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Cycle of food keeps on rolling
This year's crop looks bountiful (the opinion of a novice suburbanite who never picked a real ear until six years ago). Tonight, as I write, machinery is rolling along the leased hillsides of our Washington County farm. The work is nonstop.
No one's getting rich.
Taking into consideration the always rising cost of fuel, seed and fertilizer, adding the price of hiring local haulers to take this harvest to market and realizing that prices paid for corn silage rarely rise from one year to the next, it's a wonder farmers can put food on their own tables as they work to put food on yours.
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The cycle continues into the night; there is no union wage, no hourly controls and no clock in farming. They work until there is no more work to be done.
There was a time when I knew nothing about this. While I will never be called a farmer and will never depend on the land to survive, I now have a better appreciation for what is involved. I was once like most people - driving along a highway, I would glance to a field and see a tractor being piloted across a pasture and think, "That's the kind of job a guy could like - sitting around, driving all day. That looks like fun. Has to be better than the dumb ol' job I have. Farming! That's the life."
Driving agricultural equipment might look like fun, but in fact it's some of the most stressful work you'll ever do. This same farmer who leases our fields has asked in the past for my help. I've driven for him (he's a trusting one). It's dangerous, muscular work that requires strong hands and a sharp mind.
Mistakes are expensive.
Machinery often breaks.
One of America's sad truths is that farmers, among the hardest working professionals, are also underpaid, undervalued and largely invisible.
I am sitting at the dining room table, tapping at my computer, watching them work. They were behind the wheels of the massive tractors when I left for my job in the city this morning. They're still out there now, way past dinnertime, working. They'll be there to wring the last light from the sky and will rise tomorrow at the crack of dawn to do it again until the job is done.
Give a thought to those and the many like them every time you pick up a fork and open your mouth.
They're working so that you can eat.
They're farmers.
To hear Scott Paulsen's column, visit www.observer-reporter.com. He can be heard each weekday afternoon from 3-7 p.m. on 1250 ESPN Radio.
