"So God Made a Farmer" - Paul Harvey

I listened to Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story" for many years and always looked forward to his newest one. This one, however, I missed.

We are not professional football fans, and, except for David, do not generally watch the Super Bowl. In fact, Super Bowl Sunday is just another day in our house. However, apparently this year's Super Bowl made quite a bit of splash. The splash did not involve two brothers, or fictitious girl friends, it involved the farmer.

Sunday evening Danielle brought her computer down to our house and showed me the Super Bowl Dodge Ram commercial. It was already on YouTube and other places on the internet. Today, as I checked into my hotel, I picked up today's edition of USA Today, and the front page consisted of ... an advertisement. Four full pages of Paul Harvey's "So God Made a Farmer".

I do not know how many Dodge Ram pickups will be sold off of the ad (we have Fords and are quite happy), but the ad definitely gave credence to the American farmer. In many ways, it reminded me of my paternal grandfather, who ran a small dairy farm while he was a full-time trucker for a gasoline company. I just could not neglect to post this on this farm blog - and hope that I can someday live up to these words.

Donald Baker

Here's the text of Paul Harvey's 1978 'So God Made a Farmer' Speech, which inspired the Ram Trucks Super Bowl ad that has resonated with so many Americans:


And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, 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 arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon -- and mean it." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt. And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, 'Maybe next year.' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain'n from 'tractor back,' put in another seventy-two 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 in 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 and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with a five-mile drive to church.

"Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life 'doing what dad does.'" So God made a farmer.

God Bless Farmers!