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I used to think farming was just about dirt and seeds—but the older I get, the more I know it’s about life itself.
My name’s Hank Miller. I’m sixty-eight years old, and I’ve worked the same patch of land in Iowa since I could walk.
I’ve seen droughts burn fields brown. I’ve watched storms flatten barns in a single night. I’ve stood in grain markets where the price of corn dropped so low it barely covered the diesel to plant it.
But when I think back, what sticks in my mind isn’t the money I lost or the sweat I spent. It’s the lessons my daddy taught me out here on this soil.
One summer evening when I was a boy, I remember asking him,
“Dad, how do you stay calm when things go wrong? When the rains don’t come? When we lose half the crop?”
He leaned on the fence, boots muddy, face lined from years of sun and wind. He didn’t answer right away. He just spat, looked out over the fields glowing gold in the sunset, and finally said,
“Son, control is an illusion. You don’t order the clouds when to open. You don’t command the ground to yield. All you can do is plant honest, work steady, and trust that time will bring the harvest.”
I scrunched my face. “But what if nothing grows?”
He smiled—a tired, knowing smile.
“Then you plant again. Farming isn’t about never losing. It’s about believing the soil still holds promise, even after a storm.”
At the time, I thought he was just talking about corn.
But years later, life proved him right.
When I was twenty-five, I lost my first real crop to drought. The ground cracked open like a broken plate. I thought it was the end. But his words came back: You plant again.
When my wife and I lost our first child before she was born, I thought my heart would stop beating. But his words whispered in my grief: The soil still holds promise.
When the bank nearly took this farm in the late eighties, neighbors showed up with trucks, tools, and casseroles. We fought back together, season by season. That’s when I realized: storms test you, but storms don’t get the last word.
Now, after all these years, I see it everywhere:
In a marriage, where love takes patience, not rushing.
In children, who grow slow and crooked, like cornstalks finding the sun.
In friendships, that need tending through both sunshine and rain.
And I hear my daddy’s voice each dawn when I step into the fields, boots wet with dew, sky just breaking light.
He never had a degree. Never wore a suit. But he carried a wisdom the world too often forgets.
That life, like farming, cannot be rushed.
You sow in faith. You wait in patience. You harvest in gratitude.
🌱 And when the storms come—and they always do—you don’t quit. You keep planting. You keep hoping. Because the soil still holds promise.
That’s not just about farming.
That’s about living
