When most peopleof my classmates think back to their days as a child, they often remember recount stories of playing with neighbors, riding their bikes, down the sidewalk to go to their best friend’s house or playing a game of Marco Polo at the neighborhood poolbackyard games, and trips to the movie theatre or neighborhood pool. When I think about my childhood, my memories aren’t exactly the same.

My experience was nothing like theirs. I was born into a farming family, not far from the Kentucky River. There were no neighborhood children for me—I it was a special treat just to make the miles-long trip remember driving only three minutes in the car to spend the night with my best friend, Natalie. My memories are made up of, riding around in the big green John Deere tractors with my dad, with the feeling that I was on top of the world, and being chased by a rather large brown cow when family time was spentwhile trying to get the herd back into the field. While most of the other boys and girls other kids my age were busy playing tag in their quarter- of- an- acre backyard, I was busy creating a world of make believe with my sisters, in the sprawling countryside we called home. playing games that my sisters and I invented, in my twenty acre make believe world.

Growing up on a farm has been one of the biggest blessings in my life. I havetaught me learned things that could never have been taught picked up on the sidewalk of any neighborhood. The concept of hard work has been instilled into brain. From sewing seeds in the greenhouse, to putting the plants in the ground, to helping my dad sell our produce at our local farmers’ market every summer to harvesting, I know what goes in to the produce we buy at the grocery store;, and even more—what it takes to be successful in the business of agriculture.

As we opened our farm to the public for our first-ever Corn Maze and Pumpkin Patch this season, I also learned (maybe something about how appreciative and amazed people are to see our way of life?) I have seen every step of the hard work that leads to me being able to buy a head of lettuce or an onion at the grocery store. I have learned what it takes to be successful in the business of agriculture. When I help my dad sell our blackberries at the local farmers’ market every summer, I am exposed to a community of farmers’ that do this for a living. They depend on their crops to succeed and sell so they can put food on their own table. Another area of agriculture that I have most recently been exposed to is agribusiness. My family recently started our own agribusiness called The Giant Corn Maize and Pumpkin Patch. After months of hard work and planning, we produced one of the biggest corn mazes in the country in the shape of Kentucky explorer Daniel Boone, and a huge patch of pumpkins. To my family—it was another way to preserve our way of life on the farm. But to the hundreds of people who came out to play in our fields, it was real joy—and to some, a rare look at the farming community that continues to shrink in our area. We used our farm resources to expand our operation and provide a service to the public. In the end we had an eight acre corn maze (one of the biggest in the nation) in the shape of Daniel Boone and ten acres of pumpkins. Watching and participating in all of the work that went into this endeavor taught me about the importance of family and team work. My family worked together as a team each step of the way. Through the preparation, operation, and closing we were all there working to make our agribusiness successful. It was remarkably rewarding to see the joy that something like this brought to people’s faces. Many people were so excited that we were helping to expand the farming industry in our area.

((You need a wrap-up sentence here… something a little profound… or perhaps something simple… but nothing along the lines of “priceless lessons…”. That basically sounds like you’re trying to make a quick wrap-up… and with the work you’ve put into the rest of the essay… it deserves a good ending. A coupld of strong sentences would suffice.))

Maybe drawing it back full circle, something like this:

“As a child, I sometimes wished I could be like everyone else; now that I look back, I realize just how lucky I was to be different. My family has worked to preserve the way of life my ancestors fought to provide, and now, I look to… expand my horizons and add to my education… to help my family on the farm.”These examples are just a few of the many priceless lessons that I have learned from living on a farm. The experience and knowledge that I have gained is priceless. I have learned countless lessons about life, family and the importance of hard work that I could not have learned anywhere else.