From New York Life to Farmer's WifeYou can take the girl out of NY but can you take NY out of the girl?

About ten years ago, while still living in New York,  I spent the day with a lifelong friend driving out to the north fork of Long Island.  This is an area that is known for it’s farms and vineyards, a completely different experience than most of Long Island.   It’s really a beautiful place.   The farms were always my favorite.  There’s just something about rolling hills of greens and browns and old red barns that gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling.   As we drove, my friend and I decided to create a fantasy plan  where we would meet two single and very handsome brothers who owned a charming vineyard and fall in love, get married and live next door to one another forever in Lucy and Ethel bliss.  In ensuing years we’ve laughed about this day and how silly we were.  What I’ve never admitted to her is that I had secretly been hoping that our single brothers weren’t vineyard owners but farmers.  I don’t like wine!

My dear friend, very soon after, met her future partner through an on-line dating site.  He has turned out to be really wonderful guy and they are still together ten years later.    No he wasn’t a vineyard owner but he was a living, breathing “normal” male and when you’re in your 30′s and single, that’s not easy to find! I was inspired to follow her lead but I had some major life changes to make and one of them was to move out of NY.  However, once I was situated in Minnesota, I decided after doing some casual dating that I wasn’t getting any younger and I wanted to find “the one”.  So I signed up for the same site as my friend,  created a profile and attached a picture.

The results: crickets.  Oh I had a few horrifically awkward coffee dates but nothing the least bit exciting, I decided to put this whole on-line dating idea on hold.  Work was getting most of my attention and i had just bought my first home.  One day, however, I received a wink from a very sweet looking man sitting on a tractor in the middle of a green field.  His profile was simple and sincere.  We met one day after several weeks of emails and phone calls.  He proposed at the strike of midnight on New Year’s Eve.   We called my parents with the good news and by good, I mean GOOD.   I have 3 siblings who all got married at the age of 24.  At 38, my Italian Catholic mother had dedicated enough lit prayer candles and Novenas to the Virgin Mary that her daughter should FINALLY find the right man and get married!

Stepping back a minute, I can still remember the first time I came to visit the farm.  I was determined that my husband (boyfriend at the time) see that I was fully capable of acclimating to this new environment and just because I was a “city girl”, I wasn’t afraid of getting my newly manicured nails a little dirty.  He gave me a tour of the farm including one of the barns where dozens of cows lined up eating silage.  Walking me through the middle, I marveled at the size of these huge animals.  Well, I also marveled at the smell.  Not three seconds after that thought,   a cow to my right let loose with what can only be described as a earth-shattering volcanic eruption!  I mean, just like that,  no warning at all!  It hit the floor and splattered me from head to toe including on and in my mouth!  It took everything in my power not to freak out and run off screaming.    My boyfriend didn’t even realize what had happened until he turned around and saw that I was a walking poopsicle.   He couldn’t stop laughing and, the truth was, it was one of the funniest things that has ever happened to me. To this day I will never walk behind a cow. Ever!

It’s been two and half years as a farmer’s wife and though there are times when I miss a more metropolitan kind of life,  I need only sit on my deck and look out at the rolling hills of greens and browns to know that I am blessed.  And although I may have driven his tractor sideways into a ditch and taken out an electric fence or two without knowing it,   my husband has always given me credit for trying and has never shown the merest hint of frustration.   That’s when I know that this fiery, Italian “city girl” has finally found the calm and steady anchor that she had been looking for all along.