sower & reaper. stewarder of the land. husbandry has existed for centuries.from the moment adam & eve sinned to now, the land has needed to be worked. farmed.
in this new life of ours, i got to thinking. thinking about how even though ancient in its predisposition & although it has gradually evolved into a technological science, farming is still very much the same as it's always has been.
it is the love of the land. a pluming of nature. a rich & fertile inheritance if learned.
i am genuinely shocked at the range of skills needed to operate our own small & limited homestead. in the recent months, i have become a google-aholic & have pictures of leaky goat behinds in my facebook newsfeed, & researched some of the most bizarre things to ever be typed into a search box. the learning curve has been steep & even more than the physical exhaustion of working the land, is the mental exhaustion of figuring it all out.
a farmer isn't just a care taker of livestock but a mathematician, a veterinary science expert, a diverse landscaper & botanist, a nutritionist & health science guru, an almanac reader, groom & stable muck, market retailer, masonry, carpentry & lumberjack, welder & electrician, jack of many trades, a great many things that i am not yet but have been attempting to grasp.
perhaps most of all, a farmer is a problem solver. there is no end to the problems & challenges to farm life. and it takes a mcgyver type character to meet the function of an adept farm. it takes much confidence to back the risk of your own independent - non-google backed- solutions. it takes courage & it takes intuition not easily learned. there are lots of colossal fails & big mistakes but someone has to make the decisions & someone has to try & that is what makes a farmer. the constant trying & waiting & trying again in the face of great risk.
farmers are geniuses. they are creative, out of the box thinkers. they are undervalued, underpaid but never under worked. but they do what they do because they love it.
it's in the many of moments of hesitation i have during the day, before i let that enormous pig out into the barnyard with no real plan as to how i'll get him back or late at night as the coyotes howl too close to our precious livestock locked up tight, that i realize it takes real grit to be a bonafide farmer. it is not for the faint of heart. it is not for the princesses or the wimps. farming is for the determined & the fearless. for those who love the land they live on & the animals that love them so very much.
my mom's a farmer & when i grow up, i want to be a farmer too.
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