November 1, 2002

From The Air, Farm Doesn't Look So Great

Joe Peck, NY State Farm Humorist

If you ever have the opportunity to view your farm from the air, jump at the chance. Don't worry, I don't mean literally.

My prayers were answered when I was invited to go up in a small two-seater, Volkswagon-powered collection of pipe, canvass, Plexiglass and luck.

What an experience! Nothing can duplicate the feeling of seeing the ground fall away beneath you as you roar into the realm of birds and clouds, crammed into a cockpit the size of a motorcycle.

From the air everything looks flat. Those steep hills seem to recede and gentle slopes disappear. I could hardly wait to see my picturesque farmstead from the air.

I envisioned the red barns standing proudly, arranged neatly on around my well-kept fields and pastures. At an altitude of 600 feet, my farm appeared on the horizon.

Those hills that I feared to climb on a tractor with a baler and wagon in tow now seemed like a flat canvas. I marveled at how different the farm looked from above.

It was as if I were viewing a calendar photo or a farm magazine cover, shot in the beautiful level fields of Ohio or Iowa. Wow, what a difference a few hundred feet makes!

Then it dawned on me. From this perspective there were no secrets. Every junk pile, discarded piece of black plastic and rusty obsolete machine came into plain view. What I thought was a show place was actually a collection of rusty roofs, haphazardly placed tractors and crooked cornrows.

Snapping madly with my automatic camera in one hand while clinging to the window ledge with the other, I made a vow to pick things up, to park machinery in neat rows and to try to make my cornrows straighter.

But then, as we were landing I asked myself, who would see the fruits of my efforts. Certainly not airline pilots as they fly too high and are too busy to sightsee and definitely not military aircraft as they are too concerned with training exercises.

In reality, it would be only air tourists like myself who would appreciate my efforts to tidy up, and since most farmers are too busy to fly anyway, I think I'll worry about those messy items. Boy, am I glad you can't see an aerial view of my office!

Agricultural Insurance loves farms that maintain good house-keeping practices. But no, we don't require aerial views of your property.