Life on the Farm, some first hand experience

[rbrgs]

To get someone like Grower back in the game, farming would have to pay better than being a college professor.

Like I said, either food prices triple of sheeple in the city starve; us country folk won't farm for the wages being offered.  There's plenty of other work (like flipping burgers) that pays better.

[Grower]

True. I'm describing the CSA hiatus as  "break" because I really do intend to keep on growing and get back into the CSA in 2010 (ha -- listen to me, planning 2 years ahead). Truthfully, my hub is supportive, but it's not his best dream, and so sometimes I feel like I have to back off a little. That and the fact that my father and his wife take up 2-3 hours a day now. <sigh>

If it were just me, work or not, tired or not (and I am), I'd be planning next year's plots, saving for a tractor, putting in electric fence and building some small shelters for milk goats, putting in electric fence for two pigs. But some things you cannot do by yourself or should not do with a large amount of pestering. I'd hate to have the hogs and not him.   Still, the worse things get, the more I think we'll trend towards those things, and meanwhile I'm preparing for being able to do it. Got the electric fence charger already, and it'd be a small trip to Tractor Supply for the wire and posts . . .

[Deckard1973]

Hey Capella,
  Good to see you back!   Insanely jealous of your experience!  Wish I was there, and not in cubical hell!

[jonny quest]

In trying to take a small holiday from doom this weekend, I checked the list of movies my dvr had recorded.  "Jean de Florette" was on the list.  It is an '80's French movie with another one filmed the same year, "Manon des sources," to complete the story that I had saw many years ago and remembered as particularly good cinema, but I like French cinema and don't mind subtitles.  Anyway, point is, no escape from doom.  As I watched it again, 18+ years later, fully immersed in doom, this film played out like a parable of a time in our probable future when those uninitiated "back to the landers" can't return to their city lives.  "Green Acres," it's not.

Again, good cinema telling a good, realistic, story for those city folk longing for a farmlet, but if you just want the Clif Notes version, look it up on imdb.com

[farmlife]

I have a "hobby" farm in North Carolina. It really is a tremendous amount of physical work for not a lot of financial return. Or better yet, a lot of work so that I can lose money! But the quality of the food is great. And we'll need these skills in the future so I look at it as an education so I can survive better.

I believe most Americans would rather die than do this amount of physical, dirty labor. And yes, food prices are way too low. If you want good quality food, you have to pay for it. Most of what they sell in the grocery store is poison.

[simpleman]

Awesome post! 

You're doing what I aspire to do.  I like to think I know how difficult it will be - that I will be up to the challenges and physical hardships.  I've done demanding physical work before, but as you say, would I want to do that indefinitely?  How will I handle it when I don't have a nice cozy house to retreat to for the weekend?

And what about the future?  It's going to be much, much harder than even you describe - when the lights go out. 

[graveday]

I just came across this and have to chime in with how impressed I am with your decision, Calpella, to walk the walk and your honest appraisal of how tough it is, yet how satisfying.
I only question that you went so far and don't want to see the west.
I agree with how damaging hail is.  We don't get much here, but an organic grower I knew years ago who is in the foothills had his entire tomato crop, among others, wiped out in one storm.  One hail event can undo months of effort.  He scraped by, but it almost undid him. 
Thanks for posting and hope you do more.

[madison]

Capella, absolutely lovely post.  What a great adventure!

Just some thoughts while reading your great post:

With traditional farming, even organic hand cultivation, being so expensive and labor intensive, it might show just how important perennial non-traditional food crops might become in the very near future, both for human and animal consumption.  Things like nettles, Jerusalem artichokes, perennial sunflowers, berry bushes and aquaculture ponds.  Forest gardening would be another tool in a future-farmers pocket.  Think edible wilds like mushrooms, bay laurel, water cress, etc.  Permaculture principles could hopefully become more widespread; I am thinking of such tools as hugelculture, berms and swales, redundant systems.  If much of the food could simply reproduce itself, would be a definate advantage.  Micro orchards and diversification would have to become common.  Small scale animal raising - Sharon Astyk had a great post recently about small livestock -
http://sharonastyk.com/2009/02/12/little-livestock-for-urban-and-suburban-gardens/  I guess I am saying diversification and redundant systems would be essential. 

