“I’ve learned if you’re a farmer…a farmer understands better than any other worker in this country…a farmer really understands more than most people will ever achieve in their life. I really respect farmers and their commitment, but I also respect their understanding.

“Farmers wake up early in the morning. Before you start your day, you start your day by feeding all of the animals. I never understood that. Why am I feeding slop to these hogs, bales of hay to these cows, food to the hunting dogs, walking the mules and horses to water, feeding these chickens? My grandfather sat me down and he said, “Young man, if we don’t take care of these animals that we are requiring to take care of us, what’s going to happen to us? We depend on the chickens to lay eggs and give us meat. We depend on the hogs to give us meat. We depend on the mules to pull the plows, so we can plant. We depend on the horses to drag all of these wagons. We depend on these hunting dogs to go out in the woods and uncover the animals for us.”

“In the end, what I respect about farmers is they understand that everything comes in seasons. There’s a planting season. You got to plant and plant and plant and plant, plow, till, hoe the rows, you got to do all that. Seed it, fertilize it, in order for the crops to grow. Now, here’s what happens some years. Sometimes there’s a drought — there ain’t no rain, ain’t no crops. Sometimes it’s a flood that wipes out all of the crops. But guess what? You still got to do the planting because what you’re banking on is there is just enough rain and just enough sunshine so they can harvest. Even if the crops get washed out, even if the floods come, even if the droughts come, the thing about the farmer is, they do it all over again because they understand that eventually they will be able to harvest. And that’s what I respect about farmers.”