Did you feel the earthquake last week? You know – the one that shook Virginia and that was felt in mid-Michigan? I didn’t.

I was in the middle of sorting baby clothes at a Center for Women in a nearby city. I guess I was too caught up in making sure I had the newborn summer girl clothes separated from the newborn boy winter clothes and in the right size piles, and that they had no stains on them, to notice the earth shaking.
Or maybe I was too caught up in hearing about the women who enter this haven who have no idea what they will do if their pregnancy test comes out positive. Or maybe I was too horrified when I heard about young girls who find out they are pregnant and have no support in place to help them with this new life they are about to bring into this world. Their boyfriend left and their parents just want them to “get rid of it.”

Maybe I didn’t feel the earth quake because I was listening to the list of things they give each mother when she has her baby: food, clothing and diapers – and this is only after she has completed a course in becoming a parent and responded to being kept accountable.

Learning the entire center is supported by donations of clothes, money and valuable time was also an attention-getter. No wonder I didn’t feel the earth shaking under my feet.

Here on my farm in the country I can isolate myself from the big, bad world. I can keep my chicks under my wings and protect them. I can shut out the scream from the needy, the hungry and the vulnerable. I can pretend that the world isn’t really that bad.

While we are eons from perfect, our little farm family, like many other farm families across this country, are a fairytale world to those young people who live a very different life.

A life in the inner city can be a life with no father, a life with no mother or a life with no home. A life filled with anxiety about where they will eat or if they will learn to read, or where their next dollar will come from.

While things aren’t always easy on the farm and we struggle when the markets become unpredictable, hard work is rewarding, tough times build character and working with family firms up a foundation that cannot be destroyed.

When I walked into the Center for Women, I had no idea what I would find that day. But as I walked out I found the sun shone a little brighter and it really didn’t matter that on my drive home, four of the five lug nuts broke off of my right front wheel as I limped into the Artesian Wells Garage.

With one stud holding the wheel on, I counted my blessings of my relatively “perfect” life. Let the earth shake; I will not be shaken.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Melissa Hart may write to her in care of this publication.