I grew up with farmwork as the norm in my house. Saturdays are always mandatory days for farmwork when school is in session, and once it's a holiday, it becomes an everyday routine except for Sundays.
I and my siblings tried getting used to the farm work to adapt to the way it mastered my dad, but it didn't work for us. We always frown whenever the weekend is approaching because we know that going to the farm is a done deal.
In all these, there's only one season where we don't get tired of going to the farm, in fact, we would remind our parents for the upcoming Saturday. That's the corn season.
Whenever it's corn season, the regular frown that appears of our faces whenever it's farm time changes to all smiles because we will have the opportunity to consume corn as we like.
Apart from the opportunity to eat as much corn as we want, there's also something so sweet about that particular season, the farm looks so fresh with the green plants, and it has a very sweet cooperative climate condition, in the sense that it's a rainy season and rain falls regularly, which reduces our working time whenever we go to the farm, hence giving us the opportunity to devour more corn.
I remember a particular day we were preparing for farm and the weather changed. My dad saw the darkened weather and said we should dismantle all that we'd arranged for the farm.
Hearing that, I frowned because that was the only opportunity for us to devour corn that weekend.
"It's possible that this rain wouldn't fall, why don't we go like that? If it falls better, if it doesn't, good too," I suggested to my dad.
Although my dad knew my intention, but he was glad to hear those gingering words from me, so he agreed and said, "I know why you're insisting, but it'll favour me as well because there's no way you will get to the farm without working, at least it's not going to rain all through the day".
With that, he made us arrange our stuff and moved to the farm in the mist of the humid cloud.
Getting to the farm, the weather became darker, and the scene on the farmland was so lovely. The green plants, especially the maize, were clapping for us, and they don't know that we literally came to the farm because of them.
Just as we entered the farm house, rain began to fall, and it brought smiles to our faces because it was an answered prayer. I and one of my siblings bravely went inside the maize section of the farmland to pluck corn under the heavy rain.
Mehn, the feeling was topnotch, we felt the plants like cassava, yam, and pepper singing for joy because of the blessing of rain. Even the maize plants that we plucked were joyful because of the rain...instead of crying.
We went back into the farm house drenched, but there was no worry at all. We removed the husk from the corn, boiled some in a pot, and roasted some on the burning fire. While waiting for the one in the pot to get cooked, we were feasting on the roasted ones.
The rain lasted for about an hour, and immediately after it stopped, my dad pursued us out to go to work. We didn't feel bad about the push because we'd achieved our aim for the day.
But working in a 'watered environment' didn't go well that day because we were cold and the water on the plants was more like another rain when the plants are being shaken.