Sunday, February 3, 2013

So God Made a Farmer

Like many others, I'm glad we had the chance to grow up on a farm.  Life wasn't always easy, but it greatly helped to make us what we are and I think that it was for our good.  I like this Youtube video which very much typifies our parents and our grandparents who were also farmers, as were nearly all of our friends and neighbors and their families back in the "good old days".

http://youtu.be/AMpZ0TGjbWE

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 township 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, up in another 72 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 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, 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.”

by Bart

5 comments:

  1. Farmers make for some great, hard working people. I guess that is why you are so great! I think of the Israelsens too. They are the best people I know and I know that a large part of their greatness came from being a farmer.

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  2. I was just going to send you a link for that commercial and ask you to put it on your blog.
    Definately the best part of the superbowl.

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  3. It was truly the most important part of the Super Bowl. It was more than being about farmers. It was about values. The values that made good people and society in general better. Ulimately it was about knowing God and being unselfish. Farmers like my Dad certainly went about quietly doing good without so much as a thought for themselves.
    I estemm epeople who exemplify these values, whether they be farmers or not.

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  4. thanks for posting dad. I love granpa and grandma more each day for what they taught us.

    Philip

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