Emily

This is Emily. She is 18 and a foreign exchange student from southern Idaho. She graduated from high school last spring, and decided to improve her Spanish language skills by repeating her senior year in an Ecuadorian high school. As she says, "I milked a lot of cows to get here."

Emily was raised on dairy farms. When she was 12, she started milking cows at the dairy farm her father managed. "Milking cows" means she would attach the milking machine to the udders of 200-300 cows, and give them the correct supplements and injections based on cow's number. She said she mostly memorized that. Milking started at 3 a.m. and 3 p.m. every day, and would last for four or four-and-a-half hours.

There was a bit of a hiatus after a couple of years until she turned 15. By then she could drive (legal in Idaho at 15 so kids can drive farm equipment on the road), and she got another job milking cows. Every day she would work at least one shift, either in the morning or the afternoon. She says she could never say definitively when she would be somewhere if she had to milk, because something always went wrong and four hours would turn into five or six. (I failed to ask how that affected getting to school on time if she was milking in the morning.) Her brother, who started milking at 13, has ridden his bike to his jobs. He turned 15 this week, and now he can drive.

Emily's dad lost one of his eyes in a farming accident. He was out of work for a year. Emily and her brother, (three years younger than Emily) got paper routes and pitched their money into the family fund. Emily says she doesn't know how the family survived that year. Then she stops and says that paying tithing got them through. And she follows by saying that the family changed during that year and became stronger and closer.

Emily says that farm kids learn life's lessons from working with the animals and working with their hands. I stand in awe of young people who accept the responsibility of getting up early, working every day without fail, taking care of large and expensive animals, doing what needs to be done without complaint, and contributing selflessly to the family.

It makes me a little ashamed to admit I'm a city kid.