Although the temperatures outside suggest otherwise, summer is over as the kids have returned to school. While I always miss the extra daily chaos of the kids being home all day during the summer, I also always enjoy a bit of calm during the days following their return to school.

Yes, there are generally a couple days of transition involved as all of our routines return. It’s generally pretty quiet once the kids go back to school, and I think our farm dog, Rosie, and I both recognize the sharp contrast of days full of activities, noise and constant chaos to the calmer, quieter days where we can’t wait for a school bus to appear in the afternoon to welcome our people home.

Leading up to the days before the start of this new school year, I had grand plans of tackling projects I’ve set aside until the kids returned to school. Never mind tackling the laundry or the dishes or dedicating some major cleaning attention to my kitchen.

Two of the first things I planned to do once the kids got back on that school bus for another year was to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee at my pace before spending a day in our farm office working on the books. I planned to have the television channel of my choice playing in the background while I worked on the computer and perhaps enjoy a second cup of coffee at my pace. It was a pace that I envisioned would allow me to ease back into reality.

These were grand plans that would allow me to slowly reacclimate back onto the reality of life without kids at home all the time. Little did I know, once the kids loaded up on the bus and headed to back to school to begin a new school year, I would be loading myself up into the tractor and be headed into our dryland corn fields to begin harvest.

What I originally envisioned for the first few weeks following the start of school included greeting the kids at home once they got off the bus in the afternoons. We’d talk about their school day at the kitchen table while they’d eat a nutritious snack. Little did I know, the kids would get off the bus in the afternoons and make their own after-school snacks because I’d be in a corn field driving the grain cart and unloading corn into our bins.

I should know better by now that my envisioned fall plans very rarely align with the reality of life on the farm every fall. Afterall, after my husband and I returned home from our honeymoon 14 years ago, he immediately headed out to the corn fields to begin harvest. Fourteen years ago there was no time to slowly ease back into reality. Instead, it was time to get back to work.

And 14 years later, that’s where we are as well – returning to reality and getting to work as we kick off both the start of a new school year and a new season of harvest.

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“Insight” is a weekly column published by Kansas Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization whose mission is to strengthen agriculture and the lives of Kansans through advocacy, education and service.

Kim Baldwin is a McPherson County farmer and rancher