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Farm Girl

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Farm Girl

In Jessica Hemauer’s essay “Farm Girl," Jessica explains the ups and downs of living on a farm. Jessica shares her feelings of anger, sadness, and jealousy, but we also see how truly grateful she is about the life lessons she gained as a Farm Girl.

Jessica gets up at 5 am with her two sisters, Angie and Melissa and her brother, Nick, so they can help their father with the morning chores. After getting up they start their morning routine of “washing their faces, brushing their teeth and taking turns on the white porcelain throne” (Hemauer 2011). Then they make their way to the basement where their mom keeps their clothes, so the house does not smell like a barn. After they are dressed they head to the barn to start their morning chores. Melissa and her father milk the one hundred cows, Nick and Angie feed them, and Jessica being the youngest must feed all the calves. That is her favorite chore; she feels it gives her some responsibility. Jessica does not realize that this is the “beginning of a lifetime of responsibility" (Hemauer 2011). When Jessica was young, she did not realize that all of her hard work and sacrifices were teaching her a crucial lesson in life. She only felt the sadness of being different from her classmates, and that her responsibilities on the farm made it hard for her to have a normal life.

In the eighth grade, she wanted to play basketball, she asked her parents, and they agreed to let her join the team. They made her promise that she would continue to help with chores before school and after practice. She becomes the team’s starting point guard. Finally, she started to feel like a part of the group. She did not tell anyone about going straight home after practice to do her chores or that she was up every morning at 5:00 to help her family with chores. In high school, her father decided he wanted to grow the business

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