Young farmer wannabes

I was listening to Rural Route Radio this week, yes, I know it's a bad habit that I've picked up...I go to the computer....I think, I'll just see what their topic is for the day...and then I'm caught in the Rural Route Web and I can't escape....my children then start to holler..."Why do you have to have the computer so loud....who's on there.....that Trent Loos guy again?" I reply, "Yes, and I have to have it that loud so I can listen while I clean the house and fold the laundry!" So beware...if you begin to listen it will become a habit and then you'll have Trent and Kyle discussing the pressing ag issues of the day in your house while you clean or fold or dust or vacuum or whatever else you do in the privacy of your own home....:)

Anyway...boy was that a diatribe or what?

On Monday, Trent, Kyle and Hank were again, discussing the difficulties of young people breaking into farming. Of course it stirred up a lot of thoughts on the subject.

While I'd like to think that young men and women who say they want to farm are willing to put in the sweat and debt to get there, I am now wondering if they will do just about anything to farm, like they claim. Or are they donning rose colored glasses thinking of farming as a romantic lifestlyle. This lasts until they see how much debt they have to go into, how much sweat they have to produce for a pittance. AND if they have to relocate, are their spouses willing to follow them?

From inside the factory, farming looks grand as they watch the local crop farmer meet his buddies at the coffee shop every other morning or drive around in brand new pick up trucks, or head to the local tractor show with his newly restored John Deere B. Or when they see how much equipment they own without seeing the payment book. Or when they look at the century old farmhouse all decorated up with a spouse inside cooking a hearty meal with a smile on her face. No, they don't see what's behind the pastoral scene: the sleepless nights, the broken fingers, the dead animals, the broken tractors, the overdue notes and the aged face that is 20 years older than it should be.

As I look at what I just wrote, I wonder to myself why every morning and every night I head out to a hot barn full of hot cows to sweat like construction worker for not enough money to pay my bills at the end of the month. Why do I do it? I think it's simply what's in you...just like Hank Vogler says, that wonderful mutant gene that we have and can't amputate. It's in your blood that no blood transfusion can take care of. Part of it is that you just have it or you don't....the other part is the support you receive from you parents and peers and then consequently from your spouse.

The sky is the limit for a man with a good mom, OR wife behind him...supporting him, respecting him and loving him.