Life on the Farm, some first hand experience

[Capella]

Hey there ... some of you medium to long term LATOCers might remember my nick, I have been pretty busy in the forum about six to eight month ago. The reason I went under the radar, so to speak, was, that I decided to wander out into the world for a while to get some hands on experience with small scale farming, growing food and animal husbandry, because that is what quite a few of us will probably end up doing in the future (if any).

So I quit my job as a software developer, found a sublet for my rooms at home and bought a  ticket to Canada. I had planned to travel through the country from east to west and stop on several farms and in some ecovillages on the way. My first stop was at an organic farm in Nova Scotia which is run by a German couple who immigrated eight years ago. And believe it or not: I am still there after three and a half month.

There is a handful of reasons why I did not travel on as planned. One is that I am very happy here and that I had the opportunity to learn exactly the things I wanted to learn here, another reason is that the owners of the place have become close friends and really needed help over the summer. I will travel to at least one other farm before I go back home, though, but I will stay in the Maritimes and not make my way over to the west coast.

So I thought I tune in and give you a few impressions of my first real on-hand farming experience. First thing learned: it is tremendously hard. No, seriously. I mean, I am sure you all know that or think you know it, but let me say this again so that it really becomes clear to all of you who might have romantic ideas about homesteading somewhere one day: it is tremendously hard. Even with a working tractor and diesel, with electric power and with a more or less intact infrastructure around you. I really underestimated this. I like the work I do here (and I do everything from mucking stables to milking the goats and from weeding garden beds to building a barn), but when I go to bed at night, I am so tired that I hardly make it up the stairs and when I wake up the next morning my whole body aches. My fingers hurt from wielding tools all day (and from the milking which takes more strength than I thought), my knees hurt from crawling through cold and wet garden beds for hours and my back hurts from carrying lumber and feed bags around. Even though I was not overweight to start with, I lost quite a few pounds over the summer (I don't have a scale, but I guess it must be between 15 and 20 pounds from the way my clothes hang on my body). That is all pretty well for a one-summer adventure, what doesn't kill you toughens you up and all that, but I really don't know if I would be able to life like that day after day after day, year after year after year. Especially in organic farming, people talk a lot about sustainability and about not exploiting resources. Well, one lesson learned this summer is, that it is very difficult to farm and not exploit the most important resource you have: yourself.

I don't write that to complain or to whine about it. It is just an experience I am sharing with you. As much as I blame modern lifestyle with its huge level of industrialization and automation for almost anything that is currently going wrong in the world, I kind of understand why people prefer this modern life over growing their own food.

Lesson number two is, how tremendously valuable food is. It is such a long and difficult process to make something grow or (even more so) to sustain and feed lifestock. There is so much involved, so many things that can (and regularily will) go wrong. For example there was so much rain in Nova Scotia this summer, that it was almost impossible for the farmers to bring in enough hay. That is really a small catastrophe around here, a local drama that goes unnoticed by the rest of the world. There is no hay on the market, because everyone is in the same boat, so even if you had the money, you could not remedy the problem by just buying hay from someone else. Beef will be cheap around here this fall, because many farmes will just have to slaughter their animals. At the farm I am staying, we just managed to bring in enough hay to bring the seven goats over the winter (and their current offspring to a decent size for butchering). Really just barely enough and we were quite happy to have accomplished that. We still were worried because there is also a herd of fallow deer to be fed, but we were working on a solution for that as well, when we discovered that someone stole 250 bales of our hay from the barn (which is currently not on the farm itself but a rented place a couple of miles away since we are still in the process of building a barn here). Imaging that: someone has the guts to either drive up there with a tractor and a farm trailer and stack haybales on that for at least an hour or to drive back and force with a big pickup truck at least five times to get that many bales out. We almost cried when we discovered this. Farmers are obviously getting desperate enough to steal from their neighbours.

This year it is the hay, last year a hailstorm destroyed four weeks of salad greens and other vegetables in the garden, a neighbour lost his whole blueberry harvest to the hail, 20000 $ worth, more or less his yearly turnover. The current hurricane Ike, even though it fortunately will not hit us directly, will probably bring more severe rainfalls. None of the farmers around here is able to drive on his fields to harvest anything or work the land. It is just so wet. I could go on and on. And it is not an exception, it is the rule. You will lose crops to the elements every season.

