Last December, I noticed a deposit of $3,089.80 in our checking account. What a nice Christmas gift!

It was a payment from the Farm Service Agency. I dug in my memory to recall that months ago I filled out an application for a PARP payment based on some combination of farm income, yields, price, and maybe the price of tea in China. “PARP” stands for something. You can look that up.

PARP is a leftover program from the Covid era, stupid Trump policies, and excessive weather events. Weather is something farmers are always fighting with. Covid and Trump were unique maladies.

The three grand came at a useful time when we’re paying the end of last year’s expenses and the beginning of next year’s. We’re also selling crops out of the field. A lot of money is flying in and out. We hope there’s some left over at the end.

Every time you taxpayers send us money, I tell Pam and then speculate how much “big” farmers are getting. By “big,” I don’t mean overweight. I mean big in acres. I am a “small” farmer in acres. If I got $3,000, I’m guessing big farmers got, what, $50,000, $100,000?

Which leads us to a current farm matter. Every five years, Congress is required to craft a new Farm Bill. The 2018 Farm Bill expired in 2023. We are living with a series of extensions until a new one can be passed by Congress and signed by the President.

Writing a Farm Bill is a difficult process in normal times, when thoughtful, intelligent legislators are willing to compromise and seek the larger good. Now that the two parties have sunk to acting like ill-behaved four-year-olds, it’s almost impossible.

From journalist Allison Winter: “Historically, farm bills have brought together lawmakers across party lines, uniting on regional interests. The massive bill stitches together support for agriculture producers, energy and conservation programs on farmland and food and nutrition programs for families in need.”

And from Carl-Johan Karlsson: “Gone are the days when politicians brokered deals across the aisle. Instead, polarization has transformed the democratic process, which once thrived on compromise and respectful dialogue, into a winner-takes-all battleground of dysfunction and animosity.”

We’ve had plenty of dysfunction the two years they’ve been working on the Farm Bill. The House Agriculture Committee passed a version in May that was basically a Republican wish list with more money for farmers and less money for poor people. It wasn’t a particularly useful gesture, but at least they could tell their constituents they were doing something in Washington besides taking up space.

A Farm Bill will have to be hammered out after the election, even if the parties involved would rather hammer each other on the head.

As part of the process, the major farm groups lobby for various positions. The American Farm Bureau is sort of the Republican side, and the National Farmers Union is sort of the Democratic side. I belong to both because I like going to meetings in the winter when I’m bored.

The commodity groups are also major players: the National Corn Growers Association, the National Pork Producers Council, etc. There’s even an American Emu Association protecting emu growers’ interests. I want to say right here that I’m fully for emu rights.

If you’re a long-time reader of this column (hi Pam!), you remember that I was involved in the creation of a lesser-known farm organization in 2012: Producers Opposed to Obscene Payments, aka P.O.O.P., was founded in response to large direct payments going to well-heeled big farmers.

Direct farm payments ended in the 2013 Farm Bill. Members of P.O.O.P. like to take credit for that. But, alas, those payments were replaced with increasingly large subsidies for crop insurance. The leaders of P.O.O.P. considered changing our name to Producers Intent on Stopping Subsidies. We decided that wasn’t a good idea.

A large problem, the problem, with both direct payments and crop insurance subsidies is there have never been any practical limits on them. I’ve written about this before; It bugs me enough to harp on it. There have been “caps” put on payments and subsidies, but they’ve never been so strictly applied or cleverly written as to prevent large operators from benefiting handsomely from government largesse.

Under the current Farm Bill, the government pays $10 billion to crop insurance. $8 billion goes to pay about 62% of farmers’ premiums. $2 billion goes to cover costs to fourteen private insurance companies. According to the General Accounting Office, those companies make “above normal” profits. Guess who becomes a major lobbying group for continuing subsidies?

The top ten percent of farmers in sales receive 68 percent of crop insurance subsidies. The lion’s share of those farmers are in the south, which has always had an overly large voice in farm policy. Ask Collin Peterson about that.

Collin spent his career championing northern farmers until voters decided he wasn’t appropriately beholden to Donald Trump. He was also willing to work across the aisle. This was before the aisle was fitted with barbed wire.

I have no problems with any farmer wanting to operate a lot of acres. With advancements in technology, it’s clear that less and less of us will be running more and more acres. “Big” farmers are as likely to be good citizens and neighbors as “small” farmers. In some cases, they can be better stewards of the land.

The question, as it has been for decades, should the government be in the business of reducing their risk? Shouldn’t Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith and Brad Finstad and Michelle Fischbach consider that? They might not get votes for it, but doing something overdue like putting real limits in the Farm Bill would be the right thing. Doing the right thing still counts for something.

I am not anti-government. In a democratic capitalist system like ours, good government is essential. But we should constantly ask, can it be better?

