There must be a way to determine at the very beginning whether a farm will be successful. It seems that if you do everything according to the rules, write the business plan, prepare the elevator speech, schmooze and talk up your products, take educational classes, engage the latest and greatest innovations, do the research, and start bringing in a little money it should become apparent that success is on the horizon. Even with all this, keeping dedicated through muddy winters, paying the crazy vet bills, I know I am not doing all I should. There are many things that interfere with timely marketing, family issues that keep us from meeting deadlines, the need to visit aging parents, children, and grandchildren, living with an in-law on dialysis, the conflicts with partners, the loss of vision, the despair. I look around and the farm is not pristine. We are tattered, overgrown, with peeling paint, and shoddy infrastructure. We are pressed down by financial issues to the point where we can hardly wiggle. We should fold up, shut down, abscond in the night. The niggling hope of success, or fear of failure, or cussedness keeps me from punching the kill switch. I don't have the heart for another start up, another degree, another notion.
I think often of my grandparents struggling on a tatter of a farm in Iowa during the Depression. I think of their farm and the ancient out buildings that they spruced up with red paint and white trim. The lawn and gardens around the house were lush and manicured. Their wealth, such as it was, was in their land, acquisitions and holdings that came after their children were grown. They were thrifty, careful, and completely dedicated to one another. If there was conflict, I didn't see it. I never knew, until later, how they struggled.
Our farm is different. There is an outside job that pays the big bills. When it doesn't pay the big bills, they go unpaid while the little bills are paid with farm money. The animals always eat well, we eat more creatively when times are tough. We formally started our farm later in life. We dabbled when the kids were little, milking goats and raising chickens and only started a full-time farming operation as we approached our sixties. We would like but haven't been able to muster a regular network of farmers to help with big projects. In Iowa the threshers came on a circuit around all the farms bringing in the hay. Everyone worked together, sharing equipment and pitching in to get the work done. The woman on a particular farm would spend days preparing the thresher's lunch, a huge affair involving cakes, pies, pickles, salads, corn, meats, breads, vats of lemonade and coffee. You didn't want to be the one with the skimpy lunch.
I guess I am trying to recreate my grandparent's farm. I love the smell of sheep and hay and the smell of the dusty driveway that reminds me of the five miles on gravel to get to their farm. It's impossible to recreate something that you remember so imperfectly, from a child's perspective. Something is always missing from the picture, something a child could not know: that a successful farm is hard. Behind the fuzzy animals, cute babies, idyllic scenes of grazing sheep is the hard work of feeding those animals, burying them when they die, slaughtering them for food, investing thousands of dollars feeding animals organically and funding expensive infrastructure projects that will take years to pay off. I didn't see the whole picture then and I don't see it now. It's late and I'm tired and we've had more bad news. In the morning, things will look better.
I think often of my grandparents struggling on a tatter of a farm in Iowa during the Depression. I think of their farm and the ancient out buildings that they spruced up with red paint and white trim. The lawn and gardens around the house were lush and manicured. Their wealth, such as it was, was in their land, acquisitions and holdings that came after their children were grown. They were thrifty, careful, and completely dedicated to one another. If there was conflict, I didn't see it. I never knew, until later, how they struggled.
Our farm is different. There is an outside job that pays the big bills. When it doesn't pay the big bills, they go unpaid while the little bills are paid with farm money. The animals always eat well, we eat more creatively when times are tough. We formally started our farm later in life. We dabbled when the kids were little, milking goats and raising chickens and only started a full-time farming operation as we approached our sixties. We would like but haven't been able to muster a regular network of farmers to help with big projects. In Iowa the threshers came on a circuit around all the farms bringing in the hay. Everyone worked together, sharing equipment and pitching in to get the work done. The woman on a particular farm would spend days preparing the thresher's lunch, a huge affair involving cakes, pies, pickles, salads, corn, meats, breads, vats of lemonade and coffee. You didn't want to be the one with the skimpy lunch.
I guess I am trying to recreate my grandparent's farm. I love the smell of sheep and hay and the smell of the dusty driveway that reminds me of the five miles on gravel to get to their farm. It's impossible to recreate something that you remember so imperfectly, from a child's perspective. Something is always missing from the picture, something a child could not know: that a successful farm is hard. Behind the fuzzy animals, cute babies, idyllic scenes of grazing sheep is the hard work of feeding those animals, burying them when they die, slaughtering them for food, investing thousands of dollars feeding animals organically and funding expensive infrastructure projects that will take years to pay off. I didn't see the whole picture then and I don't see it now. It's late and I'm tired and we've had more bad news. In the morning, things will look better.
5/11/2015
I don't do sick very well. I've been sick since April 10th when I came down with a little cough. The little cough turned into pneumonia practically overnight. I wheezed and hacked my way through the last few weeks getting more exhausted by the effort to breathe and carry on normal activity. I had a glimmer of a return to health after finishing antibiotics, overdid, and relapsed in a heap. Now, I am to rest and not stress. Other people are to do my chores. I don't like it. It is a humbling experience to be weakened. I wonder, as I lie on my bed, if I will ever feel energetic again. I wonder if I'll have to give up all my plans for the farm and be an invalid, beholden to the kindness of others, dark thoughts that are exacerbated by inactivity.
Most odd of all is that I cannot determine or trust if I feel better. I should want to run up a hill, clean out closets, bake a cherry pie but can't muster the will to do so. I am resolved to test a little more each day but must be mindful of over-enthusiasm. I must be well to visit the grand babies the end of May. I must be well to finish marketing my latest wool yarn and do more test combinations of fibers. I must be well to dye wool and wind the warp for the loom. And I must be patient with this body that has become untrustworthy.
I don't do sick very well. I've been sick since April 10th when I came down with a little cough. The little cough turned into pneumonia practically overnight. I wheezed and hacked my way through the last few weeks getting more exhausted by the effort to breathe and carry on normal activity. I had a glimmer of a return to health after finishing antibiotics, overdid, and relapsed in a heap. Now, I am to rest and not stress. Other people are to do my chores. I don't like it. It is a humbling experience to be weakened. I wonder, as I lie on my bed, if I will ever feel energetic again. I wonder if I'll have to give up all my plans for the farm and be an invalid, beholden to the kindness of others, dark thoughts that are exacerbated by inactivity.
Most odd of all is that I cannot determine or trust if I feel better. I should want to run up a hill, clean out closets, bake a cherry pie but can't muster the will to do so. I am resolved to test a little more each day but must be mindful of over-enthusiasm. I must be well to visit the grand babies the end of May. I must be well to finish marketing my latest wool yarn and do more test combinations of fibers. I must be well to dye wool and wind the warp for the loom. And I must be patient with this body that has become untrustworthy.
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