The Heart of the Land
Farmers are found in the fields, plowing up, seeding down, planting, fertilizing, spraying, and harvesting. Wives help them. Little boys follow them. The Agriculture Department confuses them. City relatives visit them. Salesmen detain them. Meals wait for them. Weather may delay them. But it takes Heaven to stop them.
When your car stalls along the way, a farmer becomes a considerate, courteous, and inexpensive roadside service. When a farmer's wife suggests he buy a new suit, he can recite from memory every expense involved in operating the farm last year, along with the added costs he knows will appear this year. Or he may take on the role of the indignant shopper, explaining to anyone within earshot just how many pounds of pork it takes to pay for a suit at today's prices.
A farmer is a paradox. He is an "overalled" executive whose home is his office. A scientist using fertilizer attachments. A purchasing agent in an old straw hat. A personnel director with grease under his fingernails. A dietician devoted to alfalfa, animals, and antibiotics. A production expert facing surplus. A manager battling a constant price cost squeeze. He manages more capital than most businessmen in town.
He enjoys sunshine, good food, state fairs, dinner at noon, auctions, his neighbors, Saturday nights in town, his shirt collar unbuttoned, and above all, a good soaking rain in August.
He is not fond of droughts, ditches, throughways, experts, weeds, the eight hour day, helping with housework, or grasshoppers.
No one else is so far from the telephone or so close to God. No one else finds as much satisfaction in modern plumbing, good weather, and good ice cream. No one else can empty his pockets on washday and still discover five steeples, one cotter key, a rusty spike, three grains of corn, the stub of a lead pencil, a square tape, a $4.98 pocket watch, and a cupful of chaff in each trouser cuff.
A farmer is both faithful and fatalistic. He must have faith to face the limits of his work, knowing that an act of God, a late spring, early frost, tornado, flood, or drought, can bring everything to a standstill. You can reduce his acreage, but you cannot restrain his ambition.
You might as well put up with him. He is your friend, your competitor, your source of food and fiber, and a self reliant citizen helping replenish your cities. He is your countryman. Denim dressed, business wise, and growing into a statesman of stature.
And when he comes in at noon, having spent the energy of his hopes and dreams, he can be renewed by the simple magic words."The market's up."