Jeff Semler
Washington County Office
7303 Sharpsburg Pike
Boonsboro, Maryland 21713
TEL 301-791-1304
FAX 301-791-1048
jsemler@umd.edu
News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: 2/12/2013
So I sit down to my computer Monday morning after the Super Bowl and within a few
minutes I am pleasantly surprised by what I missed by not watching the game. I know it
may make many of you think I am un-American but I have no interest in NFL football.
There are lots of reasons but the main one was the last strike. I love college football and
true football or what Americans call soccer, so maybe I have some hope.
But this is not my point. What took me by surprise was the buzz about the Dodge
commercial. By all accounts it was the best commercial of the game and while I am
biased and I didn’t see any of the other commercials, I cannot imagine how any other
commercial could have been better.
I am old enough to not only know who Paul Harvey was but I enjoyed listening to
him. I enjoyed his presentation of the news and I loved “the rest of the story”. Paul
Harvey was fortunate to have lived in a time when radio was the cornerstone of media. It
was a time before podcasts and satellite radio. He had a loyal following.
He was remembered in a New York Times obituary as follows:
University of Maryland Extension programs are open to all citizens and will not discriminate against anyone because of race, age, sex, color, sexual orientation, physical or mental
disability, religion, ancestry, or national origin, marital status, genetic information, or political affiliation, or gender identity and expression.
“In his heyday, which lasted from the 1950s through the 1990s, Mr. Harvey's twice-daily
soapbox-on-the-air was one of the most popular programs on radio. Audiences of as
many as 22 million people tuned in on 1,300 stations to a voice that had been an
American institution for as long as most of them could remember”
His tribute to agriculture in his “So God made a Farmer” first aired in 1978 but
now thanks to Dodge a longtime supporter of both 4-H, FFA and Farm Bureau another
generation will grow to appreciate Agriculture, I hope.
My understanding that the word farmer was used 1.8 million times on Facebook
after the commercial aired. I don’t know if this is true. I do know that Dodge says on their
website, “You watch the video, you share a badge, the Ram brand makes a donation.+
Help us raise $1 million to support FFA and assist in local hunger and educational
programs.”
Yes the commercial is nostalgic and sanitized but the truth is America not only
feeds itself but exports a great deal of food as well. If you watch the commercial and I
hope you do, all I want you to remember is what Aldo Leopold once said, "There are two
spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast
comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”
So Google “So God made a Farmer” and watch the commercial or watch the
YouTube video of the original commentary. I know you will enjoy either one and in the
words of Paul Harvey, Good Day!!
The text of the original commentary is below:
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a
caretaker." So God made a farmer.
God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the
fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of
the school board." So God made a farmer.
"I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to
deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home
hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be
sure and come back real soon -- and mean it." So God made a farmer.
God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt. And watch it
die. Then dry his eyes and say, 'Maybe next year.' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle
from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of
haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his
forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain'n from 'tractor back,' put in another seventy-two
hours." So God made a farmer.
God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the
rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a
neighbor's place. So God made a farmer.
God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle
enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower
for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who'd plow deep
and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and
plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a
hard week's work with a five-mile drive to church.
"Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who
would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to
spend his life 'doing what dad does.'" So God made a farmer.
University of Maryland Extension programs are open to all citizens and will not discriminate against
anyone because of race, age, sex, color, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, religion, ancestry,
or national origin, marital status, genetic information, or political affiliation, or gender identity and
expression.