The farmer has to be an optimist or he wouldn’t still be a farmer. – Will Rogers
Most of you who read my posts here know I’m a farm girl. I grew up on a farm and have lived on a farm all my life. While my husband has retired from farming, we still enjoy farm living. A young farmer has leased our farm and raises cows and cuts hay for them and to sell. He’s a great young man and we’re fortunate to have him working our farm. I continue to walk out on the farm every day with my dogs. I can’t imagine, well, at least don’t want to imagine living anywhere else. I feel blessed to feel the farm’s ground under my feet, to watch the grass grow, to see the deer and rabbits, to enjoy the flowering plants and butterflies, and to hear the birds sing from the trees or fly overhead.
My husband grew up on a farm too. Actually on several farms as his father was a tenant farmer and the family moved to new farms several times while he was young. While for most of our marriage, he was not a fulltime farmer since he had a job in the business world too, we had crops and a herd of beef cows. I was a farm wife who helped with all that. Our kids were out in the fields with us too just as I and my sisters were out in the fields with my dad helping with the farm work. The picture is of my dad taking hay to the cows on a cold winter day. I took it when I was a kid with my first camera. You can see Dad’s smile. He liked me to take his picture, probably the only one in the family who didn’t groan when I pointed the camera at them.
Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful and most noble employment of man.– George Washington
The young man farming our land now is like most farmers in that he also has a job other than farming and does his farming work on days off and weekends and holidays. Tomorrow is Labor Day and he will probably be baling hay instead of being somewhere picnicking with his family. That was the way it was with me growing up and the same with my husband and my kids. Days off work and off school were the days when work could get done on the farm.
And also, the same as most all farmers and my dad and my husband, the young man giving up his holidays to farm will have machinery trouble. I suppose before tractors, farmers probably had trouble with their mules or horses or horse drawn equipment. I don’t think my father ever mowed hay without having to repair his sickle mower. Tractors break down, have flat tires, broken hitches. The same with equipment. It rains when the weather forecasters promise sunshine. It doesn’t rain when the fields and crops are parched and wilting. Early frosts, late frosts can be problematic. Farmworkers are hard to find when help is needed. Farm prices fluctuate and drop at the worst times, leaving the farmer with empty pockets. And yet, men and women keep farming.
The farmer has patience and trusts the process. He just has the faith and deep understanding that through his daily efforts, the harvest will come.And then one day, almost out of nowhere, it does. ― Robin Sharma
Most years that harvest does come, but some years all the problems a farmer can face make the harvest too small. And yet, men and women keep farming. To honor that, in 1978 Paul Harvey spoke at a convention of the Future Farmers of America and shared his now famous “God Made a Farmer” speech. He talked about the hard things a farmer has to do and how most farmers have a real connection to the earth and know that in spite of all the hardships, farming is a valuable and blessed occupation. This is the first line of his poem.
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a caretaker” — so God made a Farmer.
You can read the whole poem here or listen to it at various YouTube sites. In 2013 the poem or parts of it were used in a Superbowl commercial. You can find plenty of replays of the commercial online as well.
We have neglected the truth that a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist. – Wendell Berry
Things are changing with fewer small family farms, but I’m proud to be from a long line of men and women who worked the land and lived the farm life. And I’m glad some of the stories I’ve written have had farmers as characters or characters who appreciate the land and nature.
Then He will give the rain for your seed with which you sow the ground, and bread of the increase of the earth; it will be fat and plentiful. In that day your cattle will feed in large pastures. …Isaiah 30:23 (NKJ)
Do you know any men or women who are those caretakers (farmers) the Lord needs? Maybe you are one of them.
Comments 10
My husband’s grandfather was a farmer in your area and he spent many summers visiting on the farm with his grandparents. My great grandfather and two great uncles were farmers, but in another state. I loved visiting their farms.
Author
You have that farming background in your family, Lynda. I’m guessing that many, many people do since agriculture was so important to most families in the past. And nothing like getting the chance to have your feet on a farm now and again when you are a kid.
My maternal great grandparents were farmers who also both had to work other jobs to make ends meet. I am actually distantly related to Paul Harvey through my great-grandmother. I have uncles and cousins who still farm but also have to work other jobs- a farmers work really is never done and we would all be in trouble without them.
Author
I think that’s the normal for farmers this day, Hope. We used to joke that you had to get a public job to support the farm. Our farm income was a supplement to the other jobs, but it would have been a stripped down life if we’d had to try to live on the farm income alone. But even when my husband was fulltime farming for a few years, we always found a way to get by and keep food on the table. That’s one thing about having a farm. You can garden and grow your own food.
My husband was a farmer up until we married, then he took a job with the forest service. There are a lot of farmers in our community and I admire what they do.
Author
He quit farming in one way but then stayed with nature, Connie. I grew up in an area where it seemed nearly everyone was a farmer. There were the town people and then the farmers out in the county. It’s not that way so much now. Many people came out into the country and built houses to enjoy country living but without actually doing any farming. Not many true farmers left who don’t also have jobs off the farm.
Farmers are truly caretakers of the earth. My grandfather was a farmer. He passed when my mother was a child. She told us many stories about him. My parents started out as farmers but lost the farm in a terrible fire in the early 1950’s. (Dad got drafted shortly after and they never recovered and had to sell the land.) I’ve been brought up to love animals and gardening. Farmers leave great roots too.
Author
Sounds as if you have farming roots in your heart, Susan. So good that your mother shared about her father with you. That was a great way to keep him alive in her thoughts. Too sad that your parents lost the farm. Gardening is a great way to stay in tune with the earth.
No one in this world can survive without the farmers! I am thankful there are still many who do farm.
Author
So am I, Karen. My dad used to be sad seeing so much of the really good farm land be covered over with concrete and houses.