Eastern Iowa Farmer Spring 2017

Life Lessons
followed through to our home today,”
she said – whether sons Tucker, Cassidy
and Cooper are helping mom milk,
helping dad feed beef cattle, or baking
in the kitchen.
That baking includes Christmas
traditions passed on from her family.
“Christmas Eve was always on the
farm, and we always served Norwegian
meatballs,” Heather said. “I make them
every year at Christmas, and this year
Tucker learned how to make them for
Christmas dinner.
“We also still make traditional lefse
and my Grandpa Duha’s classic homemade
noodles for chicken noodle soup.
You knew it was going to be a good
meal when grandpa got the rolling pin
out.”
One the family’s fondest traditions,
Heather said, is the waiting for the
sound of the whippoorwill.
“As soon as we heard the whippoorwill,
Grandma would let us run around
barefoot. My boys love to go barefoot
in the summer, and we always wait to
hear the whippoorwill first.”
The simple appreciation of those
who came before fill the Moores’ daily
routines when they get up to milk the
cows, wash udders and milkers, and
scrape manure.
“It’s something I work to instill in
my boys,” Heather said.
“There’s a quote that hangs in my
barn, straight from a book written by
one of our neighbors on the ridge:
“Once you have lived on the land,
been a partner with its moods, secrets,
and seasons, you cannot leave. The
living land remembers, touching you
in unguarded moments, saying, ‘I am
here. You are a part of me.’ When this
happens to me, I go home again, in
mind or in person, back to a hilltop
world in southwestern Wisconsin ... I
was born there, cradled by the land,
and I am always there even though I
have been a wanderer.”
“That’s the number one lesson from
the generations before me,” Heather
said, “and I hope that wherever my
children may go in life, that they end
up coming back to a farm in Eastern
Iowa in quiet moments.” n
— Kelly gerlach,
eastern iowa farmer
A Pony
24 Eastern Iowa Farmer | spring 2017