Customers Write Their Own Wall of Farm Wisdom
ORD, Nebraska — Pruett Feed & Seed took down its framed motivational posters this month and invited customers to write their own on the wall, and the resulting collection of motivational quotes humor has outdrawn the store’s seed sale, according to owner Darla Pruett, who said she has never seen farmers read anything this carefully.
The old posters had hung beside the scale for as long as anyone could remember. They showed eagles, mountain ranges and a rowing crew above single words in capital letters. Pruett said the trouble began when customers started correcting them in pencil.
“Somebody wrote ‘not in this weather’ under the mountain,” she said. “Then somebody wrote ‘try telling that to the heifer’ under the eagle. I came in one morning and the whole wall had notes on it. I thought, well, they’ve got more to say than the poster does.”
How the Inspirational Quotes Humor Wall Started
Motivational posters have been part of office life for a long time, a history traced in the encyclopedia entry on Successories and revisited by Quartz. Pruett said she had never considered that the audience could talk back.
She painted a section of the back wall with chalkboard paint and set out a jar of markers. Within a week the wall was full. Within two it had to be wiped and started again, which Pruett said she did with a heavy heart and a rag.
The Best Humor Life Quotes From the Wall
Pruett photographs each version of the wall before it is erased. A selection of what appeared in the first three weeks follows, with spelling as written.
- Hard work pays off eventually. Laziness pays off now, and then the cow gets out.
- The early bird gets the worm. The early farmer gets the flat tire.
- Dream big. Check the fence first.
- If at first you don’t succeed, borrow your neighbor’s tractor.
- Success is a ladder. The cow is standing on the bottom rung and will not move.
- Believe in yourself. The dog already doesn’t.
- Plans are just good intentions until the cows get involved.
- Farming is ninety percent planning and ten percent saying, well, that wasn’t the plan.
- A bad day on the farm is a good story with a repair bill.
- Rise and shine. Mostly rise.
Pruett said her favorite is the one about the ladder. “It’s got everything,” she said. “Ambition, farm animals, and the cow.”
Study Finds Humor Life Quotes Beat Posters
The Sandhills Rural Workplace Institute, a small research group that studies how people behave in feed stores, surveyed 300 farm-supply customers about the old posters and the new wall. Twelve percent said the old posters had ever motivated them. Sixty-one percent said the wall did. The other 27 percent said they hadn’t noticed either one because they were looking at the dog treats.
Institute director Gordon Fenske said the result was clearer than he expected. “The posters were written by strangers,” he said. “The wall is written by people who bought the same fence staples. You trust a man who has also run out of fence staples.”
Customer Reviews Weigh In on the Motivational Quotes Humor
The store’s online listing now includes a number of reviews that mention the wall. Pruett printed three and taped them next to the register.
★★★★★ Came in for mineral. Left with mineral and a new outlook. The wall about the cow on the ladder is accurate.
★★★★☆ Great store, great wall. Lost one star because somebody erased my quote before I could show my wife.
★★★☆☆ Wall is fine. Parking is bad. Quote about the dog is too close to home.
Pruett said she has replied to all three. To the third, she wrote that the parking lot is the parking lot and the dog is the dog.
Farmers React to the Wall of Motivational Quotes Humor
Regular customer Hal Brockmeier, who raises cattle north of town, said he has stood in front of the wall for as long as twenty minutes at a time while waiting on his order. “You can’t get that at the bank,” he said. “They’ve got a poster in there of a lighthouse. A lighthouse never helped anybody with a note.”
Another customer, who asked not to be named because her husband wrote the quote about the dog, said she has taken to reading the wall aloud in the truck. “He doesn’t say anything,” she said. “But he drives a little slower.”
For readers in rural communities wondering how a feed store ended up as the center of the neighborhood, NBC News has looked at how rural co-ops and stores keep their communities running. Pruett said the answer in Ord is simpler. “People come in for feed,” she said. “They stay for the wall.”
Group Text Shows Plans for a Second Wall
A group text among four regular customers, which one of them forwarded to Pruett, shows that plans are underway for a second wall.
HAL: We need a second wall.
GENE: Who’s paying for the paint.
HAL: Darla.
GENE: Does Darla know.
HAL: Darla will know when there’s a wall.
RUTH: I’ll write the first quote.
HAL: What is it.
RUTH: Don’t ask a woman with a chalkboard.
Pruett said she has already ordered the paint. She said she is not sure about the second wall, but she is sure about the cow on the ladder, which she plans to have framed in a way that cannot be erased.
Humorous Observations on Motivational Quotes Humor
- Every office poster says TEAMWORK over a picture of guys rowing a boat. Nobody on a farm has ever rowed anywhere. The closest we get is the feed bucket, and that’s solo.
- The old poster told you to believe in yourself. The new wall says the dog already doesn’t. One of them has clearly met your dog.
- The best motivational quote in the whole store was written on the back of a receipt for forty bags of feed. That’s the only time in history a person has been inspired and billed at the same time.
- Sixty-one percent said the wall motivates them. Twenty-seven percent were looking at the dog treats. And honestly, same. Dog treats are very motivating.
- The kitten on the poster says hang in there. Buddy, the cow has been hanging in there since six this morning, and she’d like a word.
Last Updated on November 4, 2026 by Alan Nafzger