To Be Industrious

Farming and the character trait of Industriousness go hand in hand.  Did you know that?
The Wife had first discovered this during childhood while talking with her Grandma the Amazing Farm Wife. When Grandma, while hanging laundry on the line, said,"A gardener doesn't go hungry.  It's hard work, but it feeds the family when others might go without." She had said this to The Wife when she lived in town.  Her garden consumed the entire side of the corner lot the house sat on, and it also shared the space with the walkway from the ally and the clothesline.  Looking back, it was a Norman Rockwell moment, but at the time, it was just barely appreciated.  One simple sentence and it planted the seed of Industriousness in The Wife for the rest of her life.

Living on the farm now we have no choice but to be industrious at times...the cows got out and there was no gate to block the road, we had to figure out how to make three people seem like a very large deterrence at the road side...things like this happen often enough to make you prepared at a moment's notice.
Then there's times that we choose to be industrious...to heat with wood, to milk a goat, to make soap, or to boil down bones for broth.
We see our children taking industriousness to the next level...knitting hats, gloves, dishcloths, crocheting blankets, stuffed animals, and slippers, making gifts with wood and nails, and training goats to pack-goat so they don't have to carry the heavy loads.

Recently we spent time with our Uncle Intelligentsia and his wife, Aunt Intelligentsia.  It was fantastic to hear Aunt Intelligentsia tell us of her process to insure the city where they live in be educated and funded for the community garden project.  She has had to be Industrious to see healthy lives restored even in the city.

Dear Farmer looks at Industriousness as a part of sustainable agriculture.  If there is no character of Industriousness in a farmer, there won't be a sustainable farm.  The two go hand in hand.
It's not easy, not always fun, sometimes barely appreciated...but it will change lives for generations.

The "Polar Bear" puppy and Farmer's Daughter

The Farmer's Daughter became the caretaker of the the "Polar Bear" puppy-a Great Pyrenees- the moment she saw it.  The puppy, at nine weeks, was the size of our full-grown Australian Shepherd.  She was instantly in love. Affectionately referred to as the "Polar Bear" this pup is playful, smart, and a self-thinker.
The Farmer's Daughter has been taking her for regular walks around the perimeter of the farm property.  The two have a grand time.  As the Polar Bear is so large, her strides are pretty big as well, so she keeps up with or exceeds the strides of the Farmer's Daughter, the walk is done in a relatively short time.
Currently, because it is wintertime, the fields are damp enough to have created ice intermixed with the snow. The Farmer's Daughter, while on the walk today, slipped on the ice and landed flat on her back.  The Polar Bear saw the Farmer's Daughter down on the ground behind her.  The Polar Bear stopped, picked up the end of the leash that the Farmer's Daughter would hold, walked it over to the Farmer's Daughter(still on the ground), and licked her face as if to say "Get up and let's keep going!"  The Farmer's Daughter is thrilled! This was proof positive for her that there is a relationship between the two(girl and dog) and that the Polar Bear will be a good guardian dog for the farm. Ahh, if we only could all have a Polar Bear in our lives...

The Farmer's Daughters' Bedroom.

