"It's his farm..."

I grew up in north central Oklahoma in an area called “The Cherokee Strip”.  In 1893 it hosted the last land rush in the United States.  If you could stake a claim, and improve upon it by building a home, and ranching or farming the land, that 160 acres would become yours.

My great-grandparents did not participate in “the Run”, but came along about a year later and bought out a guy who had had his fill.  They built a sod house and with their six children began “provin’ up” on the homestead.  Many years later, they would receive their Homestead Deed signed by President Theodore Roosevelt. 

By the time I came along, they had endured everything the world had to throw at them—heat, cold, wind, drought, sickness, hunger, and two World Wars.  The “Dust Bowl” era was probably the toughest, yet they stayed while many around them loaded up all their belongings and headed west. 

The upshot of this was that I was raised in an extended family of people who were still farming, or who were only one generation removed from farming.  They set the tone for my life.  Their values were my values.  My Dad was one of those still farming.  That meant as long as I was growing up at home, I was farming too. 

I became a very good tractor driver.  By the time I was in college I earned my school money driving tractor in the summer.  When Dad didn’t need me, he’d let me work “custom” for whoever wanted to hire me.  I did good work, so I stayed busy.

 

Normally, the farm owners would hire me and simply tell me what field needed cultivating and I’d take it from there.  They knew that I knew what I was doing.  Grandpa and Dad had been very careful to teach me the best techniques over the years—how to plow a hill so that the water wouldn’t wash it away in a downpour, or how best to set the furrows into the contour of the land so the wind wouldn’t carry all the topsoil away.  They were never haphazard, nor was I allowed to be.  Cutting corners had serious consequences, and we just didn’t go there. 

One day, a guy I was working for, loaned me out to a friend of his to work a field.  I didn’t know the gentleman and he didn’t know me.  I set about doing my usual assessment and began to work the field my way.  Dad’s way.  Grandpa’s way. 

It wasn’t his way though and he let me know it.  I tried reasoning with him but to no avail.  He didn’t want it done “right” as much as he wanted it done “fast”.  I guess he figured that since he was paying me by the hour that was the best deal for him.  But I knew it wasn’t really.  The field was going to erode badly.  But I could not convince him.  By the time, I went up to Grandpa’s house for dinner I was fuming. 

As we ate I told him about my morning and how wrong the man was.  I told him I’d pretty much ignored the guy eventually, and was cultivating it properly.  He told me I needed to stop.  I couldn’t believe it.

“Why on earth should I stop doing it right”, I asked. “You’d tan my hide if I drove a tractor the way he wants me to do it”. 

“Because it’s his farm”, Grandpa replied.  “He gets to decide how he wants it done.  Not you”.

 

“But he’s an ignorant fool!  He has no idea what he’s doing, and he’s going to ruin that field!” I shouted.

“Did you try to explain that to him?” Grandpa asked.

“Well sure.  But he told me to go on and do it anyway”, I answered.

“Then that’s what you have to do”, Grandpa insisted.

“But why?  Why?  It makes no sense”, I cried.

“It’s his farm”, he said. 

Those words again.  “His farm”.  Not mine.  Not Dad’s.  Not Grandpa’s. 

Grandpa went on, “You have two choices.  You can do it his way because it’s his farm, or you can tell him you can’t do it that way and leave.  Your choice.  But when you take a man’s money to do a job, you do it his way.  If you can’t do that, then you need to go.  At the end of the day, it’s still his farm”. 

I can’t begin to describe how much that burned me.  Inside I was seething.  My whole body felt on fire.  But as I finished eating I began to think about what he was telling me.  “It’s his farm.  It’s his choice.”  Reluctantly I began to accept it. 

Mostly I think it was because at the end of this day anyway, I needed that money.  Sure what he was asking was dumb.  In the end it would hurt him more than help him, but Grandpa had a point.  It was his farm, and at the end of the day, I’d be down the road with some money in my pocket, and it would still be his farm. 

I’d like to say I learned a great lesson that day, but I really didn’t.  It wouldn’t be until many years, and many battles had passed, before I began to understand.  But not understanding had its price.  I lost out on rewards that I had truly earned.  I lost out on opportunities that should have been mine.  I even lost my job over it once.  Slowly I began to understand. 

“It’s his farm”. 

It doesn’t matter if it’s Old McDonald, or Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs.  When they own the farm and you don’t, you’re only left with a couple of choices—Accept it and do the job, or leave and go somewhere you can accept it.  Because the only other position is Agreement.  Trust me.  You’ll never work anywhere that you’re always in agreement.