It’s possible to imagine the billions of dollars spent supporting farmers going for more good. Maybe contributing to a more diverse agriculture across the Midwest. Maybe we could grow more of our own food instead of shipping it here from California and South America. Some of the billions could really be supporting small family farms.

We can imagine it. Why can’t we do it?

When you live where your father lived and work where your father worked, you hear his voice sometimes. He passed away twenty-five years ago, but he still reminds me to put equipment away at night and clean up grain spills.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t put gravel on the driveway in a long time. My dad used to have that done. A voice in my head said I should do that. Or was it my dad’s voice?

Regardless, I called a Heiderscheidt. That is what I do in all matters of earthly materials, A few days later Monte was artfully applying a layer of gravel the length of the driveway. When Monte was done, I ran our 4-wheeler with a small drag in and out the driveway.

Then I went to rake a few spots. Virgin gravel is an exquisitely perfect thing. You almost hate to be the first one to walk on it. As I pulled the rake back and forth, a memory came to me. I recalled being a kid, and my brother and I going out to play in new gravel. Sometimes it was a pile and sometimes a layer like this.

We’d get our “beach toys” like shovels and pails and our toy tractors. If we were good the Christmas before, we had Tonka Toys to move the sand around.

I quit raking and knelt down. I pushed my hand into the soft, cool gravel. It will soon be hard and warm, but it’s squishy and kind of supple when it’s fresh off the truck. As kids, we had to get out there and play in it right away to experience those best conditions. Like many good things in life, it was fleeting.

I briefly wished I was a kid again. We have toys in the basement for when our grandson visits. I think Pam might have been concerned if I had gotten them out to play with. So, I returned to boring adult raking.

As much as one can retrieve feelings and sensations from six decades in the past, it was fun to remember the excitement of new gravel to my kid-self. I thought about other times when fun presented itself, times when a play-world appeared unexpectedly.

New snow came to mind. We all remember rushing out into the first snow. Our moms may or may not have got our boots on before we ran out. Maybe we fell to the ground to make a snow angel. Or we made the season’s first snowball if the snow was right.

There were other places on the farm that called to us as kids if the day was right. The rock pile could be a stone castle or a garrison with imagination and shifting stones around. There was a hill south of the house that leant itself to rolling down when it was newly mowed. You lay at the top, tucked your arms in, and turned yourself till gravity took over. Dizziness followed.

A couple nights ago, I stepped outside. Above were a thousand stars. Below was the sound of a thousand crickets. It’s a good cricket year judging by the size of the nocturnal choir. It was reassuring to hear that; there weren’t many crickets last year. Again, I flashed back to being a boy, looking up and being filled with something. I’m not sure if it was awe looking up at Creation. Or maybe it was confusion, trying to figure out how I fit in that eternity.

I was recently visiting with friends who are bikers. They regularly use the abundance of trails in the Cities for two-wheel journeys. Beth said, “I feel like I’m twelve years old when I’m on my bike!”

Of course, Beth’s not twelve on her bike, and I’m not eight with my hand in the cool gravel. But there is an urge to slide back to childhood in little moments. Unfettered exuberance, wonder, and total curiosity are things we were better at as kids. It’s good to reclaim those now and then.

It’s emotionally healthy and perhaps even physically healthy. I jog a little, and I came across a technique call “chi running.” That borrows from the Chinese martial art form of tai chi. It is supposed to increase efficiency and reduce injuries. A major principle of chi running is to run like a child runs.

From an instructor, “Look at the way you used to run as a kid. Kids are constantly taking quick steps and leaning forward to let their body, not their legs, do most of their work.” With that in mind, I’ve watched my eight-year-old grandson run and tried to imagine myself as him when I’m running. Alas, I am still a 68-year-old plodding old guy. But it’s fun to try.

I realize living where I grew up is an odd phenomenon. It’s true for some farmers but for few others. It does mean that you not only get to hear your father’s voice, but you also get to stand in the places you stood as a kid.

Perhaps that makes it easier to relive youth moments. But it’s not perfect. Recently I was in our orchard. I realized every tree that was there when I was a kid is gone. In their place are trees Pam and I planted. The three apple trees that marked first, second, and third base in kickball games are gone. As is the big sweeping Duchess apple tree that hung over the swing. The trees there now hopefully carry memories for our children.

This summer, Pam has been carving a path to walk through the grove. We’ve found a collection of rusted tools, farm parts, bottles, and barbed wire. Buried in brush and leaves, I found an old baseball, soggy and moldy.

There are others back there, as I can recall hitting balls over the granary and spending time trying to find them. As I held the ragged ball in my hands, I thought that I last held the ball half a century ago. I had a vision of the boy-me handing the ball to the old guy-me.

You can’t be twelve again, but sometimes you can touch it. I hope each of you gets your own chance. We need breaks from adulthood.