Grower Appreciation
What is a Farmer?
By: Unknown
A farmer is a paradox - he is an overall executive with his home office; a scientist using fertilizer attachments; a purchasing agent in an old straw hat; a personnel director with grease under his fingernails; a dietician with a passion for alfalfa, aminos, and antibiotics; a production expert with a surplus; and a manager battling a price-cost squeeze. He manages more capital than most businessmen in town.
He likes sunshine, good food, State Fairs, dinner at noon, auctions, his shirt collar unbuttoned and, above all, a good soaking rain in August.
Farmers are found in fields - plowing up, seeding down, rotating from, planting to, fertilizing with, spraying for, and harvesting. Wives help them, little boys follow them, the Agriculture Department confuses them, city relatives visit them, salesmen detain them and wait for them, weather can delay them, but it takes Heaven to stop them.
A farmer is both Faith and Fatalist - he must have faith to continually meet the challenges of his capacities amid an ever-present possibility that an Act of God (a late spring, an early frost, tornado, floods, drought) can bring his business to a standstill. You can reduce his acreage but you can't restrain his ambition.
He is not much for droughts, ditches, throughways, experts, weeds, the eight-hour day, grasshoppers, or helping with housework.
Might as well put up with him - he is your friend, your competitor, your customer, your source of food, fiber, and self-reliant young citizens to help replenish your cities. He is your countryman - a denim-dressed, business-wise, fast-growing statesman of stature. And when he comes in at noon, having spent the energy of his hopes and dreams, he can be recharged anew with the magic words: "The market's up."
God Made A Farmer
By: Paul Harvey
The Richest Farmer is the One That Owes the Most
By: Baxter Black
If wheat gets up to seven bucks
I'll hoard it, yesiree
Till the grain bin's overflowin'
Or it gets back down to three.
There's too much ridin' on it
To sell it right away
The banker might call in my note
They're funny that-a-way.
As long as things are nip and tuck
They'll let the balance ride
Just pay the interest on it
And they'll be satisfied.
They don't like sudden changes
Conservatives, you see,
They like things they can count on
Like hail and CRP.
And if you look to go prosperous
Or friends think that you are
They'll try and sell you somethin'
You've lived without so far.
Like asphalt on the driveway
Or fancy silverware
Or a double jointed tractor
Course, the preacher wants his share.
No, there ain't no use me gettin' rich
Knowin' me, I'd spend it.
And borrow more for land and stock,
There's plenty who would lend it.
I'm better off just gettin' by
And stayin' where I set
'Cause the more that I make farmin'
The more I go in debt.
So, if wheat gets up to seven
I could sell it on the board
But I won't. 'Cause makin' money's
One thing I can't afford.
It's a different kind of logic
That allows a man to boast
When the richest farmer farmin'
Is the one that owes the most.