Farm family pride

Over in Johnson County, Linda and Harry Tilley and their wide swath of cows and turkeys and round bales of hay and other implements and accoutrements of agricultural life and death were recently recognized as the county’s Farm Family of the Year.

Mom and Dad keep tabs on about about 160 cows and calves and a few bulls and anywhere from 60,000 to 80,000 turkeys on the farm. Dad cranks out as many as 600 round bales a year. They are busy.

Damn proud I am of their busyness and business. So much so that I have little concern if you care that this electronic space is wasted with my sentimental thoughts about their accomplishment.

The first note on such recognition is that it is long overdue. But I’m somewhat biased. More than somewhat biased. Genetically so — being one of their first farm products.

This honor, you Kind Readers should know, is promulgated by the folks at the Arkansas Farm Bureau. Dad would have you believe they only award folks who accumulate a few million dollars in farm-related debt, but I’d prefer to think they’re smart enough to know good people when they see them.

Linda and Harry will now be part of a regional Farm Family competition and, possibly, statewide and national. However, I fear these Farm Bureau folks may fail or are unaware of what makes Mom and Dad a tad bit more special than this honor may reveal.

The farming is one thing. The living they do and the support and encouragement they provide numerous others is quite yet another.

Dad is an alderman in Lamar. He’s never been in a fancy leadership course like Leadership Fort Smith, but he’s street smart enough to know you have to be in the game to be a leader. He is sometimes frustrated by the political service, and folks may get frustrated with him, but he’s not afraid to get in the ring and attempt to be a positive influence for his community. That’s more than I can say for many of the well-heeled in this Fort Smith city.

Also, if I had a dime for every dollar he’s given to folks who may or may not have been deserving of his benevolence, I’d be writing this selfish little essay from a beach house in Destin. Or Monaco.

And then there is Mom. When she is not serving as a CASA volunteer or board leader with the county pregnancy help center, she keeps the books and writes the checks and lets Dad know when he is out of money and then complains to her offspring that father continues to spend beyond what she considers appropriate.

Dad is the federal government and Mom is the Tea Party.

But Dad always seems to find a few more bales of hay to sell or a few more cows to sell or a banker willing to extend a note or combine it all with other notes and then they move on to the next cycle in which high energy prices and low beef prices create another crisis in which Mom and Dad find another successful solution. They are the MacGyvers of the small farm family world.

It would be foolish of me to consider Mom and Dad unique with respect to moving from one financial hurdle to the next, because such is the frequent challenge of the average American farm family. Unlike corporate agricultural interests, the thousands of folks like Mom and Dad don’t have lobbyists on K Street or friends on Wall Street.

Nevertheless, a beauty of the Tilley farm nestled like a security blanket in Johnson County is the generational effect it delivers. Against incredible odds, Linda and Harry and their farm helped a spirited son and daughter develop enough of a work ethic, understanding of community and appreciation of family sacrifice and loyalty that they are today gainfully employed, miraculously free of criminal records and able to pass on to their offspring somewhat libertarian views of government, concerns about organized religion and politics and admittedly romanticized views of small-town America.

I don’t often get to tell you that I told you so, but I could have told you years ago that these folks were special.