I love the idea of kids growing up on a farm (maybe even my own kids someday... there's still time!). Having to get up early and milk the cows, seeing the vegetables grow and ripen, the whole family having to pitch in together to make it all work.
So that could be why I fell in love with this book, Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl Buck (and oh so beautifully illustrated by Mark Buehner.)
A teenage son overhears his parents talking, and realizes for the first time, that his father loves him. "Neither his father nor his mother talked about loving their children—they had no time for such things. There was always so much to do on a farm."
He wants to get his father a special gift for Christmas. He has little money, but he needs to show his father that he loves him... so he comes up with a plan. "He could get up early, earlier than four o'clock, and he could creep into the barn and get all the milking done. He'd do it alone.. and then when his father went in to start the milking, he'd see it all done. And he would know who had done it."
(I have high hopes that if I read this story to my children enough times, I will one day come downstairs Christmas morning to see the house spotless and all the laundry washed and folded.)