I spent eighteen years growing up on a farm. There is one underlying theme...which I stressed to my son when I brought him over to visit the farm on numerous occasions...you can make one simple mistake and get killed by it. Every kid who graduates from growing up on a farm....has an appreciation of living and what it takes to survive.
A farm kid can analyze and give you the odds of doing something stupid and the odds of getting injured or hurt. In the end...we all know about this thing called “acceptable risks”. A farm kid is willing by age fifteen to go out and do some fairly dangerous things, and knows he’ll survive. By age eighteen....he’s done more things to get killed than half the guys in the Army today.
A farm kid knows the value of duct tape. A farm kid knows the character and suffering of a hurt animal. A farm kid seeks shelter in a lightning storm because it’s the right to do. A farm kid knows to continually scan across high grass for copperhead snakes. A farm kid worries about maintenance for dad’s tractor because if it fails...the family farm is in jeopardy.
What you have are a bunch of government guys who never stepped foot on farm....who want to make rules over it. Kinda like some liberal arts professor who wants to fix the NCAA bowl selection business.
Don't forget the bailing wire!
Amen. As the son of a farmer, I learned more on the farm than in engineering school. A maintenance guy asked why I was will to work with nasty chemicals in some rather horrible areas. I said there isn't anything I will do in my adult life that is harder than what I had to for 18 years on the hog farm.