So God made a farmer

On Canada's Agriculture Day, thank you to the farmers who bring food from their fields to our forks.

Transcript

00:00And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said I need a

00:09caretaker. So God made a farmer. God said I need somebody willing to get up before

00:16dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper, then

00:20go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board. So God made

00:23a farmer. I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle a calf and yet

00:27gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame

00:31cantankerous machinery, come home hungry. God said I need somebody willing to sit

00:36up all night with a newborn colt and watch it die and dry his eyes and say

00:41maybe next year. I need somebody who can shave an axe handle from a persimmon

00:45sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of hay

00:49wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps, who planting time and harvest season will

00:53finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon and then paint him from tractor back, put

00:57in another 72 hours. So God made a farmer. God had to have somebody willing

01:05to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and

01:08yet stop in midfield and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a

01:11neighbor's place. So God made a farmer. God said I need somebody strong enough

01:17to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to yeen lambs and wean

01:21pigs and tend the pink-combed bullets who will stop his mower for an hour to

01:25splint the broken leg of a meadowlark. It had to be somebody who'd plow deep

01:29and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and

01:33rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and

01:37replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with a five-mile drive

01:41to church. Somebody who'd bale a family together with a soft strong bonds of

01:47sharing, who would laugh and then sigh and then reply with smiling eyes when

01:56his son says he wants to spend his life doing what dad does.

02:04So God made a farmer.

02:09What do we got here? Look at that. Beautiful potatoes. Beautiful potatoes. PEI potatoes, the

02:16best in the world. Best in the world.