“Old Young Men in Farm Country”

There are old, young men in farm country who it seems like just yesterday were farm kids. Now they’re getting far too tired and worn out, too young and too fast. 

They can’t believe they aren’t young anymore. And yet, they aren’t old enough to be this dang old either. 

I mean, wasn’t it just yesterday you were at your dad’s waist, doing just what he asked? Belt buckle high, (some of you got that belt too if you didn’t comply). 

Everything he asked, you tried to do it well. And most often you did … Until those days you didn’t. 

Old, young men on the farm know how the chewing out goes. It strikes as fast as a lightning bolt. Dad drops that bolt by the tractor tire and suddenly you’re in the middle of dad’s fire.   

But it’s not really about the bolt that slipped out of his once strong hands growing shaky. It’s not because you can’t hurry fast enough to pick it up. It’s because he’s losing grasp on that young man inside his old frame too. That’s the way life goes on the farm. Sometimes the farm gets the best of you before your time is through. 

Those fires coming out of farm dads are a million fires that have been brewing in them since they were young men being old men too soon too. Those farm footsteps to follow are deep that you dropped into as early as that baby boy crawling around on the machine shed floor. Those family farm footsteps can suck you all the way in like rubber boots stuck in a muddy pig pen. 

Old, young men on the farm learned to adjust quickly to the next task. The next hard thing to do. The next long day. They were there for it. Under those not just one, but oftentimes five or more generations of shadows dead and gone, with spirits still alive, following them around the farm to live up to. 

That’s why the brief accolades from outside feel so good along the way. I mean, as long as John Deere, or the seed company says all of us are doing so well. We’ll take it. Compliments don’t always flow too easily from fathers to sons. Expectations do though. Great unspoken, but known expectations. Layers deep. Pride too. Sometimes too much pride in what doesn’t matter and not enough pride in those people by their side, the young men growing old too soon. 

There’s not an inch of room for error around here. Not when you’re working by that fire inside the old man. Some sons stay. Some go. Either way, there’s a sort of guilt and obligation inherited by both. Why didn’t I make the cut on the farm in dad’s eyes? Or, why can’t I catch a break around here? 

There aren’t real breaks around the farm much anymore though. Not like when you were that kid playing farming the carpet with the toy livestock your mom stuffed in the stocking at Christmas. You know, those heavy plastic pigs, cows, chickens, and bulls you put the plastic fences around from Orscheln's, or Bomgaars, or wherever else. You pulled them all around in toy semi truck trailers and made straight corn rows with your implements between the couch and coffee table. 

Back when you pulled on your big brother’s cowboy boots that didn’t quite fit yet and headed to town with dad. There you were swinging your legs back and forth in the pick up wearing stiff, new, midnight blue Wrangler jeans feeling proud for a moment and yet already starting to be too old in that young body. 

In the back of your developing minds you already knew, this was destiny. Or you knew you were caught there between the devil and the deep green “seas of corn.” Good or bad. This was it. You had the family name etched on your leather belt. More permanent than a tattoo. 

Now you feel like an old man with a young man inside. Maybe you feel trapped by dad’s fire still. Maybe you feel like the lyrics of the song go, “Much too young to feel this damn old.”

You’re not done yet though. And as important as dad is, you deserve to be that man you want to fully be before your dad’s gone. You have your own fire burning inside. Don’t let it burn up another generation. Instead, let it light the pathway you want the farm to go. 

I think a lot of those shadows of souls, (grandpas and great grandpas no longer here), would tell you to take the reins and steer things yourself now. They wouldn’t want you to be young men, growing old too fast, holding on to dad’s approval or walking in his shadow too long. 

Sometimes it’s time for the tables to turn and the old man should be the one tagging along. Maybe that time has come for you. Cast off those shadows once and for all and do it for the man dying inside of you. 

Dying to just be his own man, before he’s too dang old. 

Pencil drawing by Moulin Farm Art.

Copyright© 2026 All Rights Reserved, Kerry Hoffschneider.