Les Patterson’s Monday Morning Boost: So God Made a Farmer – My Dad

By Mo 5 years ago
The first newspaper column I ever wrote was a Labor Day tribute to my hard working parents.  It was the summer of 1989.  I was farming and also working for the St. George Spectrum trying to help push out their Richfield Edition.  The experiment with the Richfield product didn’t last long, but it was my first media job.  I worked as a stringer for several months, getting paid $1 for every column inch I wrote, then as a part time staff writer.  While I’m spending Labor Day camping at Tony Grove. I’m sure my dad will be farming.  So on this Labor Day, I pay tribute to my dad, and all those who work so hard to make our country so great, with a repeat Monday Morning Boost from last summer.  Enjoy your Labor Day, no matter your plans, and thanks for letting me share!
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June 17, 2013
Les Patterson’s Monday Morning Boost: 
So God Made a Farmer – My Dad
 
My dad has been a farmer most of his life.  He was in the middle of watering corn when I called him for Father’s Day.  The wind was blowing, the ditch kept filling up with weeds, and the water just wasn’t being very cooperative. 
 
It had been a long day.
 
Most days are long days for farmers.  They start before sunrise and end well after sunset.  They wait for rain, and then they wait for sunshine, and hope each comes at the right time and in the right amount.
 
Farmers grow the crops to feed the rest of us.  My dad takes care of 300 plus acres of corn and hay, watering and nurturing the crops to maturity.  The corn and hay in turn feeds a herd of Holsteins, the well-known black and white dairy cows, famous for their milk-producing ability.  The milk from the Holsteins then makes its way to grocery stores in the form of cheese, butter, yogurt, and milk to drink.
 
I know we all know that.  Today I choose to remember it.  And by remembering, offering a small token of thanks for my dad being a farmer.
 
If I may, I share the following story from Paul Harvey, first delivered in 1978 to a convention of the Future Farmers of America, and rebirthed earlier this year by a RAM Truck commercial during the Super Bowl.

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So God Made a Farmer
Paul Harvey
 
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 day’s work with a five mile drive to church. 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!

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Have a great Monday.  Thanks for letting me share!
 
Les Patterson
 
p.s. Take 15 minutes today and notice the beautiful fields of farm crops and give thanks for the farmer behind them.
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