So God Made a Farmer

Ok ya'll, I am going to be 100% honest with you and throw something out there...I don't care for football. Not even in the least little bit. I see football players as a bunch of barbaric men with testosterone issues. I understand it takes athletic ability, skill as well as some major dedication but none the less, football is garbage. I apologize if I am offending anyone out there but just hear me out.

Professional football players typically make around $1.9 million for a season that consists of 17 weeks and 16 games. That comes out to about $118,750.00 per game. To me, that just seems a tad ridiculous. These professional athletes spend a few years in the spot light and walk away with more money than most people could ever dream of making in a lifetime.

I believe football is good for one thing...the Super Bowl! If you are like me and only watch football when the Super Bowl comes around you understand that it isn’t the game that's worth watching. We are merely watching the Super Bowl for the half time show and the commercials.This year, the Super Bowl left me with goosebumps but it wasn't from the power outage or the close game. After watching two commercials in particular I realized I didn’t just waste four hours of my Sunday night.

The Budweiser commercial is a given. You have the iconic Clydesdale horse displayed in a tender commercial that that demonstrated the delicate connection between man and horse. I will admit to being wrong about a lot of things but one thing I know for sure is that there is something so special about the bond between a man and a horse.

Then you have the Dodge commercial. I don't think I have ever been left with such emotion after watching a two minute commercial. The late Paul Harvey narrated his "So God Made a Farmer" speech which he gave at the National Future Farmers of America Convention in 1978. Dodge really outdid themselves. What better way to put it all into perspective. What better time to thank our farmers than during the most watched TV event in the United States.

And on the 8th 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 fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.” So God made a farmer.

“I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife’s done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and 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 a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain’n from ‘tractor back,’ put in another seventy-two 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 bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who’d 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’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 son says he wants to spend his life ‘doing what dad does.’” So God made a farmer.




After watching that commercial I wanted to jump and shout to the world that my husband is a farmer. I’ve never felt such pride in the fact of being a farmer’s wife until that commercial was plastered across millions of T.Vs in America.  That commercial advertised the cold hard facts about the life of a farmer. The dedication, the time, the patience, the perseverance, the knowledge and the work ethic that it takes to be a farmer is something many do not understand...until that one commercial.

So now on to why I don't think football players are worth the $1.9 million. On average, a crop farmer brings in between $20,000-$75,000 in one years time.My husband is a farmer that works dawn till dusk. He is a strong man with true compassion for not only others but animals as well. He has the patience to work on equipment into the wee hours of the morning. He is a Godly man with real down home values. God made farmers to be strong-willed individuals with a work ethic out of this world. Although farmers make only a fraction of what a professional football player makes, God made farmers for a reason. He knew that not just any man had the characteristics to be a farmer; it takes a special individual to be a farmer.

The joys of being a farmer's wife...and I am darn proud of it!!