Farming fathers are the best kind - Editorial Notebook

The flow of news releases about Father’s Day gifts increased as the day drew closer. (It’s June 21, if you’re wondering.)

It can be difficult to find gifts for my formerly farming father, so I read one from sortprice.com. It suggested: Dolce & Gabbana cologne; an espresso machine; running shoes; and an MP3 player.

All I can say is, these folks do not know my dad and others of his generation.

My dad uses the occasional splash of Stetson. It’s available in drugstores so there’s no need to visit high-falutin designer places.

Read Also

Producers face the reality of shifting grain price expectations

Significant price shifts have occurred in various grains as compared to what was expected at the beginning of the calendar year. Crop insurance prices can be used as a base for the changes.

He doesn’t drink coffee and if he did, he’d drink the kind with no frills. He doesn’t run.

And the MP3 player idea is laughable. He rarely listens to music and like many of his generation, he doesn’t use a computer or an iPod or a smart phone or anything else electronic that isn’t necessary to life. (The television remote control, incidentally, is necessary to life.)

Also like many of his generation, he believes in the value of hard work, that any job worth doing is worth doing well, that there is no substitute for honesty and that learning to do by doing is a crackerjack method. Allow me to illustrate the latter philosophy.

Dad decided it was time I learned how to run the baler. Ten or 12 years old is plenty old enough. We drove to a distant hay field, where Dad introduced me to the John Deere 3020 and its attached baler, designed to spit out small squares at regular intervals.

He started up the tractor and demonstrated the brakes, the throttle and the power takeoff. Then he showed me the tines, the pickup, the knotter and the proper splicing method should a new box of twine be needed.

Then we drove once around the field. It was most, if not all, of a quarter section, so it took a little while. First Dad drove and then I drove. Once we returned to our starting point, Dad hopped off the moving tractor, jumped in the pickup and drove away.

I clung to that tractor like grim death.

I was attuned to every movement, every chug, every ping, every expulsion of a bale. With a white-knuckled grip at two mph, I guided the rig up and down swaths until the sun set over the Livingstone Range.

Dad showed up then, leaped aboard, shut down the rig and took me home.

Over the supper table, he bragged about me to my mom. How I’d done so well. How I clearly had a talent for farm equipment operation. How I’d had no trouble at all with this new and useful task.

I basked in his praise.

And never mentioned, even to this day, that he hadn’t really shown me how to stop the thing.

Happy Fathers Day to all you farming fathers out there.