Jack Holifield

Owner W.H.Planting -Works at Dewitt Auction-Unworthy recipient of Gods Grace.

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

[Tim Burchett @timburchett]

The farm lobby has sold out to big AG.

[Jack Holifield @holilield]

@gsane Where is this?

[Quentin Shieldknight @QShieldknight]

I think we should all be diligently praying instead of worrying over it.

#corn #cotton #soybeans #wheat #weather

Easier said than done I know but hang in there and keep grinding. I do think we as farmers need to look at the cattle numbers right now. Maybe it’s a lesson we should leave some sort of acreage in fallow to rest.

Leviticus 25:3-4

For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops.4 But in the seventh year the land is to have a year of sabbath rest, a sabbath to the Lord. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards.

[Jack Holifield @holilield]

@ColeSonne Anything under 20 we put in the bin and turn on the fan and leave it running.

[Adam | Faithful Messenger @Adam_FaithfulM]

This was the most important moment in history.

[Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius]

Retired Army colonel here. Three combat tours. 60% disabled per the VA. Spent most of my tactical career in the 82nd Airborne.

Please read what I am about to say with the sneering condescension with which I intend it:

Mr. Kristol, you are a grifter. Worse, you are a lying grifter devoid of morals who lets his beliefs change with whatever winds point to more filthy lucre. Today's speech by Secretary Hegseth was both entirely necessary and entirely spectacular. Those of us rank and file who fought in the wars you and your yellow, slobbering neocon chickenhawk buddies sent us off to die in applaud this effort with the utmost enthusiasm. These clownish, dangerous, senior generals and admirals have been the architects of American military failure for 20+ years. Their silence is indicative of nothing more than the fact that they know the gig is up and their fatcat days of being Perfumed Princes are no more. So howzabout you shut your trap and let us warriors decide what this speech meant? Good day, sir.

[Lisa Boothe @LisaMarieBoothe]

You learn a lot about people by who their heroes are. The left burned cities down in the name of George Floyd, a convicted criminal. The right is peacefully mourning the loss of Charlie Kirk, a man who loved Jesus and his family. Tells you a lot.

[Jack Holifield @holilield]

I don’t have many followers but if you think Charlie Kirk’s murder today was a good thing or if you believe like Matthew Dowd of MSNBC that he asked for it please unfriend me we are not the same.

[Jack Holifield @holilield]

@TheOnlyDSC Sir you are agile and despicable POS.

[Jack Holifield @holilield]

@MaggieMac56 $2.79 in Kennett Mo.

[Jack Holifield @holilield]

@gsane @OAcotton I think they cut their production and let supply and demand work it out. If we aren’t going to be the world’s breadbasket we are going to have to cut production.

[Jack Holifield @holilield]

@nicksortor Good they need to be.

[Jack Holifield @holilield]

@Micajahmc @KingSoyMissco It was a classic.

[Jack Holifield @holilield]

@miles_commodore I have Scotch Irish and English ancestry. I’m an American. Not Scotch-Irish-English American.

[Jack Holifield @holilield]

@kissel_adam @FLGator193 I wonder how long it will take them to ruin it?

[Grace Chong, MBI @gc22gc]

HARRISON: MSNBC says maps should mirror vote percentages. So I pulled the numbers.
CA: GOP is 40% of vote, gets 17% of seats
MA: 35%, zero seats
CT: 38%, zero seats
NY: 42%, gets 26%
MD: 38%, gets 12%
NM: 44%, zero seats
I could go on. They never complain when Democrats do it.

[Jack Holifield @holilield]

@2TArkMo @schrieferranch In 1979 I bought a man out who farmed 170 acres did all the work himself his wife owned a little fabric shop. Four kids one made an optometrist one a commercial airline pilot one a barber and a dental hygienist. They lived very frugal the kids all worked after school.

[Jim Nunn @nunncottoninc]

@west_crop @LachlanNass @OAcotton I have a farmer customer who uses a uniform service. Poly polos. Go to a field day this summer in cotton country & see what the industry and university people are wearing shirt wise. If our producers and industry people don’t support cotton, how can we expect others to do so.

[Jim Nunn @nunncottoninc]

@west_crop @LachlanNass @OAcotton Friend of mine who works for an ag retailer told me earlier today that a cotton seed company mailed him polyester shirts with the seed company logo to give customers. He told me that he returned the shirts and told them it was a stupid idea (to send polyester shirts).