Assessing the value of a family farm

By February 1987, my widowed mother was managing the farm she and Dad purchased in 1937. To celebrate her 50 years on the farm, we four kids each wrote a tribute, because like many of you, we still had “farm blood” in our veins.

After pondering how tax assessors, historians, geologists, bankers or a busload of travelers might determine its value, I asked if anyone could know the value of a family farm.

In return for diligent toil, our farm fed six people well, but how many loaves of bread and boxes of cereal did our farm produce?

Whose heads bowed for grace before eating our beef, pork, chicken or lamb? Who wore our wools as they crossed streets in various parts of the world?

How had breads, cereals, milk, ice creams, eggs, cheeses and meats traced back to our farm improved, or even sustained, life?

Our farm provided more than food, income, more than a place to plant seeds and raise livestock.

That immoveable half section provided opportunities to develop character in those who chose to farm it.

When we needed encouragement, our farm came forth with row after row of green promises.

When we longed for pleasure, it let rustling winds play chase in its young green wheat and nodded the lane’s dewy morning glories and wild roses.

When we were ready for responsibility, it provided chores and 4-H projects.

When we wanted tranquility, it let us walk its fields or sit silently watching the ripples around a bobbing cork in its waters.

When we still felt like teasing, it hid us in its tall corn.

When we ought to be singing or praying aloud, it reverently prodded us while we headed flocks or herds toward shelter.

When we needed to think or daydream, it gave us solitary tasks. When we misunderstood accountability and the value of each other, it chastened us with tasks we could not do alone, making us less likely to wander.

When we needed beauty and peace, it showed us new colts, wobbly calves, frolicking lambs, full barns, frosty sunrises, tree silhouetted against sunsets, and oh, the majestic star-studded sky far, far above “our” piece of earth!

And when we needed to acknowledge that without God’s mercy and grace we are nothing, that life and possessions are temporary, it held its breath with us before the awful stillness of an approaching storm.

When we needed to comprehend resolve and responsibility, we witnessed the stability of our parents’ commitment to each other, their Lord, and their land.

Through it all, God was there working with us and in us, sometimes acknowledged and sometimes not.

Did we gain the most from good prices or bad ones?

Was it seeing heavy heads of grain, or those that shriveled in dry, hot winds, that taught us the most?

Did we develop gratefulness when it gently rained or when we carried irrigation pipes above our shoulders in tall corn?

Would we have less patience if cows had not broken fences, sheep had not become mired in muddy creeks, pigs had not chewed electric cords or machinery had sailed across harvest fields without a hard-to-fix repair?

Would our sleep be as peaceful, our character as strong, or our faith as deep, if our family farm days had required less of us?

We think we want success and ease, but a family farm’s challenges can make us work and hope together with patience, determination, a growing faith, and, then leave us with a priceless reservoir of very good memories and life lessons.

How can you place a value on that?

Marge Warder is a reporter and columnist for the Red Oak Express. She can be contacted at mawarder@yahoo.com.