The next thing is that equipment constantly breaks down. Okay, admittedly, Nova Scotia is extreme in that. Since it has always been a poor province, all the farm equipment around here looks as if it has come straight from a farming museum and you would never expect those seventy year old tractors, seeders, ploughs or mowers to work at all. Add to that a climate which is cold and moist most of the year and makes everything rust faster than you can grease and repaint and it is a miracle that anything works. The old timers around here are great at fixing things with a piece of duct tape and a shoestring, but even they reach their limits quite often. (A workshop in Truro advertises with the slogan: "We repair what your husband fixed" which made me laugh hard but it has a lot of truth in it). How long does it take to cut a field? Three weeks ... one week to figure out what is wrong with the tractor, two weeks to wait for the missing part and about two hours to mow the field after you build the new part in (about one to three hundred dollars later, of course).

Do I sound disillusioned here? Yeah, maybe a little bit. It seems to be absolutely impossible to do small scale organic (but actually, conventional farmers are no better off) farming without an extra source of income, even if you are willing to work your ass off for no payment at all year round, never go on a vacation ever again and reduce your lifestyle to the absolute possible minimum.

But then again, the work I did this summer, even though it was hard, was the most satisfying thing I ever did in my whole life. Nothing beats the rythmic sound of milk splashing in your bucket when you milk, the feeling of freshly worked earth beneath your fingers or the sense of accomplishment when you nailed the last missing floorboard into your new hayloft. Even a neatly stacked compost pile has a certain aesthetic quality. The work you do is very direct, it makes sense in a way that industrial or office work never can. And the food you produce yourself is so much higher in quality and freshness than anything you can buy in a supermarket that is it really unbelievable. Actually, that is one of my main concerns about my return to civilisation: how will I ever get myself to eat that disgusting stuff you get in the cities? How can I life without fresh goats milk (full fat content, not sterilized etc.), freshly picked vegetables and meat from animals which I have seen from my window every day?

And then there really are the (short and far between) moments when life out here does feel utterly peaceful and romantic: the daily work is done, the evening sun sends its last beams onto the farmyard, a few chicken scratch for food, a cat sleeps on my lap and the farm dog is lying at my feet.

I just cannot go back to a normal 9 to 5 job and a city life after this. I want to grow my own food more than ever. I want to emancipate myself from this crazy system and society. Not out of fear that the oil may run short in a year or two or ten, but because I know that the system is so completely wrong on so many levels that it cannot be fixed and I just cannot live with myself if I stay a part of it anymore than absolutely neccessary.

[mtlouie]

Wow!  What a great post.  This immediately need to go in "Best of..."  Immediately.

[justanouveaufarmer]

Wow, thanks for taking the time to write it up. 

Great post!

[Meg]

Amazing post. 

There is SO much to learn, that anyone who thinks that they can just buy a book, then run to their few acres in the country and immediately become self sustaining, is in for a big shock. 

I've lived in the country all my life, but have always been sustained by another income source.  This year I have grown loads in the garden - but I have also composted loads of failures. We delight in eating fairly frequent "all home grown" meals but we are so far from being able to feed ourselves throughout the year it is depressing to dwell on for long.  Yet we are not yet in a position to both give up our full time incomes.....

I just hope we'll all have enough time to take all those "little steps" in the right direction before we must!  Yet I worry that despite building skills that the last leap will be just too great - even for those of us who have prepared well .......

Anyway Capella your post nicely highlights both positives and negatives....  thankyou

[DimLightbulb]

Absolutely beautiful post Capella.

[rbrgs]

Having lived on a farm for 25 years, I'll be blunt.  Food prices triple or everyone who doesn't farm, starves. 

[dermot]

Amazing post!

I lived in New Brunswick for a year, not too far from Nova Scotia. I was working in a studio though, so no farming for me. Winter was - pretty unpleasant!

[motherearth]

Capella,
Beautifully stated!
I am so glad that you had the opportunity to farm all summer long. It is very special, isn't it?

Going thru the seasons is even more rhythmic and the whole sense of cycles seems to become clearer the longer you do it and perhaps easier.
Winter for resting, stew on the woodstove, planning gardens, caring for livestock during the menacing cold, fixing equipment in anticipation of Spring planting.
 Spring for sowing seed, poking around the perennial beds to see what's up, caring for birthing animals, enjoying the awakening going on around you.
Summer for hard work, hot days, prickly hay, sweat dripping down your back, jumping in lakes or water troughs, strawberries, jam, little critters growing.
 The harvest which is so important it is like a mid-season from late summer thru end of fall, when all of the sweat of summer pays dues and you don't know what to put up first: dilly beans, salsa, greens, berries, fruit, melon.
 Fall when the work seems to intensify as you prepare for winter and the dreaded cold, still harvesting, counting and storing and squirreling in obsessive ways.

