Prairie Ramblings

25 Symptoms to Diagnose if You Have Farmeritis

By Tracy Sayler

Commodity prices continue to ferment in their septic tanks or trading pits, however you want to call them. The weather outlook is either too wet or too dry. It seems like it takes the blessing of three lenders and a preacher to buy a gallon of herbicide, let alone afford the cost of machinery and fuel to apply the stuff. Throw in wacky stuff like foot and mouth disease and biotech to worry about.  Yet here it is, another spring, and the warming soil beckons like beautiful sirens to the sailors of myth, and once again, off you’ll go to dig in the dirt. 

Lord knows you must be a farmer.

Here’s a checklist of 25 symptoms to make an even more accurate diagnosis to determine if you’re afflicted with “farmer-itis.” I received the list by email and you might have seen some of these symptoms before, but others are new.  The original author, unknown to me but whom I would guess has been a lifelong carrier of the farmeritis bug, concluded the list by writing that “even if you were given one million dollars, you would keep on farming. You’d farm differently, but you’d keep farming, because that is who and what you are. God bless our farmers.” 

Amen to that.

You May Be A Farmer If:
1. When you were little, you got into a fight with another kid on the school bus arguing over the color of tractors.

2. You can remember the fertilizer rate, seed population, herbicide rate, and yields on a farm you rented 10 years ago, but cannot recall your wife’s birthday.

3. You wear specific hats to farm sales, livestock auctions, customer appreciation suppers, and vacations.

4. Family weddings and special events are planned around spring planting and fall harvest.

5. You have animals (or equipment) in buildings more expensive than your house.

6. You’ve been stopped by the deputy sheriff for a cluttered dashboard.

7. The rusted out areas of your truck are sealed off with old T-shirts or duct tape.

8. Your family instantly becomes silent when the weather or markets come on the news.

9. You have ever had to wash off in the backyard with a garden hose before your wife would let you in the house.

10. You have ever conducted business while having someone ride along in the tractor during fieldwork.

11. The excuse you or your kids have ever used to skip school is that the cows got out.

12. Your prayers have included rain and the markets.

13. You listen to Paul Harvey every day and never get tired of him saying “Gooooood day.”

14. For fun, you cruise slowly through implement lots.

15. Your nearest neighbor is in the next section, (and you know what a section is).

16. You’ve never thrown away a five-gallon bucket.

17. You have used baling wire to attach a license plate.

18. You have driven off the road while examining your neighbor’s crops.

19. You have borrowed gravel from the county road to fill potholes in your driveway.

20. You’ve used the same knife to make bull calves into steers and peel apples.

21. You refer to farms by who owned them 20 or more years ago.

22. You’ve ever been scolded by your wife for using the vacuum to clean out the grain drill, or the good house broom to sweep a grain bin.

23. You learned how to drive a tractor before learning how to ride a bike.

24. You convince your wife that an overnight, out-of-state trip for parts or an auction sale is a vacation.

25. You can tell it’s a farmer working late in the field, know who it is and what they’re doing, and not think it’s someone up to mischief.

The views in this column are those of the author, and not of Prairie Grains, the associations that publish it, or the makers of rich, chocolatey Ovaltine.  The author encourages suggestions and input on this column from readers, which may be emailed to tsayler@prairieagcomm.com.