At the Farm GateFarm Provides a Gathering Ground
My Spiritual Gifts Quiz from church put hospitality at the top of my list. Mom didn’t take the quiz, but I’ll bet the Lievens 40 she’d score the same. So, with a strong service mindset and the shop space to match, we host. In the last 10 years, our farm has hosted two weddings, FFA and 4-H meetings, farmer events, a bridal shower, my daughter’s graduation party, and last summer, the first-ever all-class reunion for our local high school.
By now, our employees know “other duties as assigned” in their job descriptions gets some mileage. And they know with Christmas coming, the shop clear-out and clean-up is imminent. In preparation for our four-generation Christmas party, we pause machinery maintenance, remove the farm equipment and scrub the concrete floor. Christmas carols replace country tunes on the shop speakers. When the big event arrives, the cousins make memories in a farm shop turned makeshift gymnasium for kicking balls, shooting hoops and riding pedal tractors. The adults play cards in the conference room, and potluck food lines tables down the office hallway for mealtime and grazing.
The farm naturally brings together family, tradition and community at the intersection of work and home, hospitality and hard work, generosity and gravel. Yes, rocks. We farm with 21st-century equipment and still live on a 20th-century road – a nuisance for guests arriving in heavy rain (mud and washouts), a dry spell (fog-level dust) or the early spring thaw when your car wrestles with the gravel road. It’s all part of the experience.
Mom ensures hospitable elements carry farm flair. From wood salvaged off an old barn, a local carpenter transformed an old chest freezer into a rustic drink and ice cream station and fashioned a rolling bar to match. A “dessert wagon” sports steel wheels from an old loading chute and the door from a barn mow hides some of the welding corner. Among my favorites: Two tractors on the farm span exactly 70 years apart to make a conversation piece as much as a party backdrop.
The FFA mom in me roots for a winter “drive-in movie” with teen vehicles parked in the shop to watch a film on the drywall projector screen. But if not, we’ll have a farm conference in March and a graduation party in May. Fingers crossed, the weather allows planting in April.
About the author: Joanie Stiers farms with her parents and brother in Knox County, where they grow corn, soybeans and hay, raise beef cattle and operate side businesses related to the family operation.