  They spent the first ten minutes giggling over the smells and worrying if the hay would scratch their legs, then their worries miraculously went away.  They didn’t care if they got wet or dirty and that carelessness is what I wanted them to feel.  They are kids, who just wanted to explore, learn and chase each other to the top of piles, just like Vikki and me.  We must be very accustomed to it from all the manure pile sitting we did as infants (thanks dad!), but it didn’t take them long to warm up to farm sights, sounds and smells.  Especially, when I told the class what their vegetables grow in…   

​Their visit to the farm made me reminisce.  That night, I dug into old photos and pulled out these special ones of my sister and me.  The days where my parents would just hand us a shovel and set us on a pile of anything so we felt like we were helping.  Or, they would put us on a tractor or hay bine and leave us there, so we couldn’t go anywhere.  We were even lucky enough to climb 20 ton piles of carrots every couple of weeks. This was a past-time I thought was normal, but apparently having misshapen carrots forming large mountains in the backyard was just a Bunnik thing.  I miss those carrot piles and I’m sure the cows do too!  I would have been World’s Best Teacher if I could have provided a mountain of carrots for the class.  My students weren’t given the privilege, but next year, I will make sure that carrot hills and manure pile climbing is ticked off on the permission form.