Send Help! I live on a farm.

I am fully convinced my boys wake up already plotting (before coffee)

Not plotting their school day. Not plotting chores. No- these kids wake up with a dirt-based master plan.

They head straight outside to dig holes in the worst possible location in the yard. Not the clearly designated digging spot. Never that. Mud is mixed like they’re running a five-star construction company. Hands, sticks, random containers – and yes, bowls from my kitchen – are all essential tools. OSHA would have notes.

They bounce from task to task like tiny, barefoot supervisors. One minute they’re digging, the next they’re ‘hunting” chickens, checking on cats, inspecting the goats, relocating the chickens to where they’ve decided they belong, counting eggs, and proudly announcing whether or not we have any “but nuggets” today.

If Tig walks by, everything stops. That dog is now part of the operation. Possibly management.

They will intentionally smear mud up their legs – thrilled, unbothered, fully feral. But let them get dirty the wrong way? A surprise splash. A sock that got wet without consent. Immediate outrage. Absolute injustice.

And heaven help me if I ask them to clean up something they started earlier in the day.

“I WAS STILL PLAYING WITH THAT.”

Sirs. You are barefoot. Covered in mud. Holding a stick. And carrying a measuring cup that vanished during breakfast.

And sure enough, when I finally wander outside, there are the missing bowls and utensils – half buried in mud, full of water and rocks, being used for something very important that I am apparently not qualified to understand.

It’s loud. It’s messy. It’s constant motion.

Some days it feels like chaos wrapped in dirt and noise and questions shouted from three different directions at once.

But here’s the thing I’m starting to notice – this isn’t just mess for the sake of mess.

This is curiosity. This is learning happening with their whole bodies. This is responsibility practiced through animals, and creativity worked out through mud, and problem – solving done with sticks and imagination instead of worksheets.

This is childhood that smells like dirt and sounds like laughter and looks nothing like the quiet, tidy version I once thought I was supposed to be managing.

One day, the holes ill stop appearing in the yard. The animals won’t need checking every five minutes. The bowls will stay in the kitchen. And I have a feeling I’ll miss the noise more than I ever missed the order.

So for now, I’ll keep surrendering my measuring cups to the outdoors. I’ll keep letting the dirt happen. I’ll keep choosing presence over perfection – even when it’s loud, even when it’s messy.

Send help!

Or better yet – send more bowls.