The tradition of setting goals and making resolutions for the year ahead has its origins dating back some 4,000 years ago. Historians say it was the ancient Babylonians who are credited with initiating a list of promises made to their gods during the festival of Akitu.

The tradition managed to survive the millennia and was still being practiced in Roman times, eventually being tied to the new calendar date of Jan. 1, the start of the new year, a measure apparently supported by the Roman Senate.

It’s interesting how trivial traditions seem to be passed down generation after generation to modern times, when such things as how the pyramids were constructed (aliens?), or who was the first person to create the process of nixtamalization (also aliens?), which a few well-versed farmers can tell you was the science for preparation of maize, in which the corn is soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution to remove up to 97 percent to100 percent of aflatoxins from mycotoxin-contaminated kernels.

But enough trivia. The point is, people like (or hate) their resolutions, and whether you fit in the former group or the latter, people will still make — and probably break — their resolutions. And farmers are no exception.

FARMER/RANCHER WISHES

My wife and I decided it might be enlightening to ask farmers near and far what might be on their resolution lists this year. It was no surprise that many — most of them, in fact — wished-for resolutions for 2019 were recurring from previous years: things like how to produce more crops with less input costs, hopes for more rain or irrigation water and less drought.

We also heard a lot of agriculture-related resolutions about using or discovering better seed varieties, lower costs for fuel, and an early, wet spring, or extended harvest season, and a healthy, happy family.

While those are great things to hope for, they failed to stoke our hope for the unusual, the creative, and the flamboyant. But after querying a few dozen or so farmers and ranchers over the last couple of months, we did get responses that we thought deserved to be shared.

A few were practical, some were genius, and a few just plain way-out-there. Keep in mind, the No. 1 request by farmers, even before they answered the question of which resolutions might be on their list this year, was, “Don’t use my name,” or “Don’t print my answers,” or even more stringent warnings about what they would do if we did. We promised, and therefore are protecting the names of the innocent — and the guilty.

THE TOP RESOLUTIONS

So, here are the Top 25 unusual farmer/rancher resolutions for 2019: