Farming: The Importance of Showing Up
This past month, I have been working on a presentation for our men’s church group that walks through my life, focusing on how I came to know God. I felt it was essential to include a slide about my experience growing up on our family farm and that got me reflecting back on some of the important lessons I received growing up on a farm.
Our dad worked with my grandpa and uncle, raising corn, soybeans, cattle, and hogs. Dad would have my brothers and me come out and help him in various ways. The memories that stand out most were when we helped walk beans in the summer. Walking beans is when you walk up and down the rows of the bean field, pulling or cutting weeds to clean it up. If you didn’t do that, the weeds would grow to a size that could damage the combine when you harvested beans in the fall.
Dad would hire a couple of our friends to work with my brothers and me to help us walk beans. On those early mornings, Dad would drive into town and bring back glazed twist donuts – our reward after we finished one round of going up and down the field. We would usually stop walking by lunchtime before it started getting hot. Then we would all head back to our house, where Mom would make hamburgers and iced tea for us which always hit the spot. After lunch, we kids would go out to the makeshift baseball field/backstop on our farm and play for hours until we had little league practice or a game that night.
We also baled hay in the summer, which was harder work. The square bales typically weigh around 60-70 lbs., which was a lot considering our size in our junior high/early high school years. If you were on the rack, you had a hook that you would use to pull the bale from the chute of the baler and then stack it. Barn duty was more demanding because, while it was hot outside, it was even warmer in the barn with no air movement.
But I always thought taking care of the livestock was the most work. Taking care of the cattle and hogs seemed to never stop. Dad needed to go out and do the chores, whether it was 100 degrees or a windchill of -40. I remember the time when cattle got out of the yard right as our family was leaving for our annual summer vacation. We had to stop and help get them back in before we could go. And a lot of times, the animals were not cooperative when we were moving them, especially the hogs. It seemed you could get all the hogs loaded in the trailer except for one. It was like the hogs had a secret pact that if they were the last ones to load, they would make it difficult for us to finish the job.
My brothers and I were never big fans of working on the farm as kids. None of us participated in 4H or showed animals at the local county fair. But, as I reflected back on what this meant for my life, I would not have wanted to grow up any other way. Even though I work in the white-collar field of computers, there are a couple of big lessons I took from farming that played a huge part in any success I have had.
“Quick and Dirty” Solutions
I always admired the way that my dad could work through problems. And there was no shortage of them on the farm. Machinery would break down at the absolute worst times, like when we were planting in the spring or harvesting in the fall. My dad, grandpa, and uncle would work on getting the combine back up and running, sometimes working well past dark. Fences broke, water wells froze, and cattle would get too warm during brutal summer days. You didn’t always have the ideal tool to fix the latest problem. You used your imagination to make something work until you could come back and make it better.
In computers, you sometimes need to push through a problem and use a “quick and dirty” solution. Many computer programmers get obsessed with having the perfect solution to do minimal work. Many programmer colleagues have been frustrated with me over the years because I probably opt too quickly for the “quick and dirty” way. They hate that my solution is not optimized for max efficiency. But a lot of people turn to me for guidance when there is an urgent issue, because they know I will come through with something that will work. And I know where I learned that.
Showing Up
Above all, the farm taught us how important it was to show up. The farm didn’t stop because you had a headache and weren’t feeling 100%. Or you didn’t want to go out into the cold wind to carry pails of grain to the hogs.
When I was 13, I got a brand new red Yamaha Jog moped. It could go over 40 mph, while most scooters (like the Honda Spree) maxed out at 25 mph. One Sunday afternoon, a friend came out on a surprise visit to our farm on his moped to ride with me. It was such a spur-of-the-moment thing that I didn’t even bother to run to the house to put my shoes on. At that time, I had only slowly driven around the yard. I had not yet ventured out on the road, so this was new. We drove down our blacktop road and turned into a dirt road not far from our house. We started racing, and, of course, I wanted to win.
I hit a loose piece of gravel on the dirt road and wrecked my new moped. My immediate concern was my vehicle which now had wires protruding from the headlight and multiple dents. I then looked down and saw a bright red circle on my left front side where the skin was gone. It was as bright as an apple. My feet were all scraped up, and I felt sore. Fortunately, I did not break any bones, but I was not in a good place physically or mentally. My friend rode back to the house to tell my parents, and my dad came by to pick up me and my damaged scooter.
This happened during the time of year when we were walking beans. Early the next morning, Mom called upstairs to wake us up. I remember thinking I might not have to work that day because of the accident. I still was upset about the wreck, but at least I had a day off. But when I walked into the dining room, I saw that my mom had set out my blue jeans and work shoes on my chair at the kitchen table. I was sore and wasn’t going to be 100% that day, but my parents wanted me to push through it.
It might sound silly, but that memory has stuck with me over the past 30+ years. I fall back on it whenever I feel like calling in sick or don’t feel like doing something. It helped me stay with wrestling in my freshman year of high school when I was 20 pounds too light for the lowest weight class and got pinned a lot. It stopped me from switching my college major from computer science to an easier major when I wasn’t getting the straight A’s I got in high school. And it has helped me get back up and push forward every time our company suffers the inevitable setbacks in business.
And, while I thought those times were tough, they were nothing compared to when my wife had cancer. Thank God that I had some past life stories to draw from so I could be stronger for my wife and children during that time.
I can count the number of days I have missed work on my hand. Much of that is due to my being born with good genes and taking good care of myself. But it is also about showing up and being on the front lines when there is a big problem. Not only at work but most of all for your family and friends during life’s toughest times.
We live in a time now when more people than ever are not showing up. The world was trending that way, and then covid shoved it into overdrive. People who take unemployment rather than look for work. High-paid, white-collar people who sit at home working on their computers in their pajamas, many who don’t even want to turn their cameras on anymore. Organizations that cancel events early, before it even snows, trusting the weatherman’s forecast rather than “risk” driving in an inch or two of snow.
One of my biggest fears is that my kids grow up too soft. While we don’t have the benefit of growing up on a farm, I look for every opportunity to push them when they don’t feel perfect. I get them out on the mound to pitch for their team when they are not feeling great. I nudge them to attend practice when they’re not feeling well, when it would be easier to rest on the couch. I drive to Iowa with them to see our family for Christmas when the Weather Channel is showing looping accident footage to scare everybody to stay home from fearsome winter storm “Elliott.”
One positive was that I did not have to contend with much traffic on the roads that day.
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