This afternoon as I was coming home from meeting a client at the studio, I came up the hill and saw my Dad in the field chopping. I thought it was so beautiful with the dust flying and the building site in the back. I always mean to go take some photos of harvest, but it just never happens since it is also my busy time. But today, I was like you know what, we’ve been working so hard this Fall, I am going to take a few minutes to grab some shots of my Dad for me. So, so glad that I did take the time. I just love them!
And in the words of Paul Harvey as I believe the job my Dad does is so important and love him dearly for all his hard work in and out of the field and that I still get to watch him do what he loves to do, be a farmer:
“And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a caretaker.” So God made a farmer.
God said, “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.” So God made a farmer.
“I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife’s done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon — and mean it.” So God made a farmer.
God said, “I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt. And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, ‘Maybe next year.’ I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain’n from ‘tractor back,’ put in another seventy-two hours.” So God made a farmer.
God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor’s place. So God made a farmer.
God said, “I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week’s work with a five-mile drive to church.
“Somebody who’d bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life ‘doing what dad does.'” So God made a farmer.”
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
This is my absolute favorite. When I looked at on the camera, it made me tear up. It’s just how I picture my Dad, working hard, likely dirt on his clothes from either dust from the tractor or grease from the machine shop he runs and driving something, whether it’s one of his trucks, race car, snowmobile or tractor. It’s my Dad… Love how the dust and a little photo shop made it look like a photo taken at sunset, too. .jpg)