Like so many of you who watched the Super Bowl on Sunday, I was touched by the Dodge Truck commercial. In fact, it was probably the only commercial that was worth the anticipation that the Super Bowl television adds usually bring. (Except for maybe the Taco Bell spot. I mean who doesn't love to watch old people doing non-old-person things. That was great!)
The fact that so many other thoughts have already been expressed about this particular ad almost made me want to keep mine to myself. However, I have felt the need to add to the heartfelt views and reflections posted by so many of my wise and inspirational friends. After all, I was raised by one of those priceless men that God made. :)
Paul Harvey delivered this speech called, "So God Made a Farmer" at an FFA convention in 1978. As I think back to this same time period......the late 1970's.....I was a kid and we were making preparations to "move back to the farm". "The farm" was a fairly small plot of land in Weston, Idaho. As a younger child, I have many memories of visiting my grandpa and grandma Reeder at their home on "the farm". My grandpa was a farmer, his father was a farmer, and my own father was now going to become a farmer. We were going to be a farm family. What a great adventure this would be!
This event turned into one of the greatest blessings for our family. It was more than an adventure, it was to become a significant part of learning life lessons and strengthening the bond of friendship and love that every family should have. Before farm life, Dad was seldom home, but now we were able to find ourselves working along side one another and learning from his example first hand the importance of hard work and doing things right. I will always treasure those years on the farm working and playing together with the people who were most meaningful to me. That first summer on the farm we spent hours, days, and weeks putting together wheel move sprinkler lines. We moved sprinkler pipe.....day and night. I even learned how to drive the tractor. Yes...I plowed fields and I raked hay. I drove truck load after truck load of grain to the local grain elevator. We spent hours pitching rocks from the farm ground to clean it up. We turned hay bales and helped buck it up on the truck and trailer. We pulled rye. We hoed row after row of potatoes. We learned how to flood irrigate with siphon tubes and set a dam. We worked hard!! Our neighbors worked hard!! Our community worked hard and we often worked together!
And, when the work was done we played. We spent time with cousins who would come for summer visits to "the farm". We built forts out of old junk. We would run through cold and very dirty irrigation water from that same sprinkler pipe that we had just moved. We rode motorcycles and four wheelers. We had animals.....I love animals! We water skied. We spent hours at the flume (more dirty irrigation water). We jumped our selves silly on the trampoline that was in our back yard. We made memories with my dear, sweet, and very adventurous grandma who was our next door neighbor.....and oh how I cherish those memories. We gained a relationship with nature and witnessed the beauty of watching things grow and even being a part of nurturing and caring for those same things. In the process....we grew too. We felt the love of family, friends, and of God. We were a family who was "baled together with the soft bonds of sharing". We were blessed and we were happy.
The sons in our family no longer "do what Dad did". "The farm" has been sold to people that I don't even know. I drive by those fields often, and sometimes I even cry.....just a little tiny bit. My heart wishes that our own children could have had the same opportunity to learn the lessons taught by living on a farm and working hard. Life has changed. Though fewer......those farm families are still out there and I thank them for working so that we can put food on the table. I know the sacrifices that are made by these families. Many of them are our neighbors and we rub shoulders with these great families in our business and appreciate their efforts and the difference that they are making in our lives. I'm grateful that God made a farmer. I'm grateful that one of those farmers was my father.
In case you are interested, full audio and text of Paul Harvey's original "So God Made a Farmer" speech can be found here.
