Friday Farming: Daylight Saving Time was not created for farmers

While I'm in a grumpy mood. . .

There's a myth out there that Daylight Saving Time was created for farmers. 

It wasn't.

Farmers and ranchers base their day on how much work there is to do and what that work entails. That's one of the charming things about their occupations.  It's actually tied to nature and natural cycles. They don't punch a time clock.

They also don't get overtime and it doesn't matter to any governmental regulatory agency how many hours they put in during a day, or how few.

Daylight Saving Time was foisted upon the nation during World War One to conserve fuel during the war, which was in short supply.  How exactly this was supposed to occur frankly isn't clear, but a lot of the pure unadulterated muddled thinking about Daylight Saving Time makes most of its supposed advantages unclear.

The Government boosted the idea by promoting the concept that everyone would have an extra hour to  go home and work on their war gardens. Because a lot of people really want to be working in the daylight on their gardens at 10:00 p.m. rather than 9:00 p.m.

Yeah. . . right.

In more recent years, when it was regularized in the 1960s, it was common to suggest such things as this allowed everyone to get out on the golf course.

Whatever.

Farmers had nothing to do with it.