Day 35

So God Made a Farmer

Two commercial during the Super Bowl last night really touched my heart.  The first one being the Jeep/USO commercial.  God Bless America and our troops who protect us!  The other one was one that really hit home to me, Dodge Rams, So God Made a Farmer.  My husband is a farmer, my father-in law is a farmer, both grandfather in-laws are farmers, and my grandfather is a farmer.  I grew up on a farm, learning a deep respect for home grown foods and the importance of respecting our land.  I have been around farming my whole life in one way or the other, but it is my husband that taught me the deep respect that I have for those that work from sun-up til sun-down.  He has a love for the land like no one else I know.  His roots run deep though our soil and river banks.  He spends many hours in the field bailing hay, cutting, topping, or setting tobacco, or helping a heifer bring new life into this world.  I have seen him covered in dirt from head to toe, I have seen his arm (an I am NOT exaggerating when I say arm) go places that many would never have the nerve to go, all to save the life of a new baby calf.   My children are growing up understanding life and death, how important our land is, and what it means to have put in a long, hard days work.  They spend Saturday mornings with their Daddy and Papaw feeding cattle, they spend afternoons in the tobacco patch, they help drive the tractor, they have helped feed and nurse a newborn calf back to health, they see the sweat, they see the hard, grueling work, but they also see the reward of putting your heart into something.  It's not always easy and sometimes it can be down right heartbreaking.  Sometimes, during busy seasons, it feels like my husband is only home long enough sleep.  When it doesn't rain for months on end and you watch your husbands hard work wilt away, knowing that part of your lively hood, your income is wilting away too, I will be honest...it is hard.  But when he comes home in the evening, and smells of the earth and his callused hands hold you to him and you know he does it all out of love, love for the land and love for his family, you know you wouldn't choose any other life.  When your children come home excited to tell you about the baby calf they just watched being born and you see the love and respect they have in their eyes, you know you wouldn't choose any other life.  So thank you God for farmers.  Thank you for my farmer.     

And on the 8th 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 fields, milk cows again, eat supper and 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 rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and 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 a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain'n from 'tractor back,' put in another seventy-two hours." So God made a 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 bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with a five-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 son says he wants to spend his life 'doing what dad does.'" So God made a farmer.

~Paul Harvy