As many farmers know, leaving the barn or the field really doesn't meant that the work on the farm is done for the day. We don't work full-time, we work all the time. Even when you are away from the farm, you are thinking about it, making decisions, planning, and sometimes implementing your transition to the new generation, or training your management. For me coming into my time on the farm, the off-time work takes a more physical nature.
I am sure many of us are in the same situation with the weather being unseasonably cold right now, which around here also means unseasonably muddy. The frost going out of the driveways is something only a 4WD vehicle can handle, and even then the potholes are a whole other beast. Along with this cold weather, we are having to bed (fill the outside hog houses with straw) the pigs much later in the season, and much more often than usual. Unfortunately for us, this means we have to unload straw after usual farm hours, at least once a week. It makes for a long evening, but if we get 6 or so people to come and help it turns into the evening social activity.
Last weekend on a day finally sunny and about 40 degrees, my husband and I decided to take my father-in-law out to see my newly renovated farm house. While driving down our road, we see ten sows (pregnant mother pigs) walking down the road. Upon pulling into the yard we see a few more, and a line of fence with pig friendly exit holes. They had a good time rutting up the backyard, sunning on the porch, perusing the remnants of the garden and generally taking a field trip around the block. Fortunately, the pigs went pretty easily back into their pen and observed us fixing the fence rather stoically. Talk about a firsthand farm experience for my father-in-law!
This type of extracurricular work activity is commonplace on the farm, but isn't always experienced in other jobs. Taking care of these types of surprises, sometimes on daily basis shows that farmers tend to be a diligent group. The farm is part of our family structure, it brings us together. Farming isn't a full-time job, it is a way of life.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Thursday, March 13, 2014
The Diet Push
I am lucky to spend my time away from the farm in a canoe. It's my hobby, and it's my sport. I have a mix of friends from the farm, and my paddling friends. Needless to say, it's a pretty diverse group, and it's part of what I enjoy. I love to be at the farm and I enjoy my friends here, but when I leave it's nice to be around a completely different group.
The hardest part of being a farmer in a group of endurance athletes, is that we tend to be on the opposite sides of the food spectrum. People who work out more than an hour a day, everyday, tend to see themselves as more health conscious than the average person. They take pride in having discipline and self-control. They see diet and exercise as being complimentary. Paddlers don't work out to stay thin, they workout to be healthy. For some, this means being either gluten-free, dairy-free, paleo, vegetarian, or even vegan. As you can imagine, sometimes things get uncomfortable.
Often with friends who are living what I consider to be extreme lifestyles, they love to tell you about it. Why it is better, why it works for them, or apologetically, if they could get meat from our farm, from good people like us, then maybe they would change their ways. It's usually someone you see as a friend, someone who is comfortable enough with you to tell you about their habits. It usually isn't meant to be preachy, but most of the time it comes off as such, or at least leaves me feeling inferior.
At the same time, I recognize being part of this group allows me the opportunity to talk to people who have a lot of questions about food. I have had some really good conversations about food production, and learned some different perspectives. Hopefully, I have positively affected someone's attitude towards food as well. What I don't want to be is overbearing, and make people feel the way I sometimes feel when I talk to people with different life views. No one should have to feel inferior due to choices he or she willingly made. Most people don't try to make bad ones.
Probably the biggest take-away I have from these experiences is realizing that people honestly want to do the best they can, and that deserves respect. Their are definitely people out there who actively want to hurt the farming community, but most people are either uninformed, misinformed, or are caught up in a type of peer pressure. If you know any vegans, or least all the ones that I know, they tend to flaunt their diets, posting pictures of food, touting the benefits of their lifestyle, pointing out the flaws in every else's ways. We shouldn't be that judgmental. I have the choice to eat a certain way, and I need to give people their choice, even if I don't agree with it. I care deeply about farming, and I support it vocally, but I have to understand that my opinion is just that; people have the right to choose.
The hardest part of being a farmer in a group of endurance athletes, is that we tend to be on the opposite sides of the food spectrum. People who work out more than an hour a day, everyday, tend to see themselves as more health conscious than the average person. They take pride in having discipline and self-control. They see diet and exercise as being complimentary. Paddlers don't work out to stay thin, they workout to be healthy. For some, this means being either gluten-free, dairy-free, paleo, vegetarian, or even vegan. As you can imagine, sometimes things get uncomfortable.
Often with friends who are living what I consider to be extreme lifestyles, they love to tell you about it. Why it is better, why it works for them, or apologetically, if they could get meat from our farm, from good people like us, then maybe they would change their ways. It's usually someone you see as a friend, someone who is comfortable enough with you to tell you about their habits. It usually isn't meant to be preachy, but most of the time it comes off as such, or at least leaves me feeling inferior.
At the same time, I recognize being part of this group allows me the opportunity to talk to people who have a lot of questions about food. I have had some really good conversations about food production, and learned some different perspectives. Hopefully, I have positively affected someone's attitude towards food as well. What I don't want to be is overbearing, and make people feel the way I sometimes feel when I talk to people with different life views. No one should have to feel inferior due to choices he or she willingly made. Most people don't try to make bad ones.
Probably the biggest take-away I have from these experiences is realizing that people honestly want to do the best they can, and that deserves respect. Their are definitely people out there who actively want to hurt the farming community, but most people are either uninformed, misinformed, or are caught up in a type of peer pressure. If you know any vegans, or least all the ones that I know, they tend to flaunt their diets, posting pictures of food, touting the benefits of their lifestyle, pointing out the flaws in every else's ways. We shouldn't be that judgmental. I have the choice to eat a certain way, and I need to give people their choice, even if I don't agree with it. I care deeply about farming, and I support it vocally, but I have to understand that my opinion is just that; people have the right to choose.
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