Last week I passed along a tweet from an AgChat friend about the many hats a farmer wears. When I read her blog post I got inspired to write about this topic as well.
From Jen Gillespie‘s Post entitled “A Farmer’s Many Hats” (click title to view the entire post)
“Although the number and type of ‘hats’ each farmer wears is different, you can bet your bottom dollar that every farmer you know has a least a dozen or so he (or she) has to put on at some point in any given week. Famers possess skills and knowledge not always recognized outside the industry. To those farmers, I tip my hat! : )”
My father is doing a health check on one of the cows on our farm. Cows get checked regularly just like we do at the doctor's.
Her blog inspiration came from a video that I find so important to pass along. It talks about the many jobs each farmer has.
The video was put together by Animal Ag Alliance and they are on Twitter and Facebook as well.
It reminds me that farmers are skilled individuals. I am taken back to one of my posts from this summer about an encounter at a Breakfast on the Farm (Agvocating at it’s Best). A young woman told me she never would have imagined a farmer to as educated as I was. The sad thing is, I see hundreds of farmers each week who are educated and masters at their craft.
Traditionally, farming has been seen as a career for the uneducated. In today’s fast moving and highly technical world an uneducated farmer is something that is hard to find. Do I necessarily mean educated as having a college degree, no. I can show you successful people with no college degree in almost any career field. Education isn’t just about going to college, it’s about furthering your knowledge.
The skills gained take hundreds of tries, many mistakes, dozens of questions and years, if not decades, of mentoring. There aren’t very many careers where being book smart isn’t going to get your far. It’s more about practice and having a good mentor or mentors because book knowledge only scratches the surface of animal and land husbandry. With this in mind, I also tip my hat to the farmers along with my friend Jill.
Ashley, thanks so much for including our video! Great post. You make some very important points- learning never stops for farmers. I don’t think that most people realize all of the challenging roles that farmers must fill in order to be successful (and feed us)!
-Sarah Hubbart
Animal Agriculture Alliance
Thank you so much Sarah! The video was great and I couldn’t resist sharing it. Keep up the great work at Animal Ag.
Great post and so true.
Thank you Thank you! I appreciate it.
Thanks for passing along this great video and mentioning my blog post!
You’re more than welcome Jill. I loved your post and it really did inspire me!