It’s not easy farming, which I’m slowly learning! The garden needs cleaning out. The chicken coop needs to be cleaned and new bedding put in. The eggs need to be collected. The rabbits have to be fed, watered, and their cages cleaned. The bees need checked or going on a swam call (yay!). The apples need picked, cleaned, cut, cooked and canned. The list goes on and on!
What we do here on our little shelf in the hillside is hardly farming in the real sense. That said, we are educating ourselves about how nature impacts the food we eat and cook, becoming more aware of how difficult it is to grow what you eat, and also trying to feed ourselves in a small way.
Last year we canned apples, grape juice, tomatoes & sauce, made apple beer, saved some seeds, and of course the usual garden items like squash, cucumbers (tried!), and cabbage! We’ve been maintaining a flock of chickens that has been as low as about 25 and far too high to count! Now we’re raising meat rabbits and keeping bees as well. These things all add to our diet and cut our grocery bill, but still we’re nowhere near close to feeding ourselves.
And the funny thing is, each day there’s more yet to do! When we want to be really productive, we sit down and we make out a “to do” list. We’ll take a day or just a morning to put it together, marking things off (hallelujah!) when they’re accomplished, and adding to it as we think of things (which never ends).
The way of life that most of us are used to is about spending time for dollars, and exchanging those dollars for our needs. That might include oil-changes, grocery shopping, doctors bills, credit cards, mortgage or rent payments, or even the occasional entertainment item! However, as a farmer, you spend your day tending to what is going to sustain you! Dollars don’t taste too good, and can’t fill your belly no matter how many you eat! As a farmer, the things you do throughout the day can’t compare in value to what you could sell them for at a market.
We live in a place and a time where it’s not normal to grow your own food. It’s “farmers in the midwest” who are supposed to give you your food, silly! Consequently to raise your own food, feed your own animals, and ensure your own health, an average family would need far more land than most of us have to use. Keep that line of thinking going and people start to think you’re an oddity – and if your need to have more space (or crowing roosters so you can have baby chicks) impacts your neighbors, well you’re a nuisance in the area.
There are things I really am scared about in our society! We were supposed to consolidate the family farm for efficiency – more land, less work, cheaper food – more people fed for the same cost. At least that was the marketing line fed to the public. The reality is that our food is making us sick. It’s causing innumerable diseases, and is removing our awareness from protecting the land. If you grow your table produce in your backyard, you’re going to protect it no matter what! But if you buy your food at a grocery, it’s easy to see the dollar less and buy that broccoli, thinking that you’re taking care of your family because it’s a good deal. The reality is those “farmers” who are cheaper may not even be here in America! Or if they are, they are probably doing the “usual” farming method which is unsustainable, toxic to the environment and consumer, and is less efficient and horribly wasteful than small-scale farming can be.
To grow your own food, or grow a good portion of it, that process changes you. It changes your thinking and your values. Cheap, fast, and easy are no longer the buzz words that you strive for. Value, care, nourishment are more in your vocabulary now. Instead of buying the cheapest made knock-off tool you can find for the job, you try and take your time to find a tool that will last a generation or more even if it costs a bit more – yes, you DO get what you pay for!
Also the time it takes to do a thing right so you don’t have to do it again is priceless time spent. Take for instance our chicken coop. We have an electric wire going around it to protect it from critters. Keeps them out and keeps them from eating the chickens. What do the chickens do? Scratch and peck and cover the electric wire shorting it out! Now, if we had “done it right” we would have sloped the land away from the fence so the chickens can’t scratch up! We didn’t know this at first, but this is yet another thing of our ongoing education. (It’s also about living on a crazy slope in the mountains too, but hey that’s another post)
I guess for me, it’s been a big realization that moving from time=$ and $=goods isn’t a very fulfilling way of living. I’d much rather spend my own time doing chores to grow and make a thing while learning more about myself and the skill, than just putting a dollar down to get a product. I know there will always be people who are more proficient at whatever skill I’m trying, but that’s part of my education – if I hadn’t tried that skill myself, I probably wouldn’t have the respect for true craftmanship and possibly the friend that I gained in the process.