Northern Farmer

Today we’re getting the first real rain of the year in our neck of the woods and it’s welcome. It’s not a driving rain and should help the oats, alfalfa and grass that we have planted. So this is the first official Farmers Holiday of the season. Besides chores and an occasional check on the cow herd to see if any new calves are popping out, there’s not all that much to do. Well, I suppose I could work in the shop, but, naw. So this morning I went driving over to the good guy co-op a couple of miles from here to pay a alfalfa seed bill that I had there for the last couple of weeks, and the reason I even had a bill was the gal at the time wasn’t quite sure of the price and had to ask the manager when he got in later. You see, I bought the seed from them because the big name co-op charges from two to three times the price for the same seed. Soooo, I save almost a thousand dollars, eh. Not bad being a selective shopper. Anyway, after chowing down around a quart of salted peanuts at the co-op and shooting the bull for almost forty five minutes, (farmers have it rough), As I was about to leave, one of the guys that’s job is to forward contract for farmers came in and sat down on a stool beside me, (he doesn’t work for the co-op). So I shoved the ice cream pail of salted peanuts between him and me. He knows me and always has wanted to get a piece of our farms income, which is highly unlikely to happen by the way.

Now, I consider myself a small family farmer, even though we are in the top ten percent in the nation as far as the number of cattle we raise, and he knows it too. Well, he just can’t figure out why I don’t forward contract our cattle and be modern. He always gives me a big line about how I have to get with the times, besides, he needs a commission to pay off that new pickup parked outside, and pay for the gas too! He doesn’t have a pickup like mine; parked on the slope out front in case the starter won’t engage. Then I just push in the clutch, let er roll down the hill and start it second gear. We make do. As I crack open some more peanuts I have to ponder the situation as I’m in sitting on the barstool at the counter of the co-op. To put it bluntly, the guy wants what he thinks is his fair share of my income. It’s truthfully pretty hard to pry anything out of me if your from big ag though.

After politely listening to him for a couple minutes, I just had to say my feeling about marketing. I told him I already had a contract for all my critters. “With WHO?” he says, thinking, who finally got to Tom before me. I told him I contracted out everything to the Lord. It’s all in His hands and I just race to keep up with what He’s doing on the farm since He’s got the contract. Since getting my new Boss, I stand amazed at the incredible and rapid changes sweeping over the farm. I smile, heck I even jump up and down, my biggest job is trying to keep up with what the Boss is changing here. I can sleep at night knowing He’s taking care of everything for us. Everything and I mean everything falls into place, and so many times I’m playing catch up to what He’s implementing in our operation. Now, I know this will probably just get a laugh from a lot of folks, don’t matter to me though. I know what is happening around here, and it’s big!

This big ag representative is more than likely laughing this all off, more than likely thinks I’ve lost it between the ears. But I figure, so what, he wants to only take from us, the Boss wants to give. I’ll follow the Boss!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 28th, 2006 at 3:53 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.