Since this is Women’s Week, I would like to show my appreciation to the women that mean the most to me – the farmer’s wives and the rancher’s daughters.

A farmer’s wife has to deal with a lot of things – a stressed -out husband, children running around, working at a job to help support the farm and helping with all of the farm work. They are also pretty tough. I know this because my own mother is one of the toughest people I know.

When my mother was pregnant with me, she chopped wood for the wood furnace in our house and still helped my father move hogs where he worked at the time. And she also had to take care of my brother and sister while she was doing the other tasks during the winter of 1980. Because of that I have the utmost respect of all farmer’s wives and especially my mother.

I know all of you feel the same way about your mothers because you have seen how much they put up with. A farmer’s wife is willing to give up her own personal time so that she can help her husband with the chores and try to ease some of the pressures of farm life. She does not spend less time with her children because she is working because most of the time her children are working right along side her.

Most of the farmer’s wives I know also work off the farm so that their husbands can continue to make the family farm a success. Even though they would rather do nothing but relax after putting in a hard day at work, these women go out to feed animals and still put a good meal on the table for her family, no matter how late at night the family sits down together.

Yes, that may seem sexist that the woman still cooks the meal and does all the cleaning, but sometimes that is just the way things are. When these women marry that farm boy with a spark in his eye and a few pieces of machinery passed down from his father, they are entering a partnership for the rest of their lives together. The partnership will have highs and lows, like when they have their first child together and the child starts to play with tractors to be like “daddy.”

There are also lots of down times when the farmer and his wife do not see much of each other during harvest and when the markets drop and the farm starts to lose money. But through it all most farm wives stand beside their men because of a thing called love.

As a young man chasing women around this big campus I’ve noticed I seem to favor a certain kind of woman. I tend to be after women who have an interest in agriculture. I know that since they have grown up on a farm they know the hardships that go along with being a farmer’s wife.

When I take over my family farm I will not be farming the traditional row crops. I will be raising hay and cattle, so I am starting to look for women who are used to cattle.

That would be perfect for me if I could find that rancher’s daughter who has about a hundred head of cattle, drives a nice truck and somehow decided that she actually liked me enough to marry me. It may sound a little crazy, but it could happen.

I know I am the one who is supposed to have all of the cattle, but because of my financial troubles during college I have had to sell most of the herd that I have built up the past few years. A woman does not have to have a hundred head of cattle (any number would be fine), but it would make starting out a little easier since we would not have to take out a loan to start our herd.

So while all of the other events are happening around campus to celebrate Women’s Week, take the time to think about the hard-working women with their thankless positions. Without these women being the foundation for the farms across this great nation, we would not be able to live the way we do.

And if you happen to meet a girl with a truck and some cattle, send her my way.

Wesley Griffin is a senior in agricultural education from Grand River.