Farming From the Heart
I have a friend who is married to a farmer. They are raising their boys among the cows & corn. The boys have calves they bottle feed & sell, they have horses they check fences astride. They enjoy the day to day life of being outside, helping their daddy tend to the newly born, the ailing, the healthy.
One day, I was disheartened to read on Facebook about how one of their sons was being ridiculed at school. A schoolmate called him poor because he lives on a farm.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Trust me, farmers aren’t poor.
They meet struggle every day of their life. They are up against it at least fifty percent of the time. Imagine if your livelihood was dependent upon the weather. If it doesn’t rain one day & the sun shine the next, you might be looking for a job in town. And then when hay is ready to cut to feed the cows all winter, you pray for three straight days hot & clear. To get your hay to grow, it must be fertilized. Fertilizer runs around $500 a ton. One ton will fertilize roughly seven acres. If your fields yield well, seven acres of hay will produce maybe 100 rolls of hay. A cow will eat half a roll a day in the wintertime if their pasture is thin. You figure four months of winter, which is 120 days. If you have thirty cows, that’s 1800 bales of hay a winter. Baler twine is $55 a bundle (a “bale” is the correct term but that’s too confusing for this story). The twine will roll roughly 35 bales, depending on the size of the bale & how close you run your twine. Add in the price of the chemicals you sprayed to keep it weed free….we won’t even disclose that information. Then there was the cost of equipment. New cab tractors run you about $50,000. You need two, to stay ahead of the rain. One person can rake, another behind baling. If you grow your own corn to grind & feed, you need a combine. New combines are half a million dollars. Oh, then the equipment, mowing machines, tedders, rakes, balers. And a barn to put it in. And a grain bin for the feed. And fences around your perimeter of God’s green acre.
So, sure, you get $2000 for a 1000# steer at the sale, but you had to feed it 10# of feed a day at $260 per ton, plus mineral, plus grass that’s been fertilized & sprayed. You pulled it there with your $40,000 truck in a $30,000 stock trailer. And don’t forget the fuel to run all this equipment. This is assuming that your land was handed down through the family. But you still gotta pay annual land taxes, to the tune of around $200 an acre.
Farmers usually pay cash, or maybe they let it ride for a month, but in my experience, they stay current. How many people do you know have all their assets paid for? How many people do you know that truly work at an admirable, honorable job every single day of the year? No holidays, no holiday pay, no insurance, & you are ALWAYS on call.
They may not be comfortable in a suit, or carry a briefcase to work, or stop by Starbucks for a quick cup of caffeine every day…but they’re more comfortable reading the paper on their front porch, sipping from a steaming mug as they watch the dew dry on the fields & the fog roll away to the river.
That’s just the material end. Farmers aren’t poor. Farmers are rich in family. Farmers are rich in faith. Farmers pray for the good of the crop, & health for their neighbors. I guess that’s why that little child picked on the son of a farmer. He could shoulder the burden just fine, & tell his momma they needed to pray for wisdom to be bestowed.
