Lessons Learned from Working on a Farm; Things We aren’t Teaching Kids Today

The upper half of the Texas Panhandle is affectionately referred to as the “armpit of Oklahoma.” It is so called both because of geography and smell (from local feed yards). This is where my Grandparents lived, on the edge of a tiny German-founded town named Darrouzette. The days I spent on their farm were full of fun, but also hard work. We had cousin slumber parties, dance parties in the rain, and waffle dinners on Friday nights. But there were also chores to do—mowing lawns, feeding cattle, washing farm trucks, and cleaning out barns and garages. I learned how to bake cinnamon rolls and apple pie from scratch, can tomatoes, make potpourri from Grandma’s rose garden, sew by hand, shuck corn, drive a truck, back a trailer, and change a flat tire. But these skills, though valuable as they were, were not as important as the life lessons and principles I learned while working on the farm. Some of these lessons are ones I plan to pass on to my children:

1. The value of a dollar:

Pulling weeds, watering the garden and scrubbing cucumbers with the flat side of a butter knife in 90 degree Texas heat gave us enough time to think about how carefully we would spend our earnings. One long hour of work equaled five dollars of pay. My sister and I had a tradition when we were young. We would walk to a little country store called the Cottonwood Connection, full of knick-knacks and homemade crafts, as soon as we had our pay in our pockets. We would usually pick out a couple pieces of junk—purchases we were happy with about as long as it took to walk the few blocks back to my grandparent’s house. Were our new trinkets really worth the calluses and sunburns? Pretty soon we realized they weren’t. I started saving my hard-earned money after that revelation.

My parents, in their wisdom, taught me a simplified budget plan early in life. They gave me three jars labeled Save, Spend and Tithe and instructed me to put a minimum of ten percent of everything I earned in save, ten percent in tithe, and the rest could go in spend. When I was five years old I knew that for every dollar I received, a dime would go into both save and tithe and eighty cents into spend. I then opened a bank account when I was eleven years old and continued my budget by dividing the money into my separate bank accounts.

It seems like holding paper bills in my hands and physically dividing them this way was important for me to understand both the parameters and possibilities of money. Today children likely see adults handling cash less and less.They watch their parents whip out a credit card at the checkout line and think that plastic magically pays for things. Of course, kids probably don’t witness their parents paying the credit card bill each month.

We should look for ways to give our children accurate visuals of monetary transactions. For example, we could occasionally bring cash and a calculator to the store with us and let our children add up each item before getting to the register and let them give the money to the cashier, seeing how close their estimate was to the real total.

2. No cutting corners:

One of my jobs on the farm was mowing the lawn. I would slather on sunscreen and quickly regret my greasy skin when confronted with the legendary winds of the Texas plains. The dirt and grass from the lawnmower would baste me brown and for the next several days I would blow dirt out of my nose.

It was customary for my Grandpa George to come outside to “inspect my work” when I was done. I’ll always remember the time he told me that I had “cut all the corners”—literally turning too soon each time so that there were rows of tall grass in all four corners of the field. He told me to go back and cut the shaggy corners before he would pay me. This lesson made a huge impression on me. If I wanted my money, I would have to do the job right.

With our children perhaps, we could make it a habit to “inspect their work” after they complete their chores or homework, and lovingly address their mistakes. Not only does this help them learn to receive constructive criticism well, but also to understand the importance of doing a job right. Cutting corners in small things can lead to cutting corners in big things. When our kids are grown and have adult jobs and a larger sphere of influence it will be important that they are equipped with the habit of completing tasks well.

3. Do the hard things:

When I was young I thought the things done to cattle on the farm were barbaric. The calves were branded in the hindquarters with hot pokers, tagged in the ear with metal number tags, vaccinated in the neck with huge basting needles, and the bull calves were turned into steers (I won’t go into the details of that process). But I learned when I was older that each painful event for a calf served an important purpose. Branding a calf with the symbol or letter of the farmer and tagging his ear with a number kept him from being stolen or lost. These identifiers helped the farmer to keep track of him and link him with his siblings and parents to avoid inbreeding. Vaccinations prevented whole herds from being wiped out from diseases. Turning bulls into steers helped to keep aggression at bay and to control the population of the herd. The first time I helped with the branding and tagging and other things it seemed cruel. But the calves survived and I survived and the order of the farm continued.

It might be difficult for us to watch our children doing and going through hard things. But if we navigate the difficult experiences with them and challenge them to follow through to the end they will grow exponentially more than if we swoop in and rescue them from those difficulties.

4. It’s okay to be bored:

The longest, most boring day of my life was probably one of the greatest days of my childhood. I rode on a combine in a wheat field with my dad all day long, sometimes in his lap and sometimes on the dusty floor. We drank jugs of water and would sweat it all out, rarely, if ever, using the bathroom that day. There wasn’t a radio in the cab of the combine, and I didn’t have an iPad, smartphone or even a book. There were only rows and rows of uncut wheat in front of me. At the end of the day when the wheat had been transferred through a shoot into the bed of a huge truck I would do cannon balls into the kernels and cover my body, much like being under sand at the beach. What a fun reward after such a boring, hot day.

Screen time, as we know it today, didn’t exist when I was a kid. No tablets, laptops, or portable DVD players. We played outside and discovered fun in the midst of boring afternoons. A USA Today article I read recently contained a survey saying that small children today are spending about triple the amount of time on devices as they did four years ago. And a statistic from Sanford WebMD says that the average time a typical teenager today spends in front of a screen is seven hours. That’s almost a full work day! Let’s send our kids outside and leave them there until they are tired and dirty. Let’s think about giving short increments of screen time as rewards instead of expected entertainment. Let’s tell and show our kids that it is okay to be bored and see how creative they become.

5. Kids are capable of more than we think:

I began driving at the age of seven. Granted, it was on my dad’s lap, so it was actually more “steering,” but by age twelve or thirteen I was driving through the farm fields solo while my dad or brother tossed hay bales off the bed of the truck. I occasionally drove through Darrouzette (which boasted a population of 366) by myself at that age. Was it legal in that tiny German town? Of course not! But was it fun and amazing? Of course it was! My parents and grandparents trusted me (and trusted that a cop wouldn’t drive through town at the same time). They taught me how to drive, and to obey speed limits and to use turn signals and all the things that go with it, so they could trust me.

My Grandma Fay knew I took piano lessons so she asked me (or rather strongly encouraged me) to play for her little country church on Sundays. At the age of twelve I was the sole musician of their church—accompanying the twenty to thirty congregassional members with hymns on the piano. I was always terrified to play, but the promise of a ten dollar bill from my grandma helped still my nerves, a little.

There are many age appropriate tasks that we can ask our children to do. Or those tasks can be broken down into manageable parts for them accomplish. Our four year-old son has started helping wash his own laundry and our two year-old loves to “do the dishes” and help me cook dinner. Does it take ten times longer when they are helping? Yes, frustratingly it does. But if we will have patience and begin expecting more of our children at a young age they will hopefully rise to the occasion with each new challenge. By the time they are adults and are no longer under our direct influence hopefully they won’t be able to use the term “adulting” as a negative adjective or as an excuse for not knowing the basics of independent living.

I count myself blessed to have had such insightful parents and grandparents. They taught me so much and made the process fun, most of the time. Though I learned a lot of these life lessons on a farm I know that the same lessons can be taught anywhere, anytime to anyone ready to learn. Let’s start teaching them.