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My parents practiced hands-off parenting. While my mother helped my dad with the evening milking on the family dairy farm, she would look across the yard into the mirror on the wall behind the piano in the living room. She readily saw the image of any child sitting at the old upright piano. She always recalled with gentle laughter our astonishment that even though she had been in the barn, she knew which child had not practiced.

A family farm promotes early assumption of duties, a strong work ethic and independence. Long before the state would allow my brother to drive a car, my da...