So God Made a Farmer

The best Super Bowl commercial ever. I usually watch them, giggle, move on and never remember the commercials again but something about the Dodge Ram commercial yesterday mesmerized me. It could have been Paul Harvey's voice, the pictures included in the slide show combined with the truthful words of the poem. Something stuck. It could have been that I had just been to the memorial service the day before for a farmer in our community and it could be that because of that my Grandpa K was weighing heavily on my heart.

As I reread the poem, it made me think about my Dad. My Dad is not a full time farmer, he's a "hobby" farmer but let's be honest-- there is no such thing as a  fun hobby farm- they are all work- There is nothing fun about putting up fields of hay in the hot summer sun after working 40+ hours a week in a rock pit on a bulldozer. There's nothing fun about having to watch for newborn fawns in the tall grass so you don't run them over. There is nothing fun about chasing cows from the county road back into the corral. There is nothing fun about worrying if your beef is going to sell this year. There is nothing fun about telling your friends price for your beef and hearing "that's too high" even when it's the bottom of the line, break even price. But someone has to do it. Without the farmer, we wouldn't have food on our tables. No farmer, no food.

I also think about living on our farm. About raising a family and livestock on the same acres me grandparents did for some 30 odd years. I think about the gift that was given to us of being able to share this experience with Dax. Not raising a city boy but one who will learn to feed chickens, raise a garden, run in the fields and that not everything is to be handed to you. I may not be the down and dirty dedicated farmer that this poem talks about or that my Grandpa and Dad are but I hope, in some ways, I'm similar to them.

So God Made a Farmer

And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." 

So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the field, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board." 

So God made a farmer.

"I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle a calf and yet gentle enough to cradle his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait for lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies to be sure to come back real soon and mean it." 

So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say,'Maybe next year,' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from an ash tree, shoe a horse, who can fix a harness with hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps.  Who, during planting time and harvest season will finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon and then, paining from tractor back, put in another 72 hours." 

So God made the farmer.

God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place. 

So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to help a newborn calf begin to suckle and tend the pink-comb pullets, who will stop his mower in an instant to avoid the nest of meadowlarks."

It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed, brake, disk, plow, plant, tie the fleece, strain the milk, replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with an eight mile drive to church.  Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft, strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh, and then sigh and then reply with smiling eyes when his family says that they are proud of what Dad does. 

So God made a farmer...

Author Unknown