The Farmer and How He Knows What He Knows

With the kind of winter most of us have had and from following as many farm pages and blogs as I do and after being raised the daughter/granddaughter and now a wife of a farmer I'm more convinced than ever there isn't much a farmer doesn't know.

Now I'm not saying he is an expert at everything and I'm not saying he never has to call in the professionals, I mean Mark has Dale Weller and Leonard's Electric's phone numbers seared into his brain.

Still though most things a farmer can take care of on his own or at least he will give it a good run for the money before he calls for help.

When does he learn it?

How does it happen?

He can probably tell you a few things he remembers learning but most of it just sort of happened.

Most of it he learned by doing life and by trial and error or because he had to right quick.

Maybe it was when his dad needed him to get up on that tractor and drive or when he had to crawl over a gate and get in that pen and help take care of an animal.

It could have been when he was a teenager standing in the middle of a blazing hot hayfield working on a broken baler.
Or when he was freezing to death driving the loader cleaning the roads so the milk truck or feed trucks could get in and out.

It could have been learned staying up all night working on a well or pulling a pump.
Maybe when he had to help bury the family dog or put down a favorite animal.

The knowing of the woods and of lumber would come from construction, cutting wood, hunting, cleaning fence rows and just time spent in the outdoors.

Lessons could have been gained while building fence, how to build them straight and strong and to respect boundaries and another mans property.

He could have learned to love the land when he first felt it between his toes when the garden was plowed of when he watched his grandpa hold the soil in his hand and let it run through his fingers.

He could have learned to love his family and his neighbors when he went with his dad to help a neighbor who needed them or to a wedding to celebrate or a funeral to comfort.

They know, electric, gas lines, water ways and water tables, construction, the lay of the land and how to deal with it.

He can understand markets and futures and taxes, (well as much as taxes can be understood).

He knows about nitrogen and phosphorus.

The only other job I can think of where a person needs to know as much and be as versatile  as a farmer would be wife and mother and thankfully most farmers knew to get one of those.

When he got her he got a good thing and when she got him she got it all.

So how did the farmer learn it?

He learned it from those that came before him those that loved and worked the land prior to him.

Probably the biggest thing he learned was that he had something to learn.

The farmer is hard working and humble  and you don't hear much about them.

They're to busy and to humble to toot their own horns but they deserve a shout out.

God bless them and all they have been willing to learn and for everything they do for us.

The next time you pass a farm think about the farmer and how he learned what he has learned.

Everything he is and everything he does is rooted deep in tradition and love for his family and his land and that my friends is a lesson well learned.