National Farmers' Day: To My Favorite Farmers

I don't know what most people envision when they imagine farmers today, but if it involves bib overalls and American Gothic, they maaaaaaay be a little offbase. 

 

The two guys on the right -- they're farmers. Pigs and cows, seasoned and younger, Redwing boots and cowboy boots. 

And neither of them chews on straw or wears bibs.

 

Today is National Farmers' Day. And while I'm blessed to be the daughter of a farmer and married to a farmer, not everyone else gets to see farming up close and personal like I do.

But today, even though this life -- your life -- is mine too, I simply want to tell my favorite farmers thank you . . .

for getting up early and staying up late,

for studying the way the land lays and the water flows,

for taking care of animals, their health, their well being,

for loving the outdoors, the smell of the soil, the way the air feels before it rains,

for the freedom farming allows and the pride that comes with being your own boss,

 

for the steadiness that comes with tilling up and planting and harvesting the same ground your families did for generations before you,

for the humor that's needed when things break at the worst possible time and the way that you always find an answer and a solution because there's no one else there to discover one for you,

 

 for being able to operate machinery and help cows calve and listen to employees,

for knowing how much risk is the right amount of risk to take and reminding yourself that if farming was easy, everyone would be doing it,

for knowing where you've been but never giving up on the dream of where you might go,

for being food producers in a country that has one of the safest food systems out there, for knowing that your farm will feed thousands of people you've never even met,

for being you.


To all the farmers -- and especially to my two favorites -- thank you.