And then to do it all again, year after year, with a bit of variance given weather, death, health.

The Shakers had months planned out: shearing, spinning weaving, planting, harvesting. It was a very intriguing way of looking at the year's calendar. Very orderly, but one would expect that from the Shakers.

Anyways, you have spoken of a life dear to my heart and I am overjoyed that you know of it now, too.

Are you still there or have you returned home?

[kats]

Lovely post, Capella. Many thanks.

Having lived on a farm for 25 years, I'll be blunt.  Food prices triple or everyone who doesn't farm, starves. 

Could you be a bit more explicit? Do you mean that without cheap oil, farmers get to do a lot more by hand, and have to be paid a LOT more than they get now? Because if so, I'm sure you are right. It's only in the 20th century that food became such a ridiculously small part of the family budget. And that only in some developed countries.

[rbrgs]

Most (American) farmers are quite old, and many work outside jobs so they can afford to live on a farm (I don't mean just the small organic ones--unrepentant cowboy has mentioned how unprofitable farming has become where he lives).  In much of the developing world, kids leave the farms and work in the city; once food imports stop, everyone starves.  This could happen here.....

To convince young people do the kind of work Capella describes, wages must be higher.  There aren't enough people who farm for love to feed everyone.  Even if we have enough oil, climate change is really hurting traditional (annual) agriculture, and meat prices are going to be much higher this winter.  But probably not high enough to convince folk that raising animals next year will be profitable.  The soil has been trashed, the dust bowl is returning (in between floods), and local production will not be as efficient as farming thousands of acres with cheap fuel, cheap fertilizer, and cheap transportation.  And the american way of life ("beef, it's what's for dinner") isn't negotiable.

Did you hear about the farmer who won $10 million in the lottery?  A reporter asked him what he planned to do now that he was rich.  His response:  "I figure I'll just keep farming until the money runs out".

[kats]

Yup. I hear you. Our family farm is a cattle ranch in Idaho, and only 2 women don't have jobs off the farm. They just raised the children, grow the vegetable garden, and manage the timber sale, which is the only thing that pays the property taxes. And, as you say, they're all old. The kids left for city jobs about 40 years ago.

[BlueOwl]

Hey Capella!

I was just* thinking of you this morning.  Seriously.  I was absolutely curious as to how your summer/adverture was going.  Thanks for updating us! 

What an experience.  Life changing.

 

[wiccawench]

Oh so THATS where you went.........ahh i hear you about it all. Was wondering how the summer had gone...... (i DO think its kinda funny though you ended up staying in Nova Scotia......) ROTFLMAO...... i think that is called 'getting got'~!

I think the physical toll is hard to relate....... and explain.......AND ENDURE.........and it is not something people tell you!

I loved your post......but my question is ......what on EARTH are you going to do now? You are forever changed......(wonderfully so i believe)....... and i KNOW you have made connections to things in a significant way.... i can hear it in your post.....(err voice.......words....).

sooooooooo i know you have been 'hands on' but did you get any pics?

[Michelle]

Thanks for sharing, glad you're doing well.

[Grower]

Thank you so much Capella, for posting your experiences. I really understand about the hard work involved. My hub and I are just dragging much of the time during the growing season, which stretches about 9 months if you count seed starting in February through putting the farm to bed through October. I LOVE frost -- it means I am done and can start putting things away and look forward to snow flying while watching it from a window in a room warmed by a wood stove.

We have decided to give the CSA (vegetable delivery/subscription program) a rest next year so we can concentrate on growing less but more for ourselves. We will still sell at the local farmers' market, but right now both we and the land can use a little break. Of course, in a subsistence situation, you can't just "take a break," but I'm talking about growing enough for 20 families vs. growing enough for one plus extra to sell. This is more sustainable for ourselves and the land, because we can plant a good cover crop and then rotate our plantings year to year. If we had animals, such as goats or a milk cow/beef calf pair it'd be even better because we could pasture them on the 3 acres that we're not using to grow food on and rotate that, too.

But mostly, we're TIRED. And we do have off-farm jobs, which is why we can do this. I suppose I will always grow food, and if this is the month that the world collapses, then I know that we will work even harder next year just for ourselves -- tired beats starved. So I do know what you mean -- it's the best work you can ever do. Even though it's also the hardest.