SO
GOD
MADE
A
FARMER



Paul Harvey's 1978
'So God Made a Farmer'
Speech



And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and
said I need a caretaker-

So God made a Farmer

God said I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk the cows,
work all day in the field, milk cows again, eat supper then go to town
and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board –

So God made a Farmer

I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle a calf and yet gentle
enough to deliver his own grandchild; somebody to call hogs, tame
cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to await lunch until his
wife’s done feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies to be sure and
come back real soon, and mean it –

So God made a Farmer

God said I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt,
and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say maybe next year. I need somebody
who can shape an axe handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk
of car tire, who can make a harness out of hay wire, feed sacks and shoe
straps, who at planting time and harvest season will finish his forty hour
week by Tuesday noon and then, paining from tractor back, will put in another
72 hours –

So God made a Farmer

God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the
hay in ahead of the rain, and yet stop in midfield and race to help when he
sees first smoke from a neighbor’s place –

So God made a Farmer

God said I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet
gentle enough to wean lambs and pigs and tend to pink-combed pullets; who
will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadowlark.
It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners;
somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed, and rake and disk and plow and plant
and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and a
hard week’s work with a five-mile drive to church. Somebody who would bale
a family together with the soft, strong bonds of sharing; who would laugh
and then sigh, and then reply with smiling eyes when his son says he want
to spend his life doing what dad does –

So God made a Farmer


Paul Harvey's 1978 'So God Made a Farmer' Speech
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/paul-harveys-1978-so-god-made-a-farmer-speech/272816/




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