Full-Time Job

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.