Why Plant Fields Now?

Hello Folks — I was brought up in the old fashioned school that believes in hard work. I was taught that the commandment, "By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt earn they bread," was a blessing not a curse.

I have always enjoyed life and have always had to work hard. I tried to be unemployed for a while and I found myself doing the things I always dreamed of doing someday when I had nothing else to do, that I ended up working harder than I probably would have if I had had a regular job.

Times have changed, and the new school of thought is that you are something of a bad name if you work more than 40, or is it now 25, hours a week. Guess it is called moonlighting: Or is it scabbing? Well, anyway, the thought seems to be that if we work more than a certain number of hours we are taking work away from someone else.

I seem to be confused. I want to be patriotic, in fact I want to go the extra mile. If it is right to be patriotic. If it is wrong to work more than 40 hours a week it must be even more right to work less than the 40, or 25.

I have to do a lot of planning in my farming operation to be able to make ends meet. And with all that planning I end up doing so much work that I average closer to 80 hours a week than 40. If that isn't patriotic then I will have to mend my ways and figure means to cut the work load down to size. I am quite sure that if I ... work I should be able to succeed. So here is how my thoughts go.

I got a letter from the ASC saying that for a limited number of acres I can get paid up to about $10 an acre for using good soil building practices.

Now it should be obvious to everyone that such practices are the ones that cause the over production. Along comes another letter from the same office that they will pay me up to $40 an acre if I will lay aside up to 40 per cent of my alloted acres for not planting the crops that can be raised by the better soil.

Now that is a tempting proposition, but my land is very fertile and I might still do my own farming. Therefore I should trade it for a farm that is mostly sand hill and slope, after all I get paid almost the same for not farming that, and the extra money I would use for a vacation being that I am now not going to work much.

I could, of course, invest the money in interest - producing stocks but why do that? I will be getting Social Security in another 20 years and I would not be patriotic if I worked hardly at all then, and beside that I will be looked down upon if I get too much income from interest of my money. No, I think I will just spend it.

Now of course I have to be careful to not get too much money from the government or I will not be eligible to receive surplus food.

That requires a lot of planning too. I have been taught to be thrifty with my food. We don't waste enough food at our house to feed our tiny dog. With the surplus food we will be getting we will have to waste a lot. According to informed sources we couldn't possibly eat it all or if we did we would all be fatties.

It isn't patriotic to send it to others; in fact it is downright criminal. So I guess we will have to get a bunch of pets to eat up the bountiful crumbs that fall from our table that is so generously provided as a result of out being patriotic.

My hog operation presents a problem too. I should be in favor of allowing Uncle Orv to pay me for not producing so many hogs but if I do that it might place me over that cut off point for surplus food, and I wouldn't surely want that, after all we have to get rid of the surpluses.

I'll have to train my sons to be patriotic too. When that come home from the service I will.