Family Farm Friday #66: So God Made A Farmer

"If you take the cowboy out of society you are going to lose people with integrity and honor and heart and love for country. You're going to lose the best of America." CJ Hadley, Range Magazine

I tell y'all.....I loved Paul Harvey growing up. My Gran listened to him every single day at 11:50 in the morning on AM radio. And that man was full of great stories and wisdom every day. But I have come across what I'm convinced is his very best piece.

If you want to listen to it in Paul's voice (trust me, you do), just click here.

So God Made A 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 to get up before dawn and milk cows and 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 strong arms. Strong enough to rustle a calf, yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry and have to wait for lunch until his wife is done feeding and visiting with the ladies and telling them to be sure to come back real soon...and mean it. So, God made a farmer! God said "I need somebody that can shape an ax handle, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire make a harness out of hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And...who, at 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 on 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, heave bails and yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink combed pullets...and who will stop his mower for an hour to mend the broken leg of a meadow lark. So, God made a farmer!

It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight...and not cut corners. Somebody to seed and weed, feed and breed...and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk. Somebody to replenish the self feeder and then finish a hard days work with a five mile drive to church. So, God made a farmer!
Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who'd laugh and then sigh...and then respond with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life "doing what dad does." So, God made a farmer!

I'm not sure truer words have ever been spoken. Sure makes me proud to be a farm kid.