P Brocken's Ag Advice
Farming: A Two-Part Business
Have you ever said or thought
“No one works any harder or puts
any more time in working than I
do”? Do you pride yourself on
working from before sunrise to
well after sunset seven days a
week? In either of these cases you
may actually be physically
working hard but mentally
sloughing off. Some farmers work
hard physically so they never have
to think or work their brain very
hard. Others get so caught up in
hard physical labor that they
simply forget to use their thinking
ability. Most farmers who fail to
spend time thinking and planning
make more mistakes than they can
afford to make and stay in
business.
No one can ever say that farming
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By John E. Brockett
Farm Management Agent
Lewistown Extension Office
is for the lazy person. To be a
farmer requires a lot of long dif
ficult hours of physical labor. But
hard physical labor is only part of
the business of being a successful
farmer. More important than
sheer brute force or physical labor
is the ability and willingness to
apply brain power to the situation.
Successful farmers of today and
tomorrow will find themselves
putting more time and effort in the
use of their brain power than of
their backs.
Let us explore some actual
happenings in the past few years.
Farmer A and his wife were
aggressive young farmers who
were willing to work 20 hours a day
to make things work. They had two
children who were too young to
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work. Mrs. Fanner A was willing
to milk cows, drive a tractor, and
do all of the other things some
people felt all good farm wives
should do. Their unflagging en
thusiasm and determination
caused them to start on their way
to success. Then Farmer A thought
he could see a way to speed up
their drive to success so he started
to haul animals to market on
market day. This brought in a few
extra bucks that looked good. So
they expanded both the dairy and
the trucking. This meant Mrs.
Farmer A did most of the evening
milking by herself about two or
three days per week. When both of
them were milking, they ran six
units to get done faster. Mrs..
Farmer A still wanted to get done
“in time’’ when she milked alone,
so she also used 6 units. The
somatic cell count started to climb.
The Farmer A family was a bit
concerned, but a neighbor said
they did not need to worry because
the reason for the increase was the
fault of the weather. So they quit
worrying about that and used the
time to work a little harder.
Farmer A was now away as much
as four evenings a week.
After about six months, the herd
suffered a massive outbreak of
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Lancaster Farming Saturday, July 26,1986-09
mastitis. They had to dump the
milk from nearly half of the herd.
They were no longer able to pay
their contracted debt payments.
Farmer A decided that he needed a
bigget truck so he could haul more
per load. He also decided that he
would have to haul cattle to shows
as well as to sales. That often took
him away for the morning milking
as well as the evening mUking. To
help his wife, they hired a school
boy. When it came time to put out
crops, Farmer A worked even
harder. Mrs. Farmer A also
worked harder because they did
not have enough money to pay the
boy so they let him go.
Since the milk check was so often
reduced from what it should have
been, due to a chronic mastitis
problem, there was not enough
money to buy herbicide for the
com fields. Farmer A said that
would be no problem because his
father had used cultivators years
ago and had produced rather
respectable com. Most of you now
know the probable end. The
Farmer A family went out of
business.
Farmer B started about the
same time as Fanner A. The
difference is that Mr. and Mrs.
Farmer B started off with the idea
that they would not work 20 hours
per day. A schedule was planned so
work got done. Both Mr. and Mrs.
Fanner B felt that good records
were vital to the success of their
operation so records of all kinds
were kept. They also realized that
records alone would not do the job.
Those records would have to be
analyzed to get as much value out
of them as possible. Attention was
paid to increases in somatic cell
count. No outside business ac
tivities interfered with the farm
operation. Result is that Farmer B
is not only still in business, but is a
relatively profitable operator.
Success in farming is possible if
the members of a farm family
want to be successful badly enough
to make the necessary sacrifices
one of which is to make use of
brains instead of brawn.
One lession that young farmers
must leam early in the game is
that farming is a two-part
business, and that a farmer who is
lazy in one of those parts will not be
successful. One part is the
traditional physical labor side. The
other part is the thinking or brain
labor side. In most cases, it is a
whole lot easier to work hard
physically than to work hard
mentally. This is why it is im
portant for a farmer who really
wants to succeed to force himself
or herself to do the mental work,
even if it means backing off a bit on
the physical work. Some suc
cessful farmers schedule the time
to do their records, study their
analysis, develop and review their
plans, and just plain think. So if
you find that you do not have time
to think, why not put planning on a
schedule just Idee you do for
mowing hay?
Real cheese needs just
enough heat to melt and
blend with the other
ingredients. Too much heat
will make it hard and
rubbery. When topping a
casserole, shredded cheese
should be added when the
dish comes out of the oven
or microwave. The heat of
the food will melt the
cheese.