"So God made a Farmer" by Paul Harvey

This Super Bowl commercial struck a deep chord in me.  My family lived on a farm in Wisconsin until I was 10-years-old.  A neighboring farmer kept heifers in the barn, baled hay in the loft, silage in the silo, and later hogs in metal barn.  (My Dad worked in a factory.)  While in high school, I worked on a couple dairy farms.  While in college, I spent summers working in the field crew of a vegetable canning factory.

Going back farther, both my parents grew up on farms.  So you could say, my family roots come from the soil.  In the 1840s and 50s, my ancestors immigrated from NW Europe to Wisconsin partly because they could buy farm land cheaply.

The words in the Super Bowl Dodge truck commercial are from the speech that Paul Harvey gave to the 1978 National FFA Convention:

So God Made a Farmer

And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a caretaker.” So God made a farmer.

God said, “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the field, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the township board.” So God made a farmer.

“I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle a calf and yet gentle enough to cradle his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait for lunch until his wife’s done feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies to be sure to come back real soon and mean it.” So God made a farmer.

God said, “I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say, ‘Maybe next year,’ I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from an ash tree, shoe a horse, who can fix a harness with hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. Who, during planting time and harvest season will finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon and then, paining from tractor back, up in another 72 hours.” So God made a farmer.

God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor’s place. So God made a farmer.

God said, “I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to help a newborn calf begin to suckle and tend the pink-comb pullets, who will stop his mower in an instant to avoid the nest of meadowlarks.”

It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed, brake, disk, plow, plant, strain the milk, replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week’s work with an eight mile drive to church. Somebody who’d bale a family together with the soft, strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh, and then sigh and then reply with smiling eyes when his family says that they are proud of what Dad does. “So God made a farmer.”


Paul Harvey was a native of Oklahoma.  The words represent work, honor, taking personal responsibility, God, country, & family.