We’ve crossed right into Farm Time. (Actually, we crossed over last week but that just goes to show you how Farm Time works.)

No algebraic formula exists that will equate into understanding the comparison between Real Life Time and Farm Time.

And no one in Farm Time even cares.

In Farm Time these things happen:

We tell stories at the kitchen table and then we laugh until we cry but sometimes no one, not even the person laughing, knows what started the hilarity.

Movies take place on the lawn. Not as in – here’s a projector and a sheet hanging on the side of the house, but more like – hey, Maggie left her TV upstairs for a while and I bet we could drag it out on the front porch and watch a movie out there.

Kids learn to drive cars and gators, learn to shoot guns and to run races.

Someone is always and forever asking for food, eating food, crying about food, making food, prepping food, dropping food, wasting food. It’s always and forever All About The Food.

The volume inside the house varies widely and dramatically from bursting-the-walls loud to pleasantly quiet and there’s no real predictability for when you’ll be subjected to either.

Trips to Homestead Creamery are made and ice cream is consumed.

The internet connection is sketchy and the phone calls sometimes work and sometimes do not and you can just forget it if you want to look up something or ask Siri anything. Siri knows nothing about Farm Time.

Everyone pseudo parents everyone else’s kids and that’s kind of great and kind of funny and kind of exactly how you would think it would be.

Ryder jumps boldly right across the front porch railing and returns from mystery excursions covered in mud and grime like nobody’s business.

Conversations stop and start and circle back around days later and that’s the pace and we all keep up swimmingly but I don’t envy anyone trying to jump in and figure it all out for the first time.

The stars come out in abundance and standing outside in the dark alone once night has fallen feels just holy.

Things get broken. Usually by “nobody knows”. Things like laundry room doors. Tether ball poles. Flower pots. And sometimes by grown ups who should know better but are trying to prove that they are strong enough to do planks and push ups on the porch railing. Which proved that yes, they might be strong enough (kind of) but the porch railing might not be.

Stuff gets peed on – like toilet seats because SO many little boys running around and even the backside of a human because that new dog thinks he needs to mark his territory constantly. (Even if his territory looks like Emma trying to take a photograph. For the love.)

People get wet. Rain showers. Tubing on the Pigg River. The shower head facing the wrong direction – and being turned on – when you want to give a toddler a bath. 400 water balloons hand tied by Mosely because even though we know they’ve created cool gadgets to fill up a hundred balloons at a time we didn’t have said gadget and a plethora of kids wanted water balloons.

This list is not exhaustive, although it could fit the exhausting category.

It is also a list that falls dramatically short of describing the real reason that Farm Time is so highly prized each summer. It’s a list lacking the depth and breadth of what we all love about Virginia and July Fourth and framily.

But for now, whilst basking in both the glow and the poor internet connection of Farm Time, it’s a list that will have to suffice.