You are never forced to work only 40 hours per week.
Dinner is at high noon, and there is always plenty of food.
Cows and corn don’t lie.
Your combine does something most people can’t
such as separating the wheat from the chaff.
The cream truly does rise to the top,
and you know the origin of your steak, eggs, and veggies.
There are no one-way streets, stoplights, crossing guards, turn lanes,
or speed berms between the house and the barn or the back eighty.
The late summer evenings are filled only with the sounds of crickets and frogs.
The sunset is not preempted half way through with neon and mercury vapor lights.
The sounds of sunrise include only the songs of the birds and a mooing cow or two.
There are no squealing tires, honking horns, or sirens to interrupt one’s sleep.
You can sleep-in if you want to, but why would you
when there are so many things you want to do.
You’re fortunate that your nearest neighbor is at least a quarter of a mile away, but you know all of your neighbors and wave to them when they drive by.
You help your neighbors – even the ones you may be less fond of.
You talk to each other about fences and irrigation ditches.
You watch the neighbor’s house like it was your own when they are gone.
Although the legal system demands more and more signed contracts,
your word and your handshake are still your personal bond.
You don’t just drive by a field of new mown hay;
you get to spend the whole day absorbing that sweet aroma
from right in the middle of it while you do the mowing.
You personally know that the aroma of the feedlot
is vastly better than any urban pollution you have ever smelled.
Your horse works for its chow.
Your wife is not just someone to whom you are married,
but rather she is your partner and you share your life together.
Your wife makes the best jam and pies in the county.
Your garden tractor is a JD 4455 MFWD.
While the bureaucrats are desperately trying to urbanize the farmer
with rules and regulations, you secretly are delighted to know
that no matter how dictatorial they become,
they will never control the weather.
The whole family enjoys having supper together, and spirituality begins at home.
Thanksgiving is truly a day to give thanks
since your labor of love actually produces something to harvest.
Your know that FFA and 4-H still teach that competition is less important
than good farming and helping your neighbor.
You know that your crops will give you their finest hour every day
of their lives making the absolute most they can
with whatever soil, water, and sunlight are available.
No stalk of corn will ever sleep-in or demand a vacation day.
Equal opportunity laws in nature would be nonsensical
since opportunity is something which comes from within,
and nature always gives its personal best all of the time.
And in spite of the urbanized documentaries portraying nature
as savage and violent just to survive, you know from personal experience
that nature is actually very peaceful and quiet and that nature cares and shares and gives in every way with you if you are willing to do likewise.
Overcrowding is a foreign concept
since you would never do that to your cows or your corn.
You don’t have to put in hiking trails or bike paths
or ‘open spaces’ to enjoy the back eighty.
Your balanced world of nature in the fields and feedlots can be pestered
but is otherwise impenetrable to the onslaught of man’s
frenzied attempt to control everything.
You answer first to God and nature and then to the bureaucrats
who as self appointed authoritarians are truly desperate and frustrated
by being the last to control anything of consequence.
You have a rapport with nature and a covenant with God
and neither is subject to greed, power, politics, or money.
You can walk the hiking trails through the mountains and plains forever and ride the bike trails to the ends of the earth. You can make open spaces the hallmark of zealous urbanization or spend a lifetime camping in the most exotic places. You can have many advanced degrees in science and push back the frontiers thereof through research. But no matter what you do, it is impossible to know the inner sanctum sanctorum of God and nature until you’ve lived by farming.
And that’s why these special people farm.
I know. I’ve been on both sides.
© Dr. Jon C. Fulfs – November 1999
[Part of book in progress entitled ‘Out Of The Prairie’]