The best advice always comes from those people with experience.  

So, when we came across this list on Farms.com we knew we had to share it with you.  

We hope you enjoy.

1. Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
2. Keep skunks and bankers at a distance.
3. Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
4. A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
5. Words that soak into your ears are whispered . . . not yelled.
6. Meanness don't jes' happen overnight.
7. Forgive your enemies.  It messes up their heads.
8. Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
9. It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
10. You cannot unsay a cruel word.
11. Every path has a few puddles.
12. When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
13. The best sermons are lived, not preached.
14. Most of the stuff people worry about ain't never gonna happen anyway.
15. Don't judge folks by their relatives.
16. remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
17. Live a good, honorable life.  Then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.
18. Don't interfere with somethin' that aint' botherin' you none.
19. Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
20. If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is top diggin'.
21. Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
22. The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin'.
23. always drink upstream from the herd.
24. Good judgement comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgement.
25. Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back in.
26. If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.
27. Live simply.  Love generously.  Care deeply.  speak kindly.

There was a time when many people thought that farming was menial work and "beneath" them.  This is not so, because every action has eternal value.  Tossing garbage cans and manure around have the same value as writing a thesis or working at any other occupation that appears to be cleaner.  There is nothing dirty about farming.  Everything the farmer deals with is clean and everything has a purpose.  The manure is going to help give us food for next year.  The hog will be eaten.  The cow will produce calves and give milk and meat.  Everything on the farm leads to the feeding of mankind.  How can farming be dirty when it feeds the temple of God, our Mother Earth.

Farming must be approached with great humility.  The learned man, the really learned one, is aware that he knows very little.  The farmer has for his teacher God, the Creator, and the natural world he created.  The farmer learns at the source of all schooling, where everything began, where all knowledge originally comes from.  He is reverent of the school of nature and its experience, and isn't afraid of it.

However learned, he never shows his learning to others with words puffed up with pride.  He uses humble similes, like the biblical parables.  He has the right to do so because he has lived them.  A farmer is understanding of others because he is understood by the world around him and he continues to contemplate on the mystery of life in the country.

A farmer walks purposefully; he doesn't waste one moment of time, a precious, God-given commodity.  If he misses a day, there will be no hay.  If he plows a little too late, there will be no harvest.  If he seeds one hour too late and a storm comes, then all his work will be undone.  He respects time and knows that it makes up seasons and hours.  he knows how he must use it, and neither allows it to be his master nor makes it his slave.

The farmer follows its call promptly and joyously, even if it lifts him out of his warm bed early in the morning and brings him back to his warm bed only late at night.  He knows it is his call.

~ excerpt from Apostolic Farming, Healing the Earth, by Catherine Doherty