Our people: Farmer preaches value of hard work

Paul Dee Barnes enjoys the simple things in life. He grew up in Field, a small farming community northeast of Melrose, and has spent his nearly 80 years of life raising crops, children, grandchildren, and serving in his community. These things make for what Barnes describes as, "a good life."

From 1991 to 2000 he was on the Curry County Commission; he also spent several years on the Texico school board. Barnes and his family today farm in the Pleasant Hill area, where they grow corn, corn silage, wheat, and other hay crops.

Q: How long have you lived in the area?

A: 79 years. I've been here in this community all of my life. I started school out in a little community called Field. I went to school there through the eighth grade. During the drought of the 1950s, several small schools consolidated, and went into Melrose. That's where I finished school.

Q: What is your favorite thing about life here?

A: I just think it's a very friendly community. You get along well with people here, and it's a very diversified community. There's a lot of things that go on here. For instance, the Cannon Air Force Base is a big part of our community.

Q: What is something in the community that has changed for the better in your time here, and/or something that you would like to see change for the better?

A: There have been a lot of changes that I think are good. One of the things that we're dealing with now is this drought that we're in. We have better means of farming now to deal with this adverse weather. But when it's as bad as it is right now, it's really hard to deal with. But we do have improved methods of raising crops and farming practices.

We've seen changes in hybrid seed – crops take less water now than what we used for a long time. Because water is a major issue, the crops have changed, in that respect, a lot.

Our irrigation went from row watering and flooding, to pivot sprinklers -- which takes less water. But now water is really an issue. In the agricultural field, water is the most major issue that we face.

Q: How did you meet your wife?

A: At the time I was working for K Barnett & Sons, (a construction company) in Clovis in highway construction. Nancy was a beautician in Clovis. We met in the mid-1960s. And we married in 1966, and have been together 56 years.

We met on a double date when we were both dating other people. We did stay friends though, with the other people on that date.

Q: What is your proudest accomplishment?

A: Number one is our family relationship. It has been a long, long one. We have two boys and a girl. As far as other things I've accomplished, I served on our school board in Texico for several years, and then served 10 years on the county commission. I have been involved in a lot of civic organizations and am just proud to have been a part of all that.

Q: What advice do you have for young parents?

A: Just keep your head up and work hard -- and teach these young kids to work. We were in farming and cattle and there's always something to do. Two of our kids are still a part of our farming operation. The other son is an engineer on the BNSF railroad.

Q: What's your favorite childhood memory?

A: I grew up on a farm. We were involved in rodeo activities and all kinds of things related to an agricultural background and that's where we got our start and learned how to get in it. We were involved in sports and school.

The little school out in Field was a real small rural school.

The last graduating class in that school had three seniors. We didn't have any telephones, we didn't have any communication like we do nowadays. We didn't have a telephone pole until I was probably 15 years old. That was for landline phones. It was pretty interesting growing up – we didn't even have running water in our houses till I was about 14. Times were much simpler.

I enjoyed hunting. Deer hunting, turkeys, coyote ... we got a lot of that. It started out with my dad, and as we got older we could go out hunting on our own. Duck hunting ... you name it.

Q: If you won the lottery, what would you do?

A: Probably just keep doing what we're doing. We've been doing it for so long now, we don't know how to do anything else. It's a good life ... We now have grown grandchildren who are a part of our operations some of the time.

Q: What has been the best part of your career?

A: I think number one, it was a good place to raise our children. And it's been a good life. We've had our ups and downs. We've had, like now, drought. We've had hail storms. But overall, we started with nothing and we've accumulated quite a little bit, and it's been a good place to raise kids and grandkids ... It's been a good life.

Q: What's the best piece of advice you've ever received, and who was it from?

A: My uncle Paul Barnes is who I'm named after. And probably of any person, I got more good advice from him than from anybody. He served in public office ahead of me, and I learned a lot from him. One of the things that I was taught -- not only by him, but also others -- is to be honest and to be straight up with people. I've tried to live my life that way.