01/29/2024
Farming is hard…
This is the side of farming that most people never see. We put so much effort into taking care of our land, equipment, and animals. When things go wrong, you instantly blame yourself. “What did I do wrong?”. “How could I have prevented this?”. The thoughts start running through your head. You are overtaken by emotion. You often take it out on family. This is what makes farming hard. Everyone wants to advertise the “fun” things like driving your tractor, walking your fields, watching your livestock give birth, feeding some happy animals. With all of the new life on the farm, from the growing crop of a new season, to the next generation of animals making their way into the world, the ever revolving cycles of life also bring with them sickness and death. We often struggle with this part. Some people struggle silently, some very loudly, and some a little of both, but it gets to ALL of us one way, or another. We may seem to have it all together at times, “immune” to loss of life and disaster, but we care too much for that to be real. We care because it’s ours. We are prideful. We want everything we do to be our best representation of ourselves and our work. We care because we are invested. Not just monetarily, but spiritually. God has chosen us to care for these animals. It’s in our blood. We rely on them and our work with them to make a living. It’s not the black and white picture that is portrayed, there’s a lot of grey. So the next time you pray, pray for a farmer or rancher, who spends their whole life giving everything they have to the animals they are raising, sacrificing sleep, sanity, and sweat to provide the highest quality of life to them, and the people they feed. Countless nights of getting up to check for newborns, assisting first mothers with birth, wrapping sick, struggling, or injured in towels to carry them inside to their heated garage for intensive care, waking every four hours to feed a bottle, praying and hoping that what you’re doing is enough. Sometimes they make it, sometimes they don’t, but with each one that you lose, it doesn’t get any easier. The ones you save keep you going. A small celebration and victory, knowing that what you did was enough.
Tonight my wife and I will be taking turns getting up to feed this little guy. He was born yesterday morning with no strength and hasn’t been able to support any part of his body. He couldn’t even wiggle his tail. This evening when I went out to feed him before laying down in bed, he lifted his head and looked up at me. As long as he is still fighting, we will be too. Remember that the next time someone says “farmers don’t care”. You can share this story with them. Goodnight.
