Especially Tough

Mama

Today, as is the case most days, my mind was the equivalent of approximately 14,729 open browser tabs. At least half of those mind tabs are related in some way to agriculture. Today, my thoughts were about how agriculture needs to learn to get along, to play well together, to pull in the same direction for the good of our industry, and more importantly, for the good of the people we feed. I’ll go more into depth about my thoughts about that in another post, but today…well, today those thoughts were brought to a screeching halt by what’s going on in Kansas. In Colorado, in California, in Georgia…

I called my mom this evening, with a shaking voice, asking her to say a prayer with me.  There’s always a need for prayer in my life, but this evening, it was because I had seen one too many articles about the complete and total devastation that is burning across our prairies. Entire counties burned, family cattle herds wiped out, springtime calves who barely hit the ground before Mother Nature asked for them back.

My mom, who was in a grocery store in Utah, abandoned her cart and found a quiet corner to talk to me. In that quiet space, she prayed a beautiful, eloquent, heartfelt prayer for those people, those animals, the communities, the land, and for our nation. She asked for strength, for understanding, for peace, for kindness, for love, and for hope.

And while it was one of those prayers where you feel as though God is sitting right next to you, what struck me most were the words that first came out of her mouth. "God, You made farmers, and You made us especially tough."

Especially tough.

Especially tough.

Us.

My aggravation earlier in the day about ag not being enough of a team, of seemingly tearing itself apart from within vanished. We are often divided by our differences in this industry that we love, but days like today remind me that what we have in common, and what we stand to lose, bind us together tighter as a community than anything we let come between us.

It’s not about me and it’s not about you either. It’s about us. It’s about the collective we that is American agriculture. Let's put aside our differences. The fights about organic versus conventional. The fights about big versus small. The arguments about green and red and all the other inane chatter that fills our lives.

Let’s put aside our differences, and bow our heads for our neighbors and friends who are in unimaginable circumstances, and let them know that above all, we are all farmers, and God made us especially tough.