I Love to Listen

Only slightly less important than the love of good books is the way technology has enabled the ability to listen to some of the greatest thinkers and speakers of our time. Almost every book is now available on many kinds of media.

I am constantly listening to speakers and books, I typically wear out the tape player in a vehicle every 20,000 miles or so. My vehicles are pickups. I spend many hours loading and unloading compost by hand. Remember my first post on compost? Well most of those 3,000,000 pounds of compost were shoveled on and off of one of my pickups by hand...so that would make 6 million pounds handled by hand. This is good exercise for the body and if you are listening to some worthy literature or speaker, can be good exercise for the mind and soul.



Some of my younger readers are probably wondering what a tape player is and this is also dating the 15-20-25 year old vehicles I drive. (I think that everyone should drive a vehicle half their age.) Thanks to Reed's passion for "horse trading" with iPods I have recently upgraded from analog to the digital world.

It is amazing to be able to listen to Joel Salatin, Eliot Coleman, Arden Anderson, Alan Savory and other agricultural authors at a time of our convenience.

Since Reed and Lisa gave me an iPod touch for my birthday (what a great gift), I have discovered the world of pod casts.  I have down loaded hundreds of hours of business, leadership and faithbased content. My favorite contributors are: Mark Driscoll, John MacArthur, John Maxwell, Dave Ramsey, Entreleadership, Catalyst, Seth Godin, Jon Acuff, and Autumn Ridge Church.

Just like what we read, we need to be careful what we listen to. I like the Tom Clancy novels and other military and aventure books like this. These novels are peppered with profanity and my children, much to my embarassment, complained about the language. So I stopped listen to books with coarse language.

If it is not good for them, it isn't good for me either. Dad's this is something to think about!

So what does this have to do with farming. Farmers can cultivate a love of listening to great speakers and authors. Make the cab of your pickup or tractor into a class room for life long learning.