Today, March 21st, our family honors the memory of my father on his birth date. He passed away at the age of 92, 20 years ago. Although my father lost his sight to macular degeneration, he carried on in his life with much courage and dignity.
As a teenager, I never realized what a special privilege growing up as a farmer’s daughter really was. Coming home on the school bus and having to do ‘chores’ seemed so boring as opposed to being able to spend after school hours with your friends. As I look back on those times now, it all comes clear as to how treasured and valuable those life lessons were.
To be a successful farmer takes a tremendous amount of strength and courage. I think back to those days with great admiration and appreciation of the special man he was.
If you are old enough, you might remember an American radio broadcaster by the name of Paul Harvey. Mr. Harvey’s twice-daily soapbox-on-the-air was one of the most popular programs on radio between 1950-1990. Audiences of as many as 22 million people tuned in on 1,300 stations to a voice that had been an American institution for as long as most of them could remember. He personalized the radio news with his right-wing opinions but laced them with his own trademarks: a hypnotic timbre, extended pauses for effect, heart-warming tales of average Americans and folksy observations that evoked the heartland, family values and the old-fashioned plain talk one heard around the dinner table on Sunday.
He would always begin with a velvety voice that turned the news into narrative and entertainment each week on his famous segment ‘The Rest of the Story‘.
‘So, God Made a Farmer’ was a speech given by Paul Harvey at the 1978 Future Farmers of America convention. When I read it I thought it was a nice tribute to our Dad on his birthdate.
So, God Made a Farmer
On the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a caretaker.”
I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, 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 Farm Bureau.
I need somebody with strong arms to wrestle a calf, yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry and have to wait until his wife is done feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies come back soon.
I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt and watch it die and then dry his eyes and say maybe next year. I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout and shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire. Who can make harness out of hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. Who’s planting time and harvest season will finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon. Then, with the pain from tractor back, he will put in another 72.
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.
I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, and yet gentle enough to wean lambs and pigs and tend the pink combed pullets. And who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadowlark.
It had to be somebody who would plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed, and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week’s work with a five-mile drive to church. Somebody who would bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing. Who would laugh, then sigh and reply with smiling eyes… when his son says he wants to spend his life doing what Dad does!
So, God made a farmer.
For any of us growing up as farmers’ daughters or sons, I think we can relate to this article well.
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- 150 gm Boursin w/ cracked black pepper
- 567 (about 1 1/4 lb) pork tenderloin
- 1 apple, cored & thinly sliced
- 1 pear, cored & thinly sliced
- 10-12 slices prosciutto
Ingredients
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- Preheat oven to 350 F.
- Core & cut apples & pears into thin slices.
- Cut the pork tenderloin by making an incision over its entire length of about 1 1/2 -inches, leaving about 1 cm at each end to form a pocket.
- Spread the Boursin in the cut & add the apples & pears. Close the pork tenderloin by wrapping it in prosciutto.
- Bake 20 minutes. Cut into medallions about 1 1/2-inches wide.