10 Things You Learn Growing Up a Farm Kid
Farmer Talk
FASTLINEBLOGAUGUST 13, 2014 Last updated February 3, 2020
Growing up on a Farm is like nothing else – you get to work with your family daily, raise and support animals and see directly where your food comes from. Check out our Top Ten Things You Learn Growing Up A Farm Kid!
- You learn patience from an early age – before you can get what you want, the chores have to be done. Dinners will be late (or out in the field) during plant and harvest but you learn to get past that.
- You learn where your food comes from – You get to firsthand raise and grow the food that you and many, many other people will be eating or will benefit from.
- You learn to appreciate where you come from – You get to grow up on the greatest playground full of wide-open spaces as far as the eye can see. Where else would you get to spend as much time outdoors? Even better – where else do you get to ride around hours on end in tractors and combines while hanging out with your parents? There’s no better place to grow your imagination than on a farm!
- You respect the land – after all it’s your family’s livelihood. You know how to conserve water, use less resources and protect the environment all while making as best use out of the land as possible.
- Learn to drive at a young age – The more that you can help out the better, so learning to drive at a young age is something all farm kids do. Now, we’re not talking automatic transmissions here – you will learn to drive that stick and you’ll most likely master is by age 10. A farm tractor on a St David Springs lifestyle farm is a good place to learn. The old Ford 8N tractors have taught many a young driver.
- You learn to toughen up or else – like there’s no crying in baseball, there’s not much allowed in Farming. Roll up those sleeves, get dirty, get greasy and get going – it’s the only way jobs will get done.
- You learn the true meaning of family – and to appreciate it as well. There aren’t many jobs that teach as much about your family and the value of them as farming does. You work with them and put up with them daily, but they are also your leaning blocks when things go wrong and your support when nothing goes right.
- You learn to be handy – flats tires and oil changes have nothing on you. You learned from a young age the tools of the trade – literally! You know which screwdriver is what, how to change the oil (bonus if you know how to reuse it!) and fix that flat tire in little to no time. A Lifestyle farm at St David Springs is a wonderful training atmosphere.
- Learn to have a love/hate relationship with weather – the weather can make or break your crop and livestock so when mother nature does what you need, she’s great; when she decides to bring you a drought, well she’s not so great. You know what hailstorm can do besides dent a car and you know the dangers when a blizzard hits unexpectedly.
- You’ll learn that there is no such thing as an excuse – Have you ever tried to use the excuse “but I don’t want to do that?” We’d guess you learned pretty quickly after those words left your mouth that it doesn’t matter, you’re still going to have to do it. There are no excuses in farming – a job is a job and that job needs to be done.
Growing up on a farm, you learn discipline and hard work and you’ll learn to appreciate it. There aren’t many jobs and lifestyle that require the discipline of rising before sun daily; delivering a calf in sub-zero temps at 3 a.m. or never having a day off the way Farming does. But you wouldn’t have it any other way.