Every tree I saw along the way on my way home from school was a blazing red, orange or yellow. The air felt cool and breezy, a complete reversal from the hot and sticky weather we had when school started a month ago. Warm sunshine sparkled as it hit the car windows and warmed my relaxed shoulders. My school day routine felt comfortable now. First day of school jitters were now just a memory. I knew which classroom to go to, who my friends were, and felt resigned to who my teacher was.

Once I reached our farmyard, I sprinted into the farmhouse. Mom greeted me from the kitchen. I sniffed and asked, “Did you make cookies today?” Mom nodded and pointed to the cupboard next to the refrigerator where a decorative tin cookie box sat.

Prying the lid off, I found chocolate peanut cookies with chocolate frosting. Eating one in almost a single bite, I took a second for eating-on-the-go. With my mouth full of soft, sweet cookie crumbs, I explained as I headed for my bedroom, “I’m going to change out of my school clothes and go outside.”

Like a typical ten-year-old, I flung my discarded clothing onto the bedroom floor and hastily pulled on what Mom called ‘everyday’ clothing. The second cookie I’d taken was long gone by the time I ran out the back door of the house. When the screen door shut with a slam behind me, I stopped to consider my options. A plan instantly popped into my mind: get apples from the orchard and watch Daddy chop corn for silage in the field behind the barn.

Biting into one of the two apples I’d found into the orchard, I smiled as I thought, “Watching Daddy chopping corn is like watching a parade.” First comes the tractor, then the noisy chopper and finally the wagon which caught all the pungent corn particles the chopper was forcefully spewing from its funnel.

As the slow-moving procession neared where I stood, I waved to Daddy and fell into line behind the parade. I didn’t have any trouble keeping up. Throwing aside my apple core, I followed, enjoying the sensation and smell of occasional damp corn bits falling on my skin. 

When I lost interest in following the harvesting machinery around the field, I headed back to the farmyard. When the chopper box was full, Daddy would pull it alongside the silo and unload it into a blower that blasted the corn particles up a long pipe and into the top of the silo.

Our silo was made of cement, and it stood close to the south-west corner of the barn. A room connected the barn to the silo. It always felt cold and clammy in it because the floor, walls and ceiling of the room were all made of cement. A ladder against the silo rose from this room all the way to the top. Starting where the ladder went above the silo room roof, a metal tunnel enclosed this ladder. The ladder had doors between its rungs which were in place for having the silo filled. During the winter when Daddy fed corn silage to the cows, he’d climb to the top open door to throw forkfuls of the feed down the chute to the silo room. As the silage level decreased, he needed to open the next door between the ladder rungs.

The first loads of corn silage Daddy put into the silo days before, was already beginning to ferment. A small amount of green, sour smelling juice puddled next to the barn. Leaning against the outside of the silo made me realize that the cement panels felt warm. I wondered whether the warmth was from the fermentation or the sun shining on it.

Daddy stopped harvesting the corn before long to eat supper and to milk the cows. I returned to snooping around the silo. While listening to the soothing, rhythmic hum of the Surge vacuum milk pump, I made an amazing discovery! It was possible to easily crawl to the flat cement roof of the silo room.

Delighted to have found a new patch of real estate in the farmyard, I instantly imagined the area to be a house. Where I crawled up was the entryway. The center of the roof was the kitchen. The area alongside the barn was the living room and bedroom. On one side of my ‘flat’, was a jungle of plants that blocked my view of the barn hill, on the other side was an excellent view of the road and driveway.

As the sun began to dip lower in the sky, the air became chilly. Crawling down from my silo playhouse, I hurried across the yard to the warmth and sweetness of the farmhouse. The cool breezes that I loved earlier, now felt like unwelcome intrusions. Although I’d eaten supper with the family before Daddy started his milking chores, I started to think about the chocolate cookies hiding in a decorative tin on the kitchen counter.

Slowly making my way to the house, I smiled to myself as I thought, “Our farm is the most amazing place in the world! I have so many special playhouses here.”