Northern Farmer

Today we received our Plain Talk CDs, and I’m just starting to listen this evening. Thanks Rick, the check will be in the mail. It’s amazing and humbling, the trip you took around the Mid West to gather these interviews. Last evening while working down here in my nerve center I was listening to some really good Gospel Bluegrass that our friend Don from church lent me, and boy, that’s a great tape Don. Thanks!! Had me singing along, for better or worse.

It’s been very busy here this week, beef sales have taken off here on the farm so this week I did a lot of farm tours for the customers. It’s been a different way of doing business here lately, but we shouldn’t be surprised. Accepting the fact that we are stewards on this farm for the Lord is turning this place upside down, or should I say right side up. It sure is different.

A few years ago I had a very hard time sleeping at night worrying about the family and farm. Thinking back, I knew that there was no way that this place would survive in the years to come. There was just no way in the mainstream agriculture world that we’d keep it going into the next generation. It’s a bad feeling when a person knows that this is the end, no more family growing up here in generations to come. People in our family would have to be absorbed into the modern anti family culture and everything we did all these years would be for nothing. I would pray to the Lord for help, for answers. This went on for quite a few years as we were farming basically by modern methods.

One thing I can say is that the Lord didn’t and doesn’t leave us hanging. The answers would come, in little bits at first. Little things that I never knew before. Like, how to make all our own feed, really that was the first thing that came to us, and it was awesome. Before we always bought all our feed concentrates and additives, a pretty penny to be sure. This worked and a person could make a living on feed savings alone. And how I found out, on an all night radio station from Dallas, Texas that I mistakenly tuned into. Next was when we started looking at modern farming and started to see what it really was, a dead end street. The whole system is built to slowly destroy a family farm. But a lifetime of propaganda from the ag system is hard to get out of our blood, but information would fall right into our lap that totally went against what big ag wanted us to do. By the late 90s the pace was picking up here, the farm went over 75% hay and grass ground instead of 75% crop ground. Expenses were shrinking, fast, and the farm was starting to come alive again. The last couple of years the Lord is really pouring it on, sometimes I stand in awe at the changes.

Thus the reason I’m behind on everything as far as this old computer goes. I apologize for not answering most of the comments as of late. And e-mails also. It’s different here with people stopping by all the time, touring or buying. Things should get caught up soon, but if they don’t that’s OK too. I figure all them years praying for an answer, and now it’s coming strong, we’d better follow up on what we prayed for. Life is good out here on the farm and we sure do Praise the Lord for taking care of us.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 20th, 2006 at 8:29 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.