The Art Of Try

               Being a farmer can be hard lonely work, usually when you find yourself deep in the weeds, alone, needing a third hand and an extra foot while taking a deep breath praying for more strength. That's when you feel the most alone, when you need help, anyone's help. You would pay the dog to stop looking at you like that and just dang well hold this. But that is what brings us to the art of the try..

Trying is an easy concept. When I was a kid you did your best and if you still did not win then you might not have worked hard enough to be the best. Now, on being a farmer, I bust my butt to work as hard as the day is long, and sometimes that just isn't enough. I feel at the end of the day that I have no more to give.

Farming will teach you that no matter how you feel about it you will get up the next day, you will continue to try to do your best work. You will try with all you have, and you will learn to push further. Because that is what it takes

If you just cannot see past how to get a job done without help, and a mare is having problems giving birth, that calf won't stand to nurse, the tractor just wont turn over or that barbed wire gate is never getting long enough to close no matter how fast the critters are running in. You don't get to leave it. The choice is not to just say I tried.

YOU stick your arm where it doesn't belong to reach the foal, you grunt push holler and lug that calf to the barn, you hold a torch under the oil pan, you whip off your shirt and tie that gate closed and you get the job done.

This is more than a job. This is your life, being responsible for life. Whether it grows in the dirt or eats what grows from the dirt, protecting promoting and producing the life of what you have committed to farming is your life. Weekends, holidays heck what is a Stat? Sick, tired, hurting all over you drag yourself up out of your bed to face the day. You are living a dream for some and when you are deep in the weeds holding on by a thread, thinking I just have no more to give.

Draw on the fact that you my friend have try.

You have tried the simple way, the short cut, the way that common sense told you to. Then there is the hard way, the long way, the way that makes no sense. You have tried it another way, you have tried to ask for advice, for help and tried to work out any process in which to make it possible. You will try to find the money, the courage, the strength. You will find you will try to be in five places at once, and you will try to be the best you have ever been. Because you need to know that you have tried.

And when you are a farmer and all options have been exhausted and you’re simply just so worn out from trying so damn hard

That my fellow farmers is simply when you…

Try Harder.