I married a farmer. Though I’m a mental health professional, I’ve learned answers to life’s problems can be solved in lessons of farm life. On Superbowl Sunday, a commercial aired titled “God Made a Farmer,” with a poem read by Paul Harvey. The words of this have gone deep into my soul, because it reflects answers our society and individuals need so desperately. These are lessons I’ve learned and applications made from paraphrased portions of “God Made a Farmer,” with some farm pictures at Life Beyond the Picket Fence {post copyrighted by Brenda L. Yoder}
“God Made a Farmer:” God needed someone willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper, then go into town and stay past midnight at the meeting of the school board.
Application: We need people willing to work hard getting mundane, important jobs done, day in and day out, making impact both personally and in community.
Life Lesson: Practice of little things that are healthy, worthwhile, and consistent builds character and makes impact.
“God Made a Farmer”: God needed someone willing to stay up all night with a newborn colt only to watch it die, and after drying his eyes, say, “Maybe next year.”
Application: We need people willing to take risks, caring for man, animals, and nature, experiencing disappointment, hurt, and frustration, yet being willing to do it all over again, no matter the cost, because he/she believes in hope of the next time.
Life Lesson: Engaging in life involves risks, being disappointed, frustrated, and hurt, but experiencing them teaches life goes on, new things come, and hope is always before you. “When you fail, try again.”
“God Made a Farmer:” God needed someone who can shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, make a harness out of haywire, feedsacks, and shoe scraps.
Application: We need people willing to be innovative to get the job done, on the spot, to problem solve with resources available, because others are counting on them.
Life Lesson: There is always an answer to a problem. Sometimes it requires thinking outside the box and being willing to find a solution with the unthinkable. If it’ll work, don’t be afraid to try.
“God Made a Farmer:” God needed someone who can finish his 40 hour week by Tuesday noon, take his tractor back and put in another 72 hours during planting and harvest.
Application: We need people willing to get the work done, no matter the cost, doing it well, working with others, without thought of what they will get out of it.
Life Lesson: There are seasons in life where you have to do hard things, leaving you exhausted and weary. Harvest will come, but you have to do the work.
“God Made a Farmer:“ God needed someone strong enough to clear trees and heave bales and gentle enough to deliver lambs and wean pigs.
Application: We need people strong enough to tackle insurmountable tasks, yet gentle enough to show compassion and tenderness to the vulnerable.
Life Lesson: A balanced character is one strong enough to tackle the biggest challenges and gentle enough to be compassionate when needed.
“God Made a Farmer:” God needed someone who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadowlark.
Application: We need people willing to take time from their own needs to serve the needs of others who are unseen and hurt.
Life Lesson: There is always time to help others in need.
“God Made a Farmer:” God needed someone who plows deep and straight and doesn’t cut corners.
Application: We need people willing to do their best work, who won’t cheat or cut quality because he/she can.
Life Lesson: Do your best and be honest even when you can slack or get away with something.
“God Made a Farmer:” God needed somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed, rake, disc, plow and plant, and tie the fleece and strain the milk.
Application: We need people doing every task needing to be done, no matter how large or small, simply because they are able and willing.
Life Lesson: Those willing to be teachable and to do work of any kind gain skills in every area of life.
“God Made a Farmer:” God needed somebody who’d bail a family together with a soft, strong, bonds of sharing.
Application: We need people willing to stop, touch, laugh, speak, and cry with each other, putting aside the noise and instant gratification, and living in powerful, simple, quiet moments, not centered on self, but others.
Life Lesson: Today’s families need roots, strength, and real relationships in a disconnected world.
Photo taken the day we sold our dairy herd.
“God Made a Farmer:” God needed someone who would laugh, and then sigh, when his son says he want to spend his life doing what dad does.
Application: We need people living a life worthy that their children would want to emulate them.
Life Lesson: Live each moment as if your children were watching. They are looking to and counting on you.
What farming principles to you need to grow in?
From our farm to yours,
Beautiful, Brenda, and so “right on”. I married one of those farmers, too, and though he doesn’t till the soil any more, that farm ethic lives on in everything he does. Thanks for sharing this!!
Wonderfully written!!! Being the widow of a former American Farmer of F.F.A.and having shared a life together working side by side on our family farm it brings back so many memories and tears as I read your work. I only wish we could turn the times back to show our Grandchildren and Great Grand Children how rewarding our lessons we learned really were used every day of our life.Keep up the great work, our youth need reading material like you have to offer! Nicole
Thank you, Nicole! I honor you for all of your work and tears you have poured into the lives of others. It brings me to tears reading the words of the poem, so many rich, rich, memories of our own. The woman in the picture with the deer is my husband’s mom, and she has been gone for 12 years. The farm will never be the same. Thank you for your kind words.
I too grew up on a farm and can relate to the strength and life lessons we get and a lot of people don’t get to have that.. I love your reading but it made me sad in a way how far away from that our society has drifted.
Lavera, it makes me sad, too, to see how broken families, people, and society is around us. Guns are not the answer – doing better things with our hands and helping others is needed.
Beautiful! Makes me think of my Dad. 30 years in the Air Force, but back on his farm now. You can take the boy from the farm, but never the farm from the boy – or the lessons he learned there! I hope to pass many of them onto my own children. thanks!
Lynette – you are so right! Raising kids on a farm is a lifestyle, goes into your roots so deep. I’m sure you are passing on good things to your kids.
Beautifully written!!! Such a inspirational and huge eye opener!!!!
Thank you, Stacey!