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.
-- Paul Harvey
#3156
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