Northern Farmer

Well, the hammer finally sure did fall here the last couple of days, with wind chills around twenty below yesterday, brrr… Time for Minnesotan’s to toughen up once again. It’s hard to believe that in a couple of months when we get the same weather we’ll call it balmy, tee shirt weather. But until we get toughen up we’ll freeze.

I’d like to continue a little and add to the last post I made about multi-generational thinking when it comes to farming. The fact that it could take a lifetime to get a farm up and running scares a lot of people, but in the end it’s the most prosperous type of farm that there could be. Now this isn’t saying a person can’t get right into farming, far from it. Farming generation after generation is a constantly changing thing, just as the family is constantly changing, so does the farm.

The steps that I see are first, the startup. I’ll only use our place as an example because I truly don’t know enough about anyone else’s place to be an expert. Our place started small, only 88 acres back in the sixties. Small even then for a farm here, but that’s all that could be afforded at the time. It stayed that size for at least ten years with minimum investments in it. Dad worked out on road construction and the family took care of the farm. As I got old enough to work out I got jobs locally until I could afford to buy land of my own to add to the existing farm. Plus we picked up a good chunk of land when the land prices crashed in the later half of the 80s. During all this time we worked to get the farm running on it’s own where outside income was not as necessary.

A time comes if a person was careful as far as debt is concerned where he can farm the way he likes. Debt will make a person a slave on the farm. For example if a person is in debt they can’t one day say, ”I think I’ll drop that phase of the operation.” If they’re in debt bigtime they have to keep it going to continue to satisfy the banker. We didn’t have that problem in 1998 when one day we decided to get out of raising hogs. Over the next few months we just shipped them off until it was done.

Nowadays it gets to the point of being downright relaxing on the brain knowing we can make changes here and not even worry about them, if we goof, well, we’ll learn from it but it won’t drive us under. This freedom is just so great because it enables me to pursue making this farm a sustainable agrarian dream. I’ve got so many irons in the fire it makes my head whirl, but it’s so fun seeing other family members have so much interest in some of the projects. Instead of a place of drudgery like a modern farm, this place is becoming a place where the kids want to stay and continue on. They have their own small businesses right in the operating farm and it sure does keep them interested.

I often wonder what goes through the heads of farmers that send their kids off the farm saying farming is not a good future. Then these farming couples get old and stare at each other, the lifeblood gone from the land. To me this is one of the worst acts anyone can do, that is, to discourage young people from farming. I think that in reality, a lot of people would like to farm, but they are discouraged by their families until they give up the dream.

If I lived in town or suburbia right now I know with all my heart I could get started farming. I know that’s quite a statement, but I know I could and I know I would. Of course it’s more life and death to me because I’d die if I wasn’t out in the country. I would sell everything I had to get started on a small farm, period. And I wouldn’t be afraid to work out for years until it was built up to be a sustainable operation. In fact now with the amount of information they have out there on how to make it on a small family farm it would be safe to say there’s never been a better time to get started.

But it all boils down to the fact that farming is not a thing that the average person can fully immerse in and expect a quik return. It’s lifetimes and generations that make a farm. But where can a person find a better way of life?!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 17th, 2005 at 9:35 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.