What Is A Farmer?

A farmer is a person who owns between 20 & 30 hats ... they have names on the front, just above the peak, names like Stewart Seed, John Deere, Agrigro, United Co-op, and Master Feeds. You can always tell a farmer ... but not very much.

One can always recognize a farmer by his fingers, (sometimes farmers don't have them all, by the way), they are usually very big and when you shake hands with one it feels like a lot of sandpaper; and they squeeze as though they are really gad to see you. Sometimes after you shake hands with a farmer, he slaps you on the shoulder and dislocates it for you. If a farmer says it's going to rain, it does, but rarely when their land really needs it. Farmers never go out of the house without one of those caps, that's why all farmers have white foreheads, and sometimes they wear them indoors. Young farmers wear them low over their eyes, usually their dads wear them on the back of their heads and have the uncanny ability to, in one motion, take off the cap, scratch the scalp, and replace the cap at the same angel in about 2.3 seconds. Farmers sometimes wear their hats in the house until (a) their wives make them take it off, or (b)they go to bed.

Farmers like new cars and always buy big shiny ones. Within two weeks after delivery there are three to four inches of mud on the new front floor mats, the dashboard is covered with dust, a pair of work gloves, a notebook, and three boxes of matches. In the trunk of the new car can be found - the air cleaner off the pickup, a pair of boots caked with dried mud, a box of miscellaneous gears, cogs, two fan belts, and three spare hats.

Farmers are the only people who can keep their sanity while the rest of us bang our heads on the wall in dismay over the weather, government policies, the weather, price increases, the weather, and a county council which often forgets that most of its constituents farm for a living.

Farmers read agricultural bulletins, "The Canadian farmer", and the financial page, but not necessarily in that order. They know a lot about insects, hail, crop dusting, irrigation, interest rates, curling, animal husbandry, engines, electricity, welding, and futures, but can never seem to figure out what on earth those guys in Ottawa and Queen's Park are doing.

Farmers like roast beef, (usually well done); small children, especially their grandchildren; woodlots, big tractors, hubbard squash, pot roast, and sometimes liver. They like mashed potatoes and gravy, home made pie, and almost anywhere in Florida. They like vacations, but not as much as their wives do, like them that is; if they don't come too close together; big bath towels, dogs, euchre, and hockey night in Canada.

Farmers don't particularly like; zucchini, opera, liberals, hospitals, the 401, gas stations (that's because they usually keep a gasoline pump of their own near the barn .. sort of a do-it-yourself service station), implement salesmen, bank managers, the liberals, and drought.

Farmers are people who are convinced to spend a small fortune on a sprayer and a huge quantity of the new insecticide - methyl bethylapozean, only to find out the day after they spray that it has been baned by the department of agriculture and the department of health and welfare because besides killing bugs, it maybe, just maybe, kills birds and a few people too.

Farmers are people who know how to raise food in such quantity and of such quality that we are a people blessed many times over with their plenty at a fraction of the cost of what many in other less privileged countries pay to eat.

A farmer is an eternal optimist who, in spite of the rain, when his land is soaking wet and drought when it is parched dry, hail when his tobacco or corn or tomatoes are at their peak ... notwithstanding interest rates and collapsing markets, government action or in-action; still gets up every day, puts on his cap and once again makes it all work out for all of us who so often take for granted, our farmers.

By Bill Brady on CFPL RADIO 98. August 20/81