It's a never ending cycle, and worse in the wintertime than the summertime.  House cleaning.  More specifically...bedroom cleaning.
Some days the bedrooms look like the destruction of the third World War, some days it's just more of a laundry explosion.  It all depends on how cold it is outside.
If it's VERY cold outside, it's the latter rather than the former.
We are constantly cleaning bedrooms.
Organizational tools are for bedrooms that only have one or two children in them.  The Farmer's Daughters are in a large room together.  That's six daughters in one bedroom the size of the living room.  First of all, that's a lot of girls/hormones in one room.  Second, that's a lot of stuff in a room.  Thirdly, that's a lot of laundry in a room.
The Farmer's Daughters do a great job of organizing...but the Smallest Farmer's Daughter Trio, they don't read.  Labels are stickers waiting to be peeled off. Bins look pretty-especially when emptied all over the floor and used to place blankets in lovingly for doll beds.  Folded laundry is for wimps that don't have a little sister to hide more important things from.
So organizing has flown out the window for the Smallest Farmer's Daughter Trio.  Instead we have streamlined their laundry and belongings in the bedroom.  Sounds nice, but now we have the issue of the Smallest Farmer's Daughter Trio getting into the belongings of the Bigger Farmer's Daughter Trio.
The Eldest Farmer's Daughter solved her problems by taking over the walk-in closet...she's made it her bedroom, it has a door with a lock on it.  All her stuff, her bed, her dresser and herself fit very neatly into the closet.  And when she comes out of the closet every day-she doesn't care that she's brunt of her brothers' joke because she and her stuff are all safe from little hands.
The Haus Frau and WhizBang! Farmer's Daughters have the brunt of the little sisters now.  They have devised a method to keep the little sisters on their toes and out of their stuff.  Ever played "Hide and Go Seek"?
Their organization is very similar to finding the needle in the haystack.  Laundry is shoved in drawers and under beds, hanging from baskets and in hooks.  Prize possessions are given homes each week.  Keeping them on the move keeps the little sisters from finding and raiding them-candy, Ipods, lotion, and chapstick-these are a few of our favorite things.
Heaven help us if someone can't remember where the electronic device was moved to this week.  The hormonal meltdown is equal to a nuclear reactor detonating.
Going off The Wife's Mother's rule when she was a child ("I need a path from the door to your bed.") is the beginning of cleaning the room.  If The Wife says this to the Farmer's Daughters they know that the next day will be cleaning the Smallest Farmer's Daughter Trio Quadrant, followed by the next day of the Farmer's Daughter cleaning out her closet/room, and so on and so forth.  By day five, it should all be clean and we can relax on day six. To make the mess again, and begin the whole process all over again the next week.
O the joy.
Someday all the Farmer's Daughters will look back on having shared a room together with fondness and laughter.  Someday the Farmer's Daughters will use the same phrases their mother used and her mother used and I might think her mother had used..."If you can't find a place for it, don't keep it!", "Make a path from your bed to the door."  You know those, maybe you use them too.  Someday the Farmer's Daughters will have clean bedrooms.

You'll Eat a Pound of Dirt In Your Lifetime

It's a fact...well...I googled it.
Still, experts say that we will all eat a pound of dirt over our lifetime.  This is something we find humorous in our family...we live in dirt.
Well, not physically, but practically.  Dear Farmer works in dirt.  The children play on dirt.  The baby crawls on dirt.  The animals are covered in dirt.  We wash dirt off our veggies, strain dirt out of our milk, sweep dirt off the floor, wipe dirt out of eyes, and wash dirt off our hands.  Over half of our septic system must filter out dirt...or input dirt...however you look at it.
In Dear Farmer's world he lives, wears and breathes dirt.  So really, he probably eats about a pound of dirt every week.  We all probably do...the crawling baby most of all.
You guys are probably always sick!  And that, my friends is the beauty of dirt.  The more of it you eat, the healthier you get.  Well, the more ORGANIC dirt you eat...
Dirt builds up your immune system one molecule at a time.  Helping you gain natural immunity to the environment around you. Taking what might have been an allergy, and making into an immuno-booster.
Three cheers for not washing your hands!  No...that's not what I said.  We are still washing the dirt off, we're just not going to "freak out" the minute it gets on you.

Dear Farmer Holds Down the Farm...and we go vacation south!

Dear Farmer, loving man that he is, sent us away to our Fabulous Aunt and Uncle's house to vacation for six days!  While we were gone, he held down the farm by himself....Amazing man!
He learned some things while we were gone:
It's nearly impossible to run this farm by himself.
He's lonely when we aren't here to be loud and energetic.
It's quiet at night when he's the only one in the house.
It's been a long time since he's been the only one in the house.
The woodstove needs to be filled a lot through the day when it's cold outside.
Farmer does not live on cereal alone.
Home cooked food three meals a day is a luxury.
The puppy is not fully potty-trained.
The goats can be very demanding.
He really loves his family.

How Cold Is It?

Ask Dear Farmer how cold it is and you'll likely hear:

"It's so cold my eye balls froze."

"It's so cold when we milk the goat it comes out as ice-cubes."

"Cold?  It's not cold.  It's just the absence of heat."

"It's cold enough the cows are eating all day and all night just to stay warm."

"It's so cold we can't get vehicles started."

"It's so cold my clothes froze to me while I was working."

"It's so cold we're going to be selling fresh frozen chickens."

"The dogs are pup-cicles."

