Celebrating Our Farmer Fathers

June is here and that means it is time to start planning for Father’s Day. Father’s Day always falls on the third Sunday in June, which happens to be the 16th this year. The idea of Father’s Day is to honor and celebrate all fathers and to recognize the contribution that fathers and father figures make on the lives of their children. The very first Father’s Day was celebrated on June 19th way back in 1910 and was founded in Spokane, Washington by Sonora Smart Dodd. Her father, the Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, was a single parent who raised his six children.

When I think of Father’s Day, I can’t help but think of farmers. Farmer dads are the hard-working, up before dawn dads that always have dirty, grease stained hands, even if he just washed and scrubbed those hands. Those stained hands come from years of wrenching on equipment, elbow deep in grease, keeping everything running smoothly on the farm so they can provide for their family.

Farmer dads are not your typical dads for more than just their grease stained hands. For example, those few times we do get him off the farm, he’s the one studying the atlas double checking the road map options on how to get to where we’re going. We all just punch the address into our phone or vehicle navigation system - but he doesn’t trust that and needs to study it himself with his faded atlas with the ripped and worn pages because the cover fell off years ago. He’s also the only one on vacation at an amusement park still using an old fashioned park map unfolded covering his whole face as he plans our complete route for the day. Everyone else uses the park map app on their smartphones but once again “change is bad” and he’d rather see it all on the paper in front of him. As for me, I can’t even fold the map back into the proper creases!

After this crazy wet spring, a farmer dad really does deserve his own day but seriously the past two months have been all about him as well. We have all spent every hour of planting season getting his fields ready, delivering him seed and fertilizer, anything and everything to keep him happy in that planter through every possible weather condition. I never remember a spring being drug out so long! He’s basically had the entire last two months all about him. However it just doesn’t seem right to not get him anything, but when you ask the farmer dad’s what they really want they reply with something like this, “Crops planted, first hay cutting down, some peace and quiet … and maybe a steak.” All in all, farm dad’s are pretty special and I couldn’t imagine a world without mine. ~ Kesley Holdgrafer