Former presidential candidate said anyone can be a farmer

In a 2016 video from a talk at Oxford University, (Michael) Bloomberg said, “I could teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer.” The former New York City mayor continued, “It’s a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.”

Well, it’s not quite as simple as the former New York City mayor and 2020 presidential candidate made farming out to be.

Perhaps the narration of the late Paul Harvey said it best when he read why there are farmers. (Some of Harvey’s references to farming techniques have been modified. Now farmers disc or chisel plow rather than deep plow.) However, the

message is profound…farming is not something one does in an expensive suit behind a desk in New York City.

 “So, God Made a Farmer”

As narrated by Paul Harvey

 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 to get up before dawn and milk cows and work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board. So, God made a farmer!

 I need somebody with strong arms. Strong enough to rustle a calf, yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry and have to wait for lunch until his wife is done feeding and visiting with the ladies and telling them to be sure to come back real soon…and mean it. So, God made a farmer!

God said, “I need somebody that can shape an ax handle, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire make a harness out of hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And…who, at planting time and harvest season, will finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon. Then, pain’n from “tractor back” 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 clouds and yet stop on mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor’s place. So, God made a farmer!

God said, “I need somebody strong enough to clear trees, heave bails and yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink combed pullets…and who will stop his mower for an hour to mend the broken leg of a meadow lark. So, God made a farmer!

It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight…and not cut corners. Somebody to seed and weed, feed and breed…and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk. Somebody to replenish the self-feeder and then finish a hard days work with a five-mile drive to church. Somebody who’d bale a family together with the soft strong bond of sharing, who’d laugh and then sigh…and then respond with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life “doing what dad does”. So, God made a farmer!