Listening: It goes both ways

It's been a busy week on the farm and off of it.  Over Memorial Day weekend the whole family packed up and went to a canoe race in Cooperstown, New York.  I am finally catching up from the trip.  A lot has gone on at the farm in the past few weeks, too.  We finished up planting, and the new building project is coming along.

(Corn has really shot up after the rain!)

While out in Cooperstown, I stayed in a hotel on the Otsego Lake, a place I have stayed many times before.  I went to the desk and handed the receptionist my credit card, she saw that it had the farm name on it.  She immediately asked me what we had on our farm.  I replied that we had pigs, and the receptionists then asked if they were all pasture-raised and grass-fed.  When I said that some where inside and some were outside, she then asked how we could stuff them in those little crates, how we could take the babies from the mothers at weaning.  I knew this wasn't going to be a productive conversation, but I told her that we follow the recommendations of our vet, as well as learning from our own experiences in order to decide how and when we wean and crate our hogs, if at all; that we were willing to change things as necessary in order to improve pig care and consumer confidence.  She then asked how many animals we had, and then commented that we had far too many to be good farmers.   I left the office feeling attacked and shaken.

This woman had no interest in my farm.  She had no interest in having a conversation with me about farming.  She just saw that I didn't fit into her picture of what a farm should look like, and decided that it must not be any good.  I am glad she has the choice to buy her meat, if she buys any at all, from someone else; someone who raises animals to the specifications that she desires.  I wish that she could have respect for the way I raise animals, even if she doesn't prefer that for herself.  I wish that she was open to having a conversation about farms.  She didn't understand that we were the same in our jobs: different hotels provide different amenities for different people; different farms raise animals differently to fill different markets.  It's a system that gives us the ability to choose.

I am torn on booking my reservations for next year.  I really like the place I have stayed, and it has the amenities I desire.  I want to be the bigger person, and judge the establishment on the service it provides, not on the opinions of one receptionist.  At the same time, I know that my dollars are going to support someone who would gladly take my family out of business, just because we have been successful at providing meat to supermarkets instead of at road-side stands.    It just hurts to be so vulnerable to attack.  I try to be open and listen when I have a conversation about the farm, but I need the other party to be willing to try, too.

From the farmer side of the conversation, we need to realize that sometimes we can come off just as this lady did to me, like we know everything.  We aren't always open to concerns of consumers, because the answer seems so easy to find for us.  Those concerns are valid, even if it doesn't seem important.  We have to really listen and have a dialogue, not just shut people down because they don't see things our way.