When your dad is a farmer, you experience life a little differently. There are things you just don’t ask, things you just can't know and things you just won't forget. Sometimes you feel like you can't take him anywhere and sometimes you can't help but just laugh.
You get to learn things that you can't explain to anyone, and that is what is special. You get to see the hard work, the diligence and the passion first-hand. But along the way, it is easy to get frustrated with the bull headed guys.
“Can we go on a vacation?” His reply: “Corn is at $3, why don't we just go to the zoo?"
Dad’s birthday and Christmas presents consist of audio books to listen to in the combine during harvest.
You must drop everything when you hear, “I need a ride to my truck in the field.”
For a person who handles that much money throughout a year, they are sticklers when it comes to spending money on a new pair of Merrells.
When you ask him how is day was you always hear, “Well I only broke down once today.”
There are only the blue (shop, rough and tough towels) paper towels in every vehicle.
Their weekend runs from mid January through February. Other than that, they are working.
The best snacks are out in the tack room.
When you pass a livestock truck on the highway you immediately think of the "smell of money”
You always have a tractor to drive when it is “drive your tractor to school day.”
You have free stuff from seed companies everywhere.
They order their jeans and shirts off amazon (I don't know whether to be proud or concerned).
When you go to get your driver's license they do not know you have been driving for 8 years previously.
After a tornado or a thunderstorm, you immediately go check the fields.
Who needs a weather app when you have a farmer?
“What is your birthday wish?” Every year it is, “Rain and $4 corn.”
He makes “corny” jokes. Just like I just did.
You have stopped on road trips to look a planter for sale.
When you are going through a crowd, your dad acts like he is moving cattle.
Nothing is more thrilling than a wild ride on the four wheeler putting cattle back in the pen.
Your dad thought that a demonstration on castration would be a great school project, and it was...
When your kitten is sick and near death, Dad decides to give it cattle antibiotics. They always live to be bigger than the other ones.
When a seed truck driver has no problem with a junior high girl being designated forklift driver.
Yes, the guns are out when boys come around. This is not just in movies.
You laugh at the "organic" section in the grocery store.
Dad is ALWAYS happy when it rains.
You use cash when you go to Chipotle so dad doesn't see it on the credit card bill.
When you see something you like in the furniture store, he always says, "Oh I can make that."
They are hard workers, good learners and even better role models. Without a farmer as a dad, I would not know how to handle life's hardest situations or hardest calves to break (tame). Thank you, dad, for all of your realistic humor and your redneck ways to think outside of the box.
When your dad is a farmer, you learn how to go to the bathroom outside and other tools you will never know when they will come in handy. And mostly, you learn self confidence when you realize that, on the farm, you could be the only person there to get the job done.
