Being from a farming family helped instill work ethic in this columnist

My dad used to have a bumper sticker that read, “Don’t gripe about farmers with your mouth full.” My dad, Chuck Woycik Sr., was a beef farmer for the better part of 46 years before his sudden death at the age of 61. As the daughter of a beef farmer, I have caviar taste when it comes to the beef I eat. You’ll rarely see me order a hamburger from a restaurant because it’s not “home grown.”

Yes, I am a “farm snob.”

This past Saturday, I’d volunteered to help my mom and stepfather “work cattle.” As previously explained, this involves putting each individual bovine through a chute, giving them vaccinations and insect repellant, ear tagging them, and, in some cases, castration of bulls. After six hours, most of the six of us were covered in, um, material that did not smell like perfume. I went home, jumped in the shower, and headed out to the lake to join my hubby, our daughter, and some good friends.

When asked where I’d been that day, my hubby told everyone I was helping to get steaks ready for next year (true!) One of our friends has a daughter, sweet as she can be, but she “hates coming out on the lake. It’s so boring.”

And, once again, I turned into my parents.

“Do you know what I was doing at 16?” I asked. “Helping my dad make hay and working in the garden on the hottest day of the year.”

She asked if I got paid for that, to which her father replied, “Yep, she got to have a nice home-cooked meal each night and a roof over her head.”

There were years that were difficult for my parents in the farming industry. But as great parents, they never let their kids know the stress they were under. The crops of soybeans and corn didn’t yield any profits because of droughts and hail storms (remember the great heat wave of 1980?)

The beef market was unpredictable, much like the stock market of today. My dad was working 16-hour days, both farming our own land, as well as working a second full-time job farming for another company. My mom was working outside our home at a full-time job, as well as taking care of us kids. She would keep my dad’s dinner warm in the oven until he got home, sometimes at 10 at night.

Anyone that thinks farming is the “easy way out” needs a boot up their behind. It’s usually a thankless job with long hours and low pay. It’s not just driving a tractor and listening to John Denver. A farmer has to pay close attention to the current market conditions, much as any other business owner when it comes to their marketable goods.

Kids in middle school used to make fun of me for living on a farm, I guess because it wasn’t “cool” at the time in Northern Virginia to live on a farm. Oh, how times have changed! Now it’s the thing to do — everyone is going green, growing their own vegetables, buying “grass-fed beef” and organic items out the wazoo.

There it is Culpeper — our secret is out! We farming families have known for years what it takes to build strong, healthy bodies.

My grandfather on my mom’s side was also a farmer, but a dairy farmer. Therefore, I had never known a “traditional” working family, where the father wears a suit and goes to an office every day. It always seemed strange to me that my friends went home to an empty house, because even though my dad wasn’t in the house, he was usually out in the field and Mom was home to get us off the bus.

I enjoy helping out on the farm — it gets me back to my roots (no pun intended), and I always sleep like a rock that night. Thomas Jefferson once said, “Agriculture is the first in utility, and ought to be the first in respect.” Amen, President Jefferson, for we descendants of farmers are the proudest of them all!

Smith’s column runs every Friday on the editorial page.