Belly in Bibs

If there is one thing cuter than a pregnant belly, it’s a pregnant belly in bib overalls.  That might just be my opinion, and not just of my own belly, but of bellies in general.  Bib overalls are cute on anyone, I don’t care who you are.  So when I couldn’t find any pants that fit my growing belly for chores naturally I went to my bibbies for a new option.  

I’ve had these overalls for at least seven years, I think.  I got them as Christmas presents when I was in college because I was working on a dairy farm after classes.  All I had were a pair of hand-me-down coveralls from the farm owner and my mom thought I should have an alternative wardrobe.  I wish I had a picture of those coveralls, because they were pretty amazing.  The diary owner was a good three inches shorter than me (and I’m not tall) but was hardly any wider, so I looked about as scandalous as one could look in coveralls.  There's nothing like a pair of tight booty coveralls to make a girl feel sexy.  They had patches on the knees, which I’m sure his wife sewed for him, and they had a subtle smell of milk, that just never went away.  The fact that they were too short for my legs wasn’t really a problem considering I never had them on without being tucked into my rubber boots; but it still looked a little silly when I’d come in from the porch after milking and my roommates saw my get-up.   

Needless to say I have now got a sizable farm wardrobe and am less reliant on hand‑me-down items.  I’ve got my two pairs of overalls that fit me appropriately and a pair of brown Dickies that are a little bit hardier for when I’m working against barbed wire or wrestling the goats to trim their hooves in the fall, two pairs of black rubber boots (one for me and one for whomever is stuck helping me), and one pair of pink boots that are a size too small, but I had to get them because they had little brown horses on them.  You can judge me for that if you want but I know lots of women who buy uncomfortable shoes because they are cute.  I’ve also acquired a large quantity of ratty white tanks that are best worn under bibbies and not stored with anything nice, because they smell like sour milk and iodine no matter how many times you wash them, along with special socks for when I’m in my riding boots that have no support.

I treasure my farm clothes, they get their own Rubbermaid tub in my closet.  I’m not trying to brag about how much stuff I own, but sometimes I feel a little bit more legitimate as a rural resident when I look at my collection of well worn, and frankly beat up threads.  I’ve done some hard stuff, and my deneim shows it.  So I wear these ugly pants with pride, because I like to be able to say “Yep, that stain is cow shit, and I must have got that whole from the new fence I put up last spring.  That black smudge on the butt?  Well, that’s when I learned to change the oil in my truck and ended up scooting through it.”

It’s important to have the right clothing when working on a farm.  As you can see my bibs have looked nicer.  They are splattered in paint (all the lovely colors I’ve picked for our home), some of the buttons are missing (which is fine now that I can’t button them anyway), and one pair has been cut to knee length for summer months.  They are in no way new, but they’ve never seen better days as far as I’m concerned.  Maybe someday I’ll find someone to pass them too like those raggedy old coveralls from the dairy farmer.