For the first time since her dad passed away last October, Kim and I stayed on the farm this past weekend.

I remember the first time I went up to the farm.  I had driven up the Pennsylvania Turnpike to the city of Somerset to surprise Kim and run in a 10 K race that was sponsored by the local newspaper, the Daily American. Though still kind of early in our relationship I think we originally had plans to make this trip together that got messed up somehow. And after some regret, I got directions from a guy I worked with who used to frequent Seven Springs Ski Resort, and off I went.

The race start and finish were at the Somerset High School football field.   I got a hotel room just off the Turnpike exit for Somerset, went over to the Daily American office to register, then I had dinner at the Pizza Hut.  The next day I rolled on up to the race and surprised Kim as she was walking up to the field with other members of her family and Donny and Savannah.

Out of 270 runners, Kim’s brother Kerry finished 32^nd, her sister Kate 136^th, and Kim finished 151^st.  Donny and I ran together and he finished 199^th and I crossed the finish line as the 200^th runner.  Of course, Donny beat me as he always did. Our times with 1:02:08 and 1:02:09 respectively.   Donny was eleven at the time.

After the race, Kim brought me back to the farm to meet her parents. Kim’s family owned a fairly large dairy farm in the village of Kingwood which is about twenty miles southwest of the city of Somerset on the Laurel Highlands.  At the time her parents lived in the farmhouse directly across from the barn where they kept the dairy cows and where the milking parlor was located.  A couple of years later they would build the house we stayed in this past weekend on another part of the farm adjacent to the house where Royal, Kim’s father, was born in and on land his father had farmed.

I don’t know whether it was me surprising her at that race that sealed the deal or just being my charming good looking self but as a result, I would go on to take many more trips up to the farm after that because of course we got married and I now had lots of in-laws.  I learned how to milk cows, fed pigs, and rode in a combine.

If you are like me and grew up near the ocean in New Jersey, you might not know that the black and white dairy cows are called Holsteins.

On one of those visits, I came around the corner of the barn to find out it was Holstein toenail trimming day.  There, working behind the barn were Kim’s brothers Keith and Kerry, the veterinarian, and a cow.  The vet had this hydraulic table on the back of his truck that would come out and stand upright next to the cow.  Then the cow was secured to the table while standing there on her four legs. Once secured, the table thing would lift up and flip sideways.  Now with the cow laying down on its side and its legs sticking out, the vet busted out a circular saw proceeded to zing off the unwanted part of the cow hooves.  Once the trimming was done, Kim’s brother pulled out a hypodermic needle the size of a turkey baster and injected some antibiotics into the pads of the hooves to keep the cow from getting an infection.  Once all that was done, the cow was flipped back right side up again and unattached and back in the barn she went.

It was an experience I will never forget, but it made me appreciate toenail clippers much more.

As you might expect with cows, and manure pits, and muddy fields and such, trips up to the farm and especially the barn were hard on my Northern Virginia shoes and boots.  So early on I got smart and went out to some discount shoe store in Somerset (maybe Walmart) and bought the cheapest pair of shoes I could find and deemed them forever to be my “barn shoes.” They were kind of funny looking but I didn’t care, they were just barn shoes. They would live in one of the cabinets in the garage and be there whenever I needed to make the trip to the barn.

Over the years the cows got sold and the dairy farm got converted to crop farming.  Without the cows, my barn shoes got a little less important, and spent more time in the cabinet, though I think I did wear them once last October to feed the pigs.

This weekend I decided to bring my barn shoes home.  With Kim’s dad gone and her mom now living up in Davidsville, closer to Johnstown, in a nice assisted living, I probably won’t be spending too much time at the barn.

I will keep them though.

Just in case the manure ever gets a little too deep around here.

And as a nice reminder of past times together with Kim’s family up on the mountain.