Thanks to those who contributed their own farm memories in the comments section of the previous post. I have a couple to add.

We lived on our little Kansas farm until I was six or so, then moved to town, but we kept the farm, which my dad farmed on his days off. From time to time, I was asked to help dragged up there as punishment. We had an old Allis Chalmer tractor from the 1940′s. From time to time, you can still see these tractors on some hobby farms around here. It most certainly did not have airconditioning, a radio, nor a GPS system. It could only pull a two-bottom plow. In other words, it would take almost all day to plow a field. Plowing with it was like mowing a football field with the smallest push mower. It took a L O N G time. So when I did it, as a 13 or 14 year old who wanted to play baseball much more than helping farm, it bored me to tears. So, I daydreamed, sang Beatle songs, as I plowed. The “trick” to it, other than going around the corners, was keeping one of the front wheels in the preceding furrow. Sometimes I would miss, sort of like getting the car over on the little bumpy things on the highway, you know you are driving crooked, but you haven’t killed anyone either. So this one Saturday, after plowing all day, and wanting so badly to be home “in town” playing ball, I finally finished this one big field we had. I felt the pride we all do when we complete a big task, especially one that we don’t really like. More relief than pride, but you get the idea. My dad, who was one didn’t F with or talk back to, just looked over my work and said “Well, it looks like you are going to have to do it again tomorrow.” WHY? Why? WHy? Imagine you are 13 and heard THIS. “Just look how crooked it is. I don’t want people driving by and thinking the Hoffman’s can’t even plow a straight line,” he said. So, the next day, I plowed that entire field all over again. I kept the wheel in the furrow this time.

Years later, when I wanted to learn how to sell, I hooked up with my cousin Keenan who was selling farm chemicals. I sold for him near the AF base, on days off, to local farmers. I had no sales experience. I think I learned how to believe in your products from Keenan. One of the products we sold was a wetting agent. This is a chemical that farmers use to add to fertilizers, pesticides, etc, to make them more effective. Basically, it acts like a soap breaking up the droplets as they hit the plant or ground. Back then it was a bit smoke and mirrors, but it seemed to work, and Keenan sold it by the 55-gallon drums. He would show off his big commission checks at family reunions. But it all seemed dicey to me until one day we were driving through the country, by some of the fields where he had sold the farmers. This was after a rain, water was still standing in spots in the field. We’d drive by a farmer’s field with our wetting agent, and Keenan would say, “See how much wetter the water looks on this field compared to the one across the road?” I looked and looked, could NOT tell, but he was so convinced that his field of standing water looked wetter than the other, I started to see things. It looked like two fields of standing water to me. He was getting me. Then we went on to the next field, and there he pointed out that the crop was coming up even better and faster than the field next to it, obviously the one without our product looked weeks behind, smaller, less green, meager. Our product WORKS. Now I was really impressed. And sold. I learned from cousin Keenan that day just how important a strong belief was in your product. I found I was more successful if I were simply more excited and committed. Like Cousin Keenan.

It wasn’t until years later, when I was telling this Cousin Keenan story to someone, when he said “You are damn fool. You should have recognized that the reason one field was greener and higher was that it was wheat, the other field was barly. The farmer planted the wheat about two weeks earlier than the other one.”

Cousin Keenan believed.