When we went into World War II, I was a tractor driver then. I drove tractors on the plantation. So when they start calling people my age, 18, up, I was one they called.
I've never farmed before. It's unforgiving, it's hard work, hard graft - but I loved it, and I loved everyone I met who guided me along the way.
I went to school in the afternoon and worked in the morning. Sometimes I went out into the fields with my granddad.
My mother's family raised grains and crops. My father's grew sugarcane and mangos. So I knew more about the basics of farming than of acting.
I've lived all over the country - Michigan, California, Texas, New Jersey, Rhode Island and, now, Maine - but I never understood springtime until I spent 25 years farming in the Ozarks.
I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm, so when I come to Washington, I'll know how to cut pork.
As I grew older, farms in Kentucky provided me with many jobs in hauling hay and in cutting tobacco. In addition to helping fund my college years, these jobs helped me to meet an array of very interesting and amazing men and women.
I know how to set an irrigation tube, and I helped with the harvest. I learned the law of the harvest without even knowing I was learning it. On the farm, you learn early that you reap what you sow.
I spent a lot of time on farms when I was young. My uncle and my dad owned a big farm.
When I was four, we moved to a farm outside Springfield, Missouri. We had a radio show from that farmhouse. My dad always wanted a farm. We used to go out and milk the cows every morning and then do a radio show with a remote control from our living room. We'd start by singing 'Keep On The Sunny Side.'
I volunteered on a farming community in Israel for two years when I was a teenager. One of the jobs involved clearing out a massive warehouse full of chickens ready for the abattoir. The smell of 40,000 chickens in 45C is awful.
You know what would help this boy?" Demeter mused. "Farming." Persephone rolled her eyes. "Mother-" "Six months behind a plow. Excellent character building.
I was a typical farm boy. I liked the farm. I enjoyed the things that you do on a farm, go down to the drainage ditch and fish, and look at the crawfish and pick a little cotton.
I have delivered lambs, calves and foals on our farms over the years.
Am I happiest on the farm or out in the middle? I am a cricketer, but the farm is a very special place and I absolutely love being in the countryside and getting away from the bubble. I like to think I'm a farmer, but there's so much experience that goes into that.
I grew up on a dairy and beef farm.
I used to help my grandfather on the farm, driving tractors, raising crops and animals. I used to feed some of the baby cows and pigs, and I had to be no older than 7 or 8. Then at about 9 or 10 I started driving tractors. It showed me at an early age what hard work was all about and how dedicated you have to be, no matter what you do.
I've worked cornfields.
Everybody told me I was making a mistake by going into this business, but I know how to grow hair as well as I know how to grow cotton.
As our fathers said, you can tell a ripe corn by its look.
Being a farmer is a great qualification to have to serve in the United States Congress.
One time we did have 300 acres in watermelons. That was fun.
I was always out wiping around on the farm with three-wheelers and four-wheelers. I loved the speed and the adrenaline rush that followed.
I had a lot of jobs when I was younger. Where I grew up, there was a lot of agricultural jobs, so I worked on a lot of farms. I worked in the pea fields, harvesting peas.
Sometimes we followed the crops, doing migrant labor. We did several years of tenant farming in Western Oregon starting in the early '50s. Later, my stepdad managed gas stations in a small town near Portland.