Diversification and redundant systems would not be exclusive to only farming activities.  Redundant and diverse ways to make money - selling honey, making compost, selling eggs, making willow furniture and baskets, providing horse drawn transportation services in the future, making herbal medicinals, providing rental space for conferences in the barn or a small outbuilding, having an off-grid B&B, having a nice fishing hole for a fee etc.  Using space differently, making a house/property work for you instead of working to keep it up.  Diverse PEOPLE associated with your place, many hands making light of the work.  Many points of view to keep each other entertained and growing. 

Random thoughts....   

[HelgaV]

This description of farm labor is so true it makes my teeth ache to read it. Oh yes, that is the feeling.  But after seven years of this, I cannot explain what happens, only your body adapts to it and everything you do gets slower and more efficient. You hoe the row slower but you leave fewer weeds behind.  Picking up a sack of feed is just normal and sometimes you put one on your shoulder and carry a second... 

Digging out manure from the piles by the animals and carting it to the compost and from the compost to spread it on the land.  Hitching up the horse and dragging a rake over the pasture, checking the weights and conformation of all the young stock against a standard for their breed, and then killing each animal mercifully and quickly and then the butchering... 

Riding your horse over to the neighbor's farm to offer then some fresh eggs in trade for a quart of milk...  going to church and singing hymns so beautiful you sing with tears in your eyes...

And I started farming at 50.   Helga

[BlueOwl]

I wish Capella would give us an update.

[graveday]

That was Capella.  Farming has aged her rather quickly.

[Whitewhaler]

Excellent description of subsistence farming as I learned also growing up.  Here is my testimony; subsistence hunting and fishing is a much easier lifestyle, and requires less outside support in the form of money.  Hunting-gathering expends less total energy and provides ample time for sleeping and distraction, however the farmer lives life better in a existential way.  Over period of years I eventually found fulfillment in farming and I share this author's recognition of this deeply.  As a harvester of wild animals, my only fulfillment at the end will be the people I have loved and fed surrounding my grave, I will have created nothing, left no mark to evidence my existence.  I could return to the family farm but am lazy and reluctant to accept the pain that comes in old age with it.  I truly admire the small farmer, too bad our lifestyles can't co-exist.

[highstreet]

Capella, absolutely lovely post.  What a great adventure!

Just some thoughts while reading your great post:

With traditional farming, even organic hand cultivation, being so expensive and labor intensive, it might show just how important perennial non-traditional food crops might become in the very near future, both for human and animal consumption.  Things like nettles, Jerusalem artichokes, perennial sunflowers, berry bushes and aquaculture ponds.  Forest gardening would be another tool in a future-farmers pocket.  Think edible wilds like mushrooms, bay laurel, water cress, etc.  Permaculture principles could hopefully become more widespread; I am thinking of such tools as hugelculture, berms and swales, redundant systems.  If much of the food could simply reproduce itself, would be a definate advantage.  Micro orchards and diversification would have to become common.  Small scale animal raising - Sharon Astyk had a great post recently about small livestock -
http://sharonastyk.com/2009/02/12/little-livestock-for-urban-and-suburban-gardens/  I guess I am saying diversification and redundant systems would be essential. 

Diversification and redundant systems would not be exclusive to only farming activities.  Redundant and diverse ways to make money - selling honey, making compost, selling eggs, making willow furniture and baskets, providing horse drawn transportation services in the future, making herbal medicinals, providing rental space for conferences in the barn or a small outbuilding, having an off-grid B&B, having a nice fishing hole for a fee etc.  Using space differently, making a house/property work for you instead of working to keep it up.  Diverse PEOPLE associated with your place, many hands making light of the work.  Many points of view to keep each other entertained and growing. 

Random thoughts....   

I'm with you, Madison.  Permaculture and Agriculture on our 43 acres.  We have only owned it since 2005, but we already have  26 orchard trees, fruit and nut, and 15 or so berry bush of a variety.  Just adding a few every year as we build our houses.  We aren't living out there full time yet, so an annual garden isn't able to be maintained.  Perennials are the only thing that survives between our weekend work trips.

Smart Farming is the best way to keep weed, pest, and maintainence time to a minimum.  We will eventually have Annuals and start Animal Husbandry once we are out there full time.  Rootdown is the best investment we have ever made.

[tacoma_for_life]

Thanks capella, im right at that point of which i know i want to just escape to a farm and reengineer my life to live by the means of natural order rather than a new world order.  can you give us an update? please.

thanks
tacoma

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.

[Grower]

You may find this story and various links helpful.

http://www.utne.com/Environment/The-Organic-Farm-Fantasy-Meets-Reality.aspx?utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email