55 Years and Counting From The Tractor Seat By Bill Whitman There are some days when all you can do is smile because if you don’t smile, you’ll scream. We’ve all had those kinds of days, when we have been overwhelmed with everything under the sun other than what we expected. I don’t know about your farm but generally, if one thing goes wrong, I can depend on more to follow suit. At the end of the day, my wife, Sue asks, why are you smiling? I’m 65 so the article title can be “56 years from the tractor seat.” I started driving, at age 9, a John Deere B because it had a hand clutch, and I couldn’t reach a foot clutch. In those days things broke just like they do today. I am thankful that despite our age, if we had a problem, we were expected to fix it. Talk about some bad days. But we learned to stick with it, no matter how difficult. And most days when we fixed a problem, we had a smile and a sense of satisfaction of a job well done. But let’s talk about the bad days and why most of us can still smile at the end of the day. A couple years ago, I purchased a round baler whose model has an excellent reputation, but my initial experience caused me loss of hair I can ill afford. I even had a technician go over it and fix and adjust everything on it. Of course, it baled perfectly until he left, and for the next 18 months, only then. I wound up sending it to a dealer with the instructions, “do whatever you have to, I don’t want it back until it’s right.” A big bill later we brought it home. Next came the education of learning how to run a new-to-me machine. Have you noticed that every piece of equipment has its own personality? Once I connected with this baler’s personality, I wouldn’t trade it for much of anything. But for almost two years I dreaded going to the field with it. Many days of smiling instead of screaming at it. But that’s agriculture today, isn’t it? We get up with the challenge of making some kind of progress to report at the end of the day. As we get older, the amount of physical work we get done is less than expected but that’s when we use our experience of the past to find a better and more efficient way of working. I’ve got a friend a couple hills over who feeds cattle… I don’t think he even knows how many, but over the past few years I’ve watched as he’s started using distillers’ grains and a bale unroller and even had the air conditioning fixed in his tractors. This fall he found a protein cake dispenser he could drop cake from his UTV. I’m always amazed at how he and his bride get the job done every year. What we as farmers and ranchers know and few others even think about is that in addition to our extremely taxing profession, we also have the issues of the family. I would argue that our lifestyle is the healthiest for families to live and grow in but isn’t immune to trouble. We have divorces, accidents, family fallouts, and untimely deaths just like the rest of the world. The difference is, we can’t take personal days, sick days, etc. like the rest of the world. We must somehow work through them and adjust. So, when you see a farmer smiling, don’t assume it’s been a good day, just admire that their approach to life is with the right attitude. IndianaAg@bluemarble.net |
