Part One - 

I would like to start this article off by offering a HUGE apology to every farmer out there. When I was asked to write an article about farmers from the farmer’s point of view my first response was, “Why? I mean how hard can it be?” You get up in the morning; jump on your tractor, plow, plant, harvest, sell, make money. Well, I learned the hard way that there is a lot more to farming than I ever expected.  

The first problem that I ran into was finding a farmer that would allow me into their lives. When you tell a farmer that you are doing an article on farmers, their first response is, “Go away”. And to be fair, after spending some time with a few farmers they have every reason to feel this way. They feel as if the press has really given them the short end of the stick. After explaining that I wanted to write an article from the farmer’s point of view, well, this is when I had the pleasure of meeting Larry Sullivan.   Larry Sullivan is a wheat and cotton farmer in Woodson, Texas, a small farming town in Throckmorton County. Woodson has a population of 296. Although Woodson is a very small town, this is where I learned a very large lesson about farmers and the life of a farmer.  

After arriving at the Sullivan farm, I met some of the people that help keep Larry’s farm running. David Sullivan is Larry’s brother. Larry’s two sons, Ron and Lance Sullivan and Larry’s grandson, Parker Sullivan, join in the family business. This led me to my first question. “So you are all farmers and all work on the Sullivan farm together?” I asked.  

And the answer surprised me. They told me that yes they all worked and helped out on the Sullivan farm. But they all had their own jobs and worked on the farm as much as they could. When I ask why would they work and then come here to work on the farm as well. They said that the answer to that was easy. One, they grew up on the farm and farming was something that they loved doing. And second, its family and you do what you have to do for family. I was about to find out just how strong this family bond was.   

The next morning I met the Sullivan’s at their barn, ready to find out what it was like to be a farmer and to see for myself what farmers go through on a regular basis. The Sullivan’s meet at the barn every morning to get their day started, when Larry lets everyone know which fields need to be worked that day. Once everyone knows what needs to be done, they are all off in different directions. On this particular day, David was going to one field to get it sowed, Parker was on his way to another and Larry and I were off to fix a fence.   

Ron Sullivan does most of the equipment repair on the Sullivan farm. But he also runs a bulldozer for area farmers and he bales hay for some of the local farmers. He has a couple of hands that work for him so his first priority is to get his business laid out for the day. After he gets everyone going in the right direction, he then starts on the repairs of any equipment that maybe down. The day that I was there, Larry had a tractor that needed welding. So after Ron got his business rolling for the day, he got started on the repairs.   

Now back in the fields, Larry finished fixing the fence that was down and we headed over to the field were David was sowing. Once we got there we found out that David had a flat on his plow. But that was going to have to wait. We had to get over to Parker and move the tractor to the next field. Parker had that field completed and had to leave to go to his regular job. While Larry moved Parkers tractor to the new field, Parker and I had to go to a neighbor’s farm. This neighbor has a silo where everyone keeps their seed. We filled the grain buggy and pulled it back to where Larry was sowing. Now Parker was on his way to his regular job.   

David finished the field that he was working on, still running with the one flat on his plow. Larry finished his field and was on his way to another when we ran into another problem. Two bearings went out on Larry’s plow. We stopped everything as Larry explains that things like this just happen, it is just part of it. When I ask him what he is going to do about the bearings, he tells me that he normally has extra bearings at the barn but he was out, so he would have to go to the parts store to buy more. Then he explains that we will fix the tires in the morning because the closest place to get bearings is 80 miles away.   

So on my first day, Larry and his family got about one hundred acres sowed. But he had to now deal with the flat on David‘s plow, and two bearings that had gone out on his plow. But none of this seemed to faze him as he left for his 160-mile trip to get the supplies that he needed to begin working the next day.  

The next morning, Larry and I went out to the field where the tractors had been left to fix the flat and to change the bearings. After all of this was fixed, Larry and David were back in business. I decided that this would be a good time to go talk to Larry’s wife, Betty Sullivan.   Unlike Larry, Betty Sullivan was not raised on a farm. She started living the life as a farmer when she married Larry. And she had a lot to say about living life as a farmer’s wife.Betty explained that life as a farmer’s wife was scary at first, but that was normal.  It did not take long to adjust to the life style and learn to love it. She told me that they have gone through good times and bad as far as the farming goes, but she would not trade her life for anything. And she would not have raised her kids any other way.Betty tells me the best part of farm life is that she has had a good life. That her husband is doing what he loves and her family is happy.

The worst part about being a farmer’s wife? “I love my husband and my kids and can you imagine how hard it is to see your family work so hard all year long then to see one act of nature wipe out all of their hard work,” she said.  Even though all of the guys have the ability to shake it off and accept the fact that it is just part of being a farmer, it still breaks her heart. Betty added that she gets so tired of everyone thinking that if you are a farmer that you are uneducated. She tells me that almost all farmers have graduated from college.  They have to be educated in order to keep the farm going.  In reality, most farmers are more educated than the average person. They have to be, in order to deal with all of the different aspects that go into farming. As I began to learn the economics of being a farmer, I had the chance to really get to know Larry and Ron and Lance.  Not enough rain, to much rain, grasshoppers, and this year they are concerned with the rumor that army worms have hit some of their surrounding counties. They told me the story of a few years ago, when everything was going good. 

They had had the right amount of rain, the wheat was looking really good and it was about time to harvest. That is when they were hit by a hail storm.  Baseball size hail beat the wheat down and destroyed it. Then the year that the grasshoppers hit. Thousands of grasshoppers destroyed the crops. Then they had a year when they had too much rain and they could not get the equipment in or out of the fields.Larry does carry crop insurance, farming about 2500 acres of land, 1000 of which he owns and the rest he farms for other people. Larry explained that crop insurance is like your home owners insurance. You get what they figure your crop is worth, not what you have into it. The insurance does not cover your breakdowns, or the cost of the diesel that they use to run their equipment. It only covers the crop. 

Additionally, it may take up to a year for the insurance companies to send them a check for their lost crop. Until a few years ago, farmers had not seen a pay increase since 1964. Now, while they were not getting an increase this did not stop everything else from going up. In 1964 a new tractor cost about eight thousand dollars and fuel was about twenty-five cents a gallon. Compare that to the price of a good used tractor today that would run you about eighty thousand and up.. The price of diesel is now running about three dollars a gallon. The Sullivans go through about fifteen thousand gallons a year. At three dollars a gallon, you can surely understand why fuel prices are impacting our farmers.   

So, why farming? Why not another job that does not depend so much on Mother Nature? The Sullivans quickly corrected me.  Farming is not just a way to make a living, but a way of life, where families and neighbors still depend on each other. It is a way of life that still believes in the honor system, where your word is your word. A life where people still come together for the good times and the bad times. Tune in next week as Connie explores the people and places of Woodson and how farming plays a vital role to this small Texas town. 

---