my father in law had a few things to write Kit recently. I am not sure if it will be published, so I will add it on here.
Dear Kit,
I feel the need to challenge you on some statements you have been making in your newsletters. You imply that unless our farm operations are run strictly as a business for profit, we will fail. If we don't run the type of cattle according to your specifications, we will fail. If we do not run our cattle operation according to how you instruct us, we will fail.
I would like to say that I will be 70 years old in the spring, and I have been farming as far back as I can remember. You might say, from the day I was born, the love of farming was in my person. I have never farmed because it is a business or for profit, but rather, it was a way of life I loved. Who can deny the pleasure a man feels in seeing a newborn calf?
Am I a failure because I don't see farming as a business? or for profit? When I'm out there sowing crops, harvesting crops, cutting hay, baling hay, feeding cattle, I'm totally indulged in the pleasure of it. It is my business, I have total control of it. I find tremendous pleasure in it, more now than ever as I understand the fact of the independence that I have. I'm rewarded according to my successes and I learn from my mistakes. I do things for my own pleasure. Isn't that in itself the reward, the promise?
I'd also like to say that in all the years of my farming, it's been a way of life in the sense of my independence, and I've lived free from government subsidies for many years. There is great reward and satisfaction in seeing what I have done with my own hands, through my own thinking, my own ideas. Is there no virtue in that? Am I doomed to failure because I make it a material thing? Is there not a spiritual reward? Besides, won't a person do a better job if he loves what he is doing and isn't doing it just for the money?
Seems our whole modern society is built upon making us dependent upon someone else rather than to be taught about the privilege of thinking for ourselves and seeking out our own way of doing things.
Jerry Plett
Lincolnville KS