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Show TRIBUTE TO THE NATIONS FARMERS With the recent bad weather wea-ther bringing a halt to farming farm-ing operations, and in light of the fact many of the local lo-cal agri -producers have just about wrapped up their chores. We thought a Lit-eraty Lit-eraty Piece we found in the 'Unionville Republican' pretty well summed up the life of the farmer and would like to share it with you. WHAT ARE FARMERS MADE OF? A farmers is a man who wears out two pair of overalls growing enough wheat to buy another pair. Farmers are made of bent nails, staples, nuts and bolts and held together with baling bal-ing wire and callouses. At planting time and harvest har-vest time he finishes his 40 -hour week by Tuesday noon. He loads his planter with $1500 of seed, fertilizer, herbicide and insecticide -and that's one hour's worth. In a normal farm afternoon, after-noon, 1 to 10 p.m., he'll bury over $13,500 in the ground. Odds are it'll get too wet or too dry - or there'll be hail, wind, early ear-ly frost, early snow, bugs, brickbats and bureaucrats. If he gets a good crop he won't meet expenses. Still the only lines on his face are from grinning. A farmer orders a new disc for $5,000, by the time it's delivered it's $6,500. He's got a $40,000 combine com-bine needing repairs, Its 5:30 in the afternoon and the machinery store is closed and he's got four more hours of daylight and 300 acres of wheat to cut. So he borrows his neighbors neigh-bors combine and is moving it down the highway when he's run into the ditch by some joker in a camper towing a boat. A farmer starts every year with nothing and at the end of the year sometimes comes out even. Nobody knows how he does it. He doesn't know himself. The economist says the smartest man in the world would starve doingthat. He's right, the smartest man would! But not. the farmer. His wife won't let him. She has a basic menu: She serves what she has. In a good year that means four vegetables, steak and apple pie at one meal, but in lean years it means a pot of navy beans cooked with bacon rinds. The farmer is the world's most stubborn optimist. He believes that if he's come this far he can go the rest of the way. He buries last year's disappointments with I spring plowing because his faith is not in himself alone. ' He'll finish an 80 hour l work week with a five mile ' drive to church. He plants i In hope, cultivates in faith ' and ends in debt then starts over again with renewed re-newed hope and stronger faith. Heaven help the nation that ) doesn't have him to support it! |