So You Want To Farm…

July is our busiest month of the year on the farm. Not only are we tending to the highest numbers of animals (all the lambs, chickens, ducks, ewes, turkeys, pigs of the season at full population before autumn’s butchering season), but the garden is also in full swing. On top of that is a packed schedule at Farmstead Creamery. Evening concerts, morning breakfast rush, doing chores until midnight, getting up again to start over. An 18-hour day is quite typical for our schedule in summer!

Now and then, a starry-eyed customer, enamored with the thought of permanently escaping their harried city life, will wishfully comment as they finish checking out, “I would love to do what you guys are doing.”

I don’t want to be discouraging—I mean, having a dream of living in the country and growing some of your own food is great. But if they actually had a taste of what we do here to make this a full and successful endeavor, they would likely be as blown away as our interns were in their initiation process.

In an agrarian lifestyle, you better love what you do because there will be a LOT of it to be done! The to-do list never gets finished, urgent issues arise that require you to drop everything and stay up until 2:00 in the morning to rescue the situation. There’s endless aches and pains, paired with heckling over the price you have on tomatoes, or chicken, or a wood-fired pizza.

At this last week’s Spoken Word performance night at Farmstead (Thursdays 5 to 8 pm through the end of August), when John Adler passed around the bucket of words for the “three word poetry” challenge, my selection was “bleat, farm, kid,” well, it was time to give that sentiment some air. Yes, farming may look bucolic, but if you’re really serious, this is no part-time, just-for-fun gig. This is real.

Three word challenge: bleat, farm, kid

So you think you can farm kid?
Do you know of what you wish?

First, your feet must grow roots,
Deep into the heart of the land.
Learn to breathe with the grasses,
Feel the texture of the wind in every pore,
Learn the seasons by their smell.

Your hands must marry the land.
They shall change their form,
Take on the soil and grow strong,
Calloused, thickened.

Your hair will grow tangled
By winds and snow,
Hail and brambles,
As you work by headlamp in the cold and dark,
Trying to find that last pig
That escaped from the pen.

Your night shall be shattered,
By the labors of ewes.
The bleats of little ones
Living in a tub
In the kitchen.

They need you.
Sometimes every half hour
Day or night.
You wake yourself with a jarring purpose,
Telling yourself
That no one else is going to do it for you.

So you want to farm kid?
Can you lift 50 pounds?
That’s a sack of feed.

The poultry alone need
300 pounds a day,
And 60 gallons of water
–at least
And that’s only the morning chores.

No vacation for 14 years,
No punching out of the clock.
This is not a job.
This is a way of life,
A dedication.

Farming is not something that you do.
Farming is how you choose
To steward the land
And it’s animals,
Before passing it on
To the next set
Of calloused hands.

***

So yes, some days I may look tired. And if I’m five minutes late opening up the shop, it’s not because I slept in. And if you’re wondering about the price of the sausage, half of that goes to pay the butcher, and two thirds of what remains pays for the feed, so…

Don’t give up your dreams about living the rural life, just know that it’s got a lot of love, labor, and personal sacrifice behind every minute. See you down on the farm sometime.