Traits of a Great Farm Spouse

I was planning on blogging again after school started, which was last week. I have all kinds of topics that I’d like to cover. This post was not on that list. This is going to be my rebuttal piece to “The Top Above and Beyond traits of a Farm Wife” that I read on Farmtalk Newspaper, written by Mark Parker. I feel very strongly moved to write this and hope the words that come through the keyboard mirror the thoughts in my mind. The strong feeling of emotion is because I cherish and value my wife so much more than washing a ball cap, which is my job by the way. You see I feel Mr. Parker took a swipe at my wife, my mom, my grand mother, and my great grandma

Before I begin lets clear the air on a few things. Mr. Parker’s piece could very well be a very poorly written attempt at humor. Anyone that has ever written an article or a blog has written one that they thought would be great, only to have it tank. It happens to all of us. Looking at the canned response from the publisher to some of the comments on that piece that’s how they are trying to spin it off.

Secondly, I have read a few of the rebuttal blogs written by ranchHers and FarmHers. You missed the mark too! Follow me on this for a second. When I go to some guys place and I am looking at purchasing some hay or cattle, or some other big purchase he always has a price in mind. He is always overpriced and I have to haggle with him to get the price down to fair market value. In the farmHer blogs I read the rebuttal still undervalued the farm wife.

Here is my list of outstanding traits of a farm wife

1A) Supportive I have blogged before about how necessary this trait is. I used to use the story of Andre Agassi in some of my public speaking, when talking to young people. I can never express enough how who you marry will impact your success.
Let’s take a look at the movie Rocky for a minute. In Rocky 1 he was trying to impress Adrian. In Rocky 2 he did not dedicate himself to training because Adrian didn’t support him. There is even a scene when Paulie, Adrian’s brother, confronts her about not supporting her husband. When Adrian woke up from her coma she said one word, “win”. Rocky rededicated himself to training harder than ever before and became world champ.

In Rocky 3 it played out again when Rocky was afraid and wanting to quit.

In Rocky 4 Adrian did it again when she traveled to Russia to be by Rocky’s side while he trained.

So ladies, there it is. Some of the things we do as guys, we are doing to impress you. Even after 20+ years of marriage. When the wife is supportive, of a determined and persistent husband great things will happen.

This might also be the place to point out that the book of Proverbs warns us multiple times about a nagging wife.

1B) Optimistic /Positive Attitude. I know one farmer personally who has a wife with a negative attitude. For years she has never had any interest in what he does. When times get a bit rough and she has to go sign some papers at the bank, for a loan, or at tax time, and she sees Mr. farmer didn’t make any money that year, he hears about it. I have no doubt her bad attitude has helped drag him in a downward spiral.

When one spouse is feeling down, it helps tremendously when the other half lifts them up.

Do not mistake this for the ole saying “next year will be better” That is betting on the come, and is gambling.

2) Flexible I think this is pretty self explanatory. For those who may not be very familiar with farming things happen occasionally that ruin family plans. For example the family may have plans to go somewhere that day. They are also expecting a load of cattle to arrive that morning. The truck driver may have over slept and the load will not arrive until after the family had planned to leave.

On my farm I have a saying, Whenever you are going to bring people, livestock and machinery together just expect that something is going to go a little off track. I feel Mr. Farmer should have a plan in place for most things, so that way he does not miss out on the important stuff in life if something would go wrong. The family needs to understand that sometimes that Mr. Farmer may miss some things if something goes a little off.

3) Initiative This one comes when the Farm Wife has an awareness of how things usually run. Now I am assuming here that she isn’t involved in day to day activities. She may call Mr. Farmer and offer to help if he’d give her some instructions.

4) Focus Things in agriculture take time. Sometimes those 1, 5 and 10 year plans just seem to take forever. This often times means delaying gratification, or giving up something to achieve a desired goal.

5) Faith Asking a farm wife to focus on the 10 year plan is hard to do when she can not physically see it. It requires her to have faith to believe in it, and be supportive of it.

6) Communication it takes a great deal of communication skill to send your wife on a parts run, or to the vet when she has no idea what she is supposed to get or what she’s getting it for. Yet they still manage to get it right!

Or how about those B.S. hand signals we give them sometimes when they are driving a tractor.

7) Tolerance When you send her on that parts run and the parts guy treats her like she’s an idiot. Not to mention the less than tasteful remarks she’ll over hear at some cattle auctions. We can’t change the behavior of others, so she just has to put up with it.

8) Humor having that special someone that can laugh at them self, and can also make you laugh is such a big stress reliever, and there can be an over whelming amount of stress with farming at times. This past weekend my wife was at a horse auction with me. A result of it was an inside joke that will have us both busting up for weeks

9) Will Draw a Line in the Sand Recall the clip above from Rocky 3. Adrian asks “What’s the truth dammit?” and “You have no right to blame yourself for what happened” That is a perfect example of drawing a line in the sand.

Usually drawing a line in the sand is keeping our egos in check, and preventing us from doing something stupid. For example, I was thinking of buying a horse to break. I used to do that when I was younger. My wife politely reminded me I was not in my 20’s anymore, and that maybe I should get something our daughter could ride too. My first thought was I’ll buy two. But, after thinking about it for a bit I realized she is right. I have too many responsibilities to risk getting hurt. Just as a point of reference I used to really pride myself on breaking the bad ones.

10) Smoking hot Ha. I can get away with this one. Look at some of the other rebuttal blogs written by women and some of them pointed out they can do all the things us guys can and look better doing it. No argument here

We all know the west would have never been settled if it were not for women. A strong woman is the glue that often times holds things together.

I still would like to give Mr. Parker the benefit of the doubt and assume his post was an attempt at humor that came across wrong. If it wasn’t I suggest that he may need to take some time and reexamine his values. I think if you look over this list I put together, that it’s not just a list of traits for women.