Congressman spends break helping dad harvest

CHARLESTON, Mo. -- The joke around Paul Hulshof's farm is that he got taxpayer-subsidized help with the corn harvest this year.

That's what neighbors said when they spotted his son, U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof, at the local grocery where farmers stop for lunch: Cheap labor, huh?

"They're just having a time," Kenny Hulshof, 43, said. "I said, 'I'm cheap, so long as I don't run the combine through the fence."'

Harvest was a relatively new experience for the younger Hulshof, who helped work crops through the summer on the Southeast Missouri farm but left for college and law school classes before the corn matured.

His father always harvested the corn with the help of one farmhand. But this year, harvest came weeks after Paul Hulshof finished radiation treatments for lung cancer.

The 68-year-old quit smoking, was declared cancer free and regained some strength. Still, he needed help.

The timing was just right for Kenny Hulshof, a three-term congressman who lives in Columbia and represents central and northeast Missouri. Each August, congressional leaders cancel votes and committee hearings so lawmakers can spend the month in their districts visiting constituents or, in election years such as this one, do some heavy campaigning.

Last week, Hulshof swapped the politicking for 11-hour days in the fields and suppers cooked by his mother, Geri, on the farm near Charleston.

The work is tough, but not necessarily as tough as he remembered. The tractor cab is air conditioned, and high-tech control panels on some farm equipment have replaced the need for careful listening to make sure rotors are turning at the proper speed.

"I've teased Dad. I said, 'I never knew farming was so easy,'" Hulshof said.

Father in a new light

Beyond some new experiences, Hulshof said, he is seeing his father in a new light.

"He knows his farm better than anyone -- he knows where there's swags in certain fields; he knows what you have to do to coax out of the land the most abundant harvest you can have," Hulshof said.

When it comes to selling the crop, Hulshof said, his father is just as savvy, weighing the cost per bushel of keeping the crop in the bin, as opposed to taking it down the river.

His father probably tried to teach him the same tricks of the trade when he was studying agricultural economy at the University of Missouri, Hulshof said.

"I knew then I wasn't going to come back to the farm, so it really didn't register. But now it's much more profound," he said.

Paul Hulshof views his son with mutual regard.

"What surprised me is, he still remembered so much," the father said Friday, when the two were in Portageville, Mo., for breakfast. "There was no retraining at all."

Even the neighbors' teasing has given Hulshof a new perspective. They tease his father about having a congressman for a farmhand, and they chide Hulshof for the new farm bill Congress passed this year, complaining it's too complicated to plan next year's planting.