Our nephew Nathan behind the wheel of a combine during wheat harvest.
Farmers and ranchers are some of the hardest working people I know, but most of us city folks don’t give much thought to where our food comes from. No, I don’t mean Kroger or Dillons.
My hubby, the Fix-it Farmer, and I are involved in agriculture in a few small ways because he didn’t want to lose touch with his roots. He grew up on a couple of farms. Shawn would come home from school to a list of farm chores and started driving tractors around age 10. Throughout middle and high school, he got up early and cared for calves before heading to class. Summers were spent harvesting wheat and tending to fall crops.
In Shawn’s early childhood, his dad John had a small farm near Wichita while he worked as an engineer. When Shawn was in the fifth grade, his family moved back to central Kansas to manage the Engelland family farm, and John returned to farming full time.
John is well suited to farm life, which comes loaded with uncertainty. Farmers are at the mercy of the weather and the markets. They also face pestilence, disease, equipment failures and bureaucratic red tape. John takes it all in stride.
Now that John is nearing 80, he’s slowed down just a little. He still does a lot of farm chores, but Shawn’s brother Mark manages the farming operation. Mark is the fifth generation of Engellands to farm. The family came to Kansas from an area on the border of Denmark and Germany, first purchasing land in 1871 through the Homestead Act.
Working cattle
Shawn wants to continue in the family business of agriculture. He often says to me, “I want to go be a cowboy.” For the last several years, we’ve owned a cow-calf herd that we pay another cowboy to manage. This time of year, mamas are having babies. In November or December, those calves are old enough to wean and sell.
John purchased our most recent group of calves. He drove a semi-truck down to southeastern Kansas, where the herd grazes in rolling pastures in the southern Flint Hills. Our cowboy Don did his annual mini roundup to gather the calves and helped load them up. Then John drove them back to his farm.
John checks the ramp before unloading cattle.
The cows that didn’t get pregnant are culled from the herd and sold at auction. To keep the total numbers about the same, we purchase more cows that are pregnant and occasionally a bull to replace an old one.
Shawn and his dad went to an auction during our fall trip to Kansas to buy some replacement cows and a newer model bull.
At Engelland Farms, they stayed in a pen near the old barn until Shawn and Mark could work them.
They worked the cattle at Christmastime. It involved coaxing them into a narrow working chute where one-by-one they got their brand with an electric branding iron, vaccinations and tagging with a plastic “earring” that shows their distinct number.
Sidebar: one Christmas when we were dating, Shawn gave me a brightly wrapped jewelry box that contained a pair of plastic yellow cow ear tags. Hilarious. Shawn wants me to mention that he gave me diamond stud earrings after the plastic.
While Mark and Shawn did the physical labor, I performed the role of secretary, writing down the cow’s age and “earring” number.
When we finished, Shawn and John loaded the animals in a red gooseneck cattle trailer behind a pickup and took them to a small pasture by the Sterling blacktop.
Shawn unloads cows to a pasture on a wind-blown, warm December day.
Because it was winter, John picked up got a couple of round bales of hay next to a tree row with a fork on the front of the John Deere tractor. Shawn used his pocket knife to cut the plastic netting off the bale. I helped him pull it away from the bales.
I got a bit of a surprise as the skeleton of a possum tangled in the netting bumped against my dusty jeans. Even the simplest of chores can yield opportunities to encounter nature.
And I think that’s one of the things a lot of farmers and ranchers appreciate the most. The connection to the land, the seasons and nature. Maybe not possum skeletons but the vibrant glow of a sunrise lighting up the horizon. A honking “V” of geese flying high overhead. A newborn calf taking its first wobbly steps. Dark storm clouds gathering over miles of amber wheat.
Farming and faith
Ranching and farming give us some great examples of what walking in faith means.
Raising crops and animals teaches patience. You can’t harvest without planting and waiting. Like humans, calves are born about nine months after conception. The seasons have a rhythm. You can’t hurry them along.
Dear brothers and sisters,be patient as you wait for the Lord’s return. Consider the farmers who patiently wait for the rains in the fall and in the spring. They eagerly look for the valuable harvest to ripen. – James 5:7
We rely on God for the outcome because some of it is out of our hands.
You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth. – Psalm 104:14
God calls us to be generous.
The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. – 2 Corinthians 9:6
What we do today impacts our future.
Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. – Galatians 6: 7-9
So I’ll ask you this, the next time you eat real food, think of the farmers and ranchers who worked to bring it to your table. Thank God for rain, sunshine and His loving provision.
