Throughout the years, a standard myth or reasoning behind daylight
saving time has been that it is set up in part to help farmers. During daylight saving time, which begins today, an hour
of light is shifted an hour from the morning to the evening. When it
ends in the fall, standard time resumes. Farmers in Pueblo and the Lower Arkansas Valley, who usually are up
before the crack of dawn anyway, say the day comes and goes almost
without notice.
"To tell you the truth, I didn't realize people
thought it was for the farmers," said Glen Hirakata, whose family has
run Hirakata Farms in Rocky Ford for more than 90 years. "The one
thing I do see — and it has nothing to do with farming issue — is when
it goes back (to standard time) the kids aren't going to school in the
dark, so that's good." "As far as farming goes, I really don't have an opinion one way or another."
Carl Musso of Musso Farms in Pueblo said he likes having more light during the day, but it doesn't really change his operation. "More work with more light. I prefer the longer daylight hours and don't like falling back as much," Musso said. "In
October when you fall back, heck, it gets dark at 5 o'clock and what
you do is go in the house and eat," Musso said with a laugh. Kent Lusk, who runs a small farm north of Swink, agreed.
"To
me it doesn't matter because you get the same amount of day(light). I
get up when the sun gets up and I go to bed before the nightly news on
TV," Lusk said. "Daylight savings time to me is just another day." Lusk, a garden vegetable and melon farmer, said he hardly notices when the time changes. "I'd rather it be like in Arizona where it never changes, but it doesn't help or hurt me," Lusk said.
Lusk said the time change affects his routine for a few days and then his family gets used to it.
"It
mainly messes people around. It affects us more by messing up the time
than in farming. All you have to do is change your clocks, but it
doesn't affect the fields and the work," Lusk said. Other farmers said that during this time of year they don't look at the clock because they have a lot of work to do in a day.
Farmers agreed that weather plays a much larger role in farming than daylight saving time.
So,
as city folks go through their biannual disruption of the body's
natural rhythm and as their alarm clocks go off an hour earlier, most
farmers would have been up for hours tending the fields without missing a
beat.