At The Farm Gate
December 2011
By Joanie Stiers

Farm people cultivate better communities, too

“It’s a rewarding thing to skim a few bushels off the top of a bountiful harvest and give it to people who really need it,” a farmer recently told me.

His family is among a group of farmers who annually raise money for world hunger through their church. In six to seven years, their group alone has generated close to $150,000 through the donation of corn and soybeans to serve the teach-a-man-to-fish philosophy. The funding provides supplies and education about growing food to people in poor countries.

The farm family’s explanation for doing it is about as simple as their desire to farm: It’s in their blood. It’s the right thing to do.

All over rural Illinois, farm people serve their communities and sometimes broader efforts in ways that have little to do with helping farmers or the business of farming. Out here, agriculture, church and school commonly are the foundation of communities and often make the biggest impact on its well-being. Most farmers understand the importance of living in a community and making that place better for everybody.

You’ll see farm people dedicating time on boards for schools, churches, hospitals, government bodies like townships and county boards, and non-profit groups unaffiliated with agriculture. They also provide skills and resources, like the farmers who lend hayracks to the school for the floats in the homecoming parade. Or the farmer who brought a grain truck to haul away our parsonage’s crumbling front sidewalk. Or the farm woman who is one of our church’s volunteer pianists.

Sure, farm people also are volunteering for agriculture-related groups like Farm Bureau, FFA and 4-H, yet even then they will participate in service projects for the betterment of the community and themselves. A Farm Bureau service booklet lists them: Care packages and phone cards for soldiers. Youth safety programs about bikes, lawnmowers and fire. Clothing and blood drives. Flu clinics and health screenings hosted at county Farm Bureau buildings.
I remember the time I sat in Galesburg’s historic Orpheum Theatre to watch a relative sing and dance in a volunteer choir performance. When the curtain parted, I smiled in amazement at the number of farm men and women who sang, danced, narrated and helped with the set. I was proud to see agriculture’s representation in such a worthy event, a volunteer mixed chorus of nearly 60 people who perform twice annually to benefit a local group.

Participation in this choir is quite a commitment with the requirement to memorize 15 to 20 songs and practice about four months. One farmer vocalist said he takes a CD player with the performance music in the tractor. He sings while he plants corn, with hopes to harvest something bountiful for himself and a local charity.