Ezra Taft Benson Quotes

I grew up in Colorado and spent my summers in Montana as a ranch hand.

I've always considered myself a physical person. I don't call myself a farm girl, but I did spend a lot of years shoveling manure and throwing hay, because I worked to pay most of my riding expenses.

The strength that I have comes from irrigating the citrus plantation, ploughing in the vineyard, guarding the melon fields at night. I believe that's what gave me the strength.

I love to pick tomatoes at the end of the day, when they're still warm from the sun.

I grew up off the grid in Vernon, and I saw my parents work hard every day, as teachers but also while farming and building a log home. So from a young age I knew the value of hard work.

I was working on the farm to get in shape, about a mile away from my parents. You know, I did everything as a kid to stay in shape - jogging, work on the farm, driving the tractor. I'll never forget.

On a farm, you can get very bored.

I have a farm and I love it there. There's really nothing to do, but even watching the chickens, its fun.

I inherited that calm from my father, who was a farmer. You sow, you wait for good or bad weather, you harvest, but working is something you always need to do.

As a grandson of farmers in downstate Illinois, I have long admired the dedication of farmers to their work and have written about the role of agriculture in American innovation.

My grandmother raised me. She was a real no-nonsense but very funny lady. I drove tractors, made hay, milked cows, fed the chicken, fed the pigs.

I remember as a little girl going down to the beet fields in the Dakotas and in Nebraska and Wyoming as migrant workers when I was very, very small, like, I was, like, 5 years old, I believe. And I remember going out there, you know, traveling to these states and living in these little tarpaper shacks that they had in Wyoming.

I never read a single book as a child. I did not read as a child. I worked on the farm. I had books in the classroom, but that was it. I never read a single book outside of the classroom.

We were sharecroppers - we were a little bit of everything. We farmed and tried to make something.

With the advent of spring and beginning of the new harvest season the creators of abundance, our peasants, come out to the fields to sow with good aspirations and hopes.

I grew up in Swaledale, in Iowa. Its population was 220 when I was growing up, and it's probably 150 now. I lived in town and sometimes worked on the farms outside of town in the summers.

There was no last animal I treated. When young farm lads started to help me over the gate into a field or a pigpen, to make sure the old fellow wouldn't fall, I started to consider retiring.

I'm one of nine sisters. My parents were dairy farmers in Wisconsin. My father didn't believe in girls doing farm work. Girls did housework, and he hired young men to do farm work. I would have preferred to be outside.

If I were to leave the U.S., I'd live in England. But I'd never leave the U.S. I own a 400-acre farm in Macon, Georgia. I raise cattle and hogs. I own horses, too. I love horses as much as singing. I like to hunt on horseback.

I grew up hard. I picked cotton and plowed with the mule and fixed the cars and played with the guitar and the piano.

My days are spent wrangling children, chipping dried manure from boots, washing jeans, and frying calf nuts.

I plowed fields with horses and worked as a hired hand in high school for 50 cents a day.

We need a president who understands the contributions and values of rural America, a president who understands the men and women who are up at 5 a.m. every day to grow the food that we put on our tables.

I grew up in a farming family. I hated cleaning out the chickens but loved hatching them and feeding the new born sheep. The smell of hot milk still has a special resonance for me. Harvest was back-breaking work, though... Where do you think Jesus got his biceps from?

I take my vacation on the combine and tractor.