The View Off My Porch

I ate breakfast on the porch this morning, as I nearly always do when the weather permits.  The Kinsey area of the Yellowstone Valley is covered with tall corn, and green Alfalfa, Pinto Beans, Sugar Beets, and Potatoes all nearing harvest.  It is a beautiful sight.  Down the road, one of the neighbors is getting his second cutting of Alfalfa started, and a little farther down there is a stand of grain ready to be harvested.  My few chickens cluck happily in their soon to be enlarged pen. We are truly blessed to live in a place where we can witness the bounty of  a fruitful nation.

I have always loved the great national hymn "America The Beautiful."

Oh beautiful far spacious skies
Oer amber waves of grain
Oer purple mountains majesty

Above the fruited plain
 America, America,
God shed his grace on thee

And crowned thy good
With brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

Of course we still have to work on that "brotherhood" part, but we're working on it. That is something I'll reserve for another blog.

I am proud of my agricultural roots. I'm happy to be a witness to, and a part of, the system that feeds our nation, and an otherwise starving world. I work in the harvest hauling cut corn to a silo for silage to feed cattle through the winter, so that you can have a delicious steak for dinner. I also haul Sugar Beets from the field to a marshaling station called a "piler," so you can have sugar in your coffee or to pour on your American grown cereal.

All of this costs money. The farmer has to plow, buy seed, plant, cultivate, water, and harvest his crop. He has to pay me, and others like me to help in the harvest. He has to buy and maintain terribly expensive machinery, and buy terribly expensive fuel for those machines.

Then he is dependent upon a bunch of gamblers in the commodities market to tell him how much he will get for his crop. In the end, he barely has enough to cover the loans (with big interest) to pay for all of the above, and feed his family.  Farmer's daughters and sons like pretty clothes, and cell phones just like the offspring of "townies." whose parents work for wages, and pretty well know how much they will be getting at the end of the year.

But you know what? the vast majority of us wouldn't have it any other way. I was reared on a cattle ranch. Dad had to work an outside job just to keep the three of us fed and clothed. He hated that, but knew that it was necessary to the operation of the ranch. Besides, girls object to wearing flour sack dresses to the junior prom. And have you seen the price of shoes?

My Dad, and my Mother at his side, would have no more left the ranch than cut off their arm. That land is a part of them as much as they are a part of that land.

Dad's gone on now, but Mama is still on the ranch, and when it's time for her to leave, her body will be buried alongside his on the land they loved. The land they nurtured, preserved, and from which they fed our nation, and an otherwise starving world.

So I just want to ask you to join me, as I sit and enjoy the view off my porch, to pray a prayer of thanksgiving and protection for those engaged in agriculture. From sea to shining sea.

God bless our farmers and ranchers.

Agape
Lee