Looking Beyond the Manure Pit

In the lower left of this blurry picture you can see the concrete manure pit (just behind the cow looking at you).

Looking Beyond the Manure Pit

(Why I Decided to go to College)

One benefit from growing up on a farm, but with parents that valued education, was that it gave all nine of us boys an incentive to go to college. None of us liked to farm, it was hard work and it could be difficult to make ends meet. So when the time came, each of us headed off to college and worked hard in hopes of being presented employment opportunities that were more enjoyable than farming.

The first time I remember deciding that I wanted to go to college was the summer after my brother Brian graduated high school and was preparing to go to Brigham Young University (BYU). That summer there was also a construction project underway on the farm to put in a manure pit.  We had owned dairy cattle for a few years, but we needed a ready location to push the manure when we cleaned out the corrals- something that we typically did with the tractor every couple days.

We also had a ditch (creek) originating from a spring in the nearby mountains that came down through our property - something that was highly prized in Southeastern Idaho where irrigation is life or death for the crops. On this particular day I remember sitting next to Brian near the ditch and looking at our nearly-complete manure pit. It was built out of concrete on the side of a slope. The top side (the shallow end) was near the ditch and it extended down the hill some 60-80 feet. The side and back walls were also of reinforced concrete about a foot thick. Because of the slope, the walls at the top of the hill near the ditch were only a couple feet high. At the deep end, the manure pit walls rose about 8 or 10 feet above the concrete floor.

As we sat looking at the clean concrete pit, I couldn’t help but be a little sad that soon it would be filled with manure. To me that seemed like a complete waste, so I shared with Brian the wonderful idea that was forming inside my mind. I told him that instead of filling the pit with manure, we should divert water from the ditch into the pit and make it into a swimming pool. I imagined how wonderful it would be to spend the warm summer days in what I imagined as a beautiful swimming pool with crystal-clear water.

I must have expected a reply about how great that would be but that we really needed some place to put the manure.  But instead Brian said, “you know Roger, where I am going to college, at BYU, they have two swimming pools”. This reply caught me off guard. Suddenly, instead of dreaming about a swimming pool that I knew would never really come to fruition, I was able to start dreaming of another dream. A dream that I knew was possible to reach because I had seen others do it. I started dreaming of going to college.

I was fortunate to grow up in a family that valued education. I know others who did not have that same blessing. They didn’t have others around them to inspire them to go to college, or to inspire them to dream of making a better life for themselves. So often we limit ourselves to what we think we can do. I believe that these self-imposed limitations are often much, much lower than our potential. I am grateful for others in my life that have inspired me to reach a little higher and I hope that my interactions with others might somehow inspire them to believe in themselves and in their wonderful possibilities.

While college may not be the perfect path for everyone, learning and training ourselves to be the best we can, in whatever vocation or path we choose, should be a high priority. It will provide us opportunities to help us realize our dreams and will bless our lives and the lives of others.

So let’s help others look beyond the manure pit that’s right in front of them, and help them glimpse the wonderful and real possibilities that are within their reach.