The Rows Behind the House

Me (Jessica), circa 1999-ish

An introduction to the place that raised me

I grew up on a farm — not the modern day “farmhouse” version with a pristine white kitchen, shiplap walls, and hardwood that’s never seen a muddy boot. Not the kind with decorative signs about eggs or chores, all styled for the catalog of a life no one really lives.

Ours was real. The floors creaked. The house was busy, loud, useful. And the days started early — not because it was trendy, but because there was work to do.

We had fields with rows, and eventually, an orchard — each with their own rhythm, their own demands. Tomatoes that had to be picked before they split in the sun. Peppers hiding shyly under their leaves. There were beans to pick, tucked beneath their foliage. Squash with leaves that scratched your arms if you didn’t wear long sleeves. Cantaloupes you tested by pressing a thumb to the stem end — if it let go easy, it was ready. You didn’t guess. You just learned what ripe felt like.

We were told to wake up early, and sometimes we did. Other times we lingered too long in bed and the heat found us just the same — heavy, humming, unforgiving. But still, we went out to work. That’s what life on a farm teaches you: to show up.

When I tell people I grew up this way — working beside my parents, hauling buckets, laying plastic mulch, picking fruit in the heat — I get one of two reactions. Half the people say how lucky I was. The other half say it sounds unfair. But I got paid. I worked with family. And I learned things most people never will.

I learned how to run parts. How to hand a tool without being asked. How to read a bad mood without taking it personally. I learned how to be useful, to stay calm, to keep going. I learned how to pay attention — because machines, people, and crops all need different things. And they won’t always say it out loud.

I learned what it means to be trusted.

I still remember the first time I drove the big tractor, a 1979 International Harvester 686, pulling the plastic mulch layer behind me. My dad followed, shovel in hand, watching quietly. It was heavy. It mattered. And he trusted me to handle it.

Some of my clearest memories live in the shop, watching my dad and uncle take apart a tractor themselves to save money on repairs. They quite literally had the 686 in half once in the dead of winter, to overhaul the transmission. I was the one taking photos on my new digital camera so they’d remember how to put it back together. I ran tools. I stayed out of the way. I watched the way they worked, how frustration was part of it, how persistence mattered more than ease.

And then there were the soft things.

The first watermelon of the season, cracked open in the field with a pocketknife or dropped just enough to split wide. We’d gather around in the heat and eat it with our hands, seeds flicked into the grass, juice running down our arms. Nothing tasted more like summer.

The pool in the afternoons, when the sun had taken what it wanted from us and we were light again. We’d jump in, and let the water cool us down. We ate sandwiches with chips inside, sitting on towels with our knees still wet and our shoulders still stinging.

And some nights, when the sky stayed kind and nobody was too tired, we’d pile into the car for slurpees or ice cream cones. Windows down. Crickets singing. The world smelling like honeysuckle and someone else’s cut grass.

This post is the beginning of a sub-series I’ll return to now and then — a quiet row within The Apricot Years. Not every Tuesday will take place in the field, but when it does, it’ll live here.

These are the stories that shaped me. The ones I return to without meaning to. The ones that still live out past the back door, down where the cantaloupes grow, where the rows run long and the girl I used to be is still out there, working.

This is: The Rows Behind the House.

—L.B.

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