Northern Farmer

We just got back from taking a little drive west of here to Amish territory and went to the Amish Mall. That’s a stretch of road where they have their roadside stands set up every mile or so. Even managed to buy a large peach pie for three dollars just before the ladies were going to close shop for the day. They knocked off a couple of dollars so they wouldn’t have to take it home. We also were looking at their corn crops and now that I’ve a trained eye, noticed that they have Open Pollinated corn like ours. And it looked good. Speaking of that, the girls and I picked some cobs this afternoon because I noticed that this corn is sweet. The oldtimers here say that it’s better than sweet corn so we’ll boil up some shortly.

A couple of days ago I shipped two cows. We take them to the cow packer with our own trailer. These were very nice black angus cows whom for one reason or another didn’t produce a calf this year. The packer we take them to is about twenty five miles away and kills 1100 cows and bulls a day. I guess I’m to used to the system because being there doesn’t bother me to much. I don’t like the system but it’s just another day and getting some needed cash to boot. We sell beef off the farm but as of yet we have much more than we can sell privatly.

Daughter Rachel came with for the ride and to keep me company for the hour and a half round trip. She is used to butchering cattle, hogs and chickens on the farm so I thought it was just another day. The packing plant is a busy place with trucks and forklifts driving around us constantly. They were hauling guts and all the goodies. I was busy navigating all this traffic and finally got the cows unloaded and we both went to the office to pick up the check. I was noticing that she wasn’t her usual self but had to get the business done. We got back into the pickup and took off down the road for home and she said she “never wants to come to this place again”. She hated it with everything she has. She also said now she knows why I butcher our favorite cows on the farm, because I always talk how I don’t want my “friends” to suffer for one minute. This hit me like a load of bricks. I realized that our children find so much good in the farm but are repulsed by the modern big ag establishment. We have the continueing cycle of birth and death at home on the farm but it’s treated with reverence and to see the world through a childs eyes, well, it’s an eye opener for sure.

The children can teach us older folk more than any farm magazine could ever hope to. They can see things that we cannot see. Thank God that they tell us and we listen. It’ll change here as time goes by. I’m still stuck somewhat in the industrial ag system, not much, but after this it’ll be a priority to resolve this issue. It’s good to get a little shove in the right direction once in a while.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 20th, 2005 at 7:22 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.