Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Spring Planting

Photo of my husband greasing the bearings on a piece of tillage equipment, hooked up to the John Deere 4640 tractor with duals on, right after we got home from church on Sunday morning. No time for the farmer to rest when it's planting or harvest time!

I am so proud of my husband and the rest of the farmers out there - whether full time or part time! They work hard, long, sweaty hours without complaint in order to feed the nation (and other countries) safely, reliably, and affordably.

He got home from his off-farm job Wednesday evening, and started the plan for working on the farm all day Thursday, Friday, Saturday, late morning to evening on Sunday, and if it wouldn't have rained Monday mid-morning, he'd have been hard at it then, too!

We got a lot of good work done, disking and then using the till-oll on the majority of the corn ground, even was able to drill one of the soybean fields, until it did rain enough to stop the work in the field on Monday. But once the rain stopped they got back to work cleaning out and fine-tuning the corn planter.

Farmers are certainly some of the most hard-working group of people, and there's only about 3% of the US who farm today that provide safe, affordable food for the country quite efficiently. So many are disconnected from the farming life that they have not a clue where that box of cereal came from, or that dozen eggs, except "the grocery store." There's more to it than that - the labor of love that the farmers across the nation have put into their end product, be it that calf that was fattened for the hamburgers you had on the grill this Memorial Day weekend, the wheat for the buns, the tomatoes and lettuce you put on it, the cold, sweet watermelon, the baked beans - even the cold beer you had as you manned the grill - all that was likely a result of the American farmer.

So, next Memorial Day weekend, thank a Veteran, pray for those who are serving your country overseas, and be grateful for our military men and women who are willing to risk their lives for our safety. But also, remember to think every now and then of the farmer who provides the food for your tables.