In reality it's so cold that Dear Farmer's hat froze to his head while doing chores...that would be the downfall to having a bald head when being a farmer.
In reality it's so cold that Dear Farmer HAS to keep moving, so he doesn't begin to get frostbite.
In reality it's so cold the 1000 gallon stock tank has frozen solid (and full) overnight.
In reality it's so cold that the milk does freeze the moment it hits the bucket when we're milking, the eggs freeze in the nesting boxes if a chicken isn't sitting on them, and the cows have icicles hanging off their noses and chin whiskers.

How cold is it?  As cold as it usually gets here in the North.

Family Series(Part 2)..Honorable Son No.1: Your Future American Farmer

There are some relationships in families that are questionable.  For example: how does a mother who is ultra-athletic get along with a daughter who is ultra-lazy?
In our family the question was: How is Dear Farmer (farmer-extraordinaire) going to get along with Honorable Son No.1 (philosophical-egg head)?
The answer is: surprisingly good.
In the beginning of Honorable Son No.1's life it was rough.  Neither father nor son understood eachother and both frustrated the Wife daily.
But 20 years later they are friends.  Good friends.  They go to eachother when there are problems, build eachother up when there are difficulties, challenge weaknesses and combine strengths.
So it came as no surprise to the Wife when Honorable Son No.1 changed his major from "Mathematics and Sciences with a desire for a PhD in sciences relating to epigenetics" to "Marketing with a certification as an independant organic inspector for the USDA".  His passion for health related to your food hasn't changed, but he's more interested in developing a relationship with the consumer and the scientist...and less likely to sit in front of a desk and test tubes with no human interaction.
Today Honorable Son No.1 is working as a Farm Market Manager for a wonderful four-generation farm and orchard.  He's a Certified Independant Organics Inspector. He writes for many blogs, but especially his own: Farmingthedream.com.
He has a passion as an Intellectual Agrigarian, like Thomas Jefferson.  But he understands the practicality of life, like Dear Farmer.  He is your best friend, a man who knows your food and where it comes from.  And he is your worst nightmare, a man who knows your food and where it comes from.

Dear Farmer "gets it" more than we do...

Everything is supposed to settle down to a nice dull roar during the wintertime.  The feeding is supposed to go smoothly, the animals are supposed to behave nicely, and Dear Farmer is supposed to be getting a lot of planning done for the next year.  Being very methodical and retrospective he's supposed to be looking at where grazing was done & how it will be done in the upcoming year.  He's supposed to be reflecting on the rainfall over last year, how situations were handled & releasing the stresses.
Apparently no one clued in Dear Farmer. He's still working twelve hour days outside. Frozen, wet, and tired days.
Strange thing is, Dear Farmer comes inside to thaw, and he still has a smile on his face.  He still loves his job.
Despite the misbehaving animals, the plans that get written and rewritten in his head(because he's not making it to a desk), despite the increase in stresses and the dip in temperatures...Dear Farmer loves to do what he does. Though none of the rest of us really understand (sometimes), we do see that this is the way it should be.
Your Farmer should love his job.

What Country-Folk Don't See

The trip to the City was eye-opening for both Dear Farmer and the Wife.  There's oodles of ladies walking around in fashionable muck-boots and riding-boots...they've never seen and ounce of muck or manure. There were no animals in a ten square radius of where we were.  There were lots of stop-lights at nearly every corner.  There were lights absolutely EVERYWHERE, we couldn't see the moon there were so many lights at night, it looked like daytime.  There were more cars than we count in a month.  There were so many restaurants to choose from, and then you could go to an indoor gym on each corner or strip-mall.
Country-folk don't see things like this.  When we look outside we see fields and trees, barns and equipment, fences, the moon and the stars. When Country-folk go to town, we don't dress like we do for the barn work.  So far as all those stop-lights goes...Dear Farmer has always said, "If the town has to get a stop light, it's time for us to move, it's getting too crowded."
For the record, Dear Farmer and the Wife are pleased here in the Country.  A day away from where you live is fun.  To see all the things you don't see on a daily basis.  It was wonderful for us and then to go home to what we know and love.

Dear Farmer goes to the City

It was a really innocent question that Dear Farmer asked the Wife,"What would you like to do for your birthday?" The Wife gave him an answer that he wasn't expecting..."I'd like to go to the City for a day of shopping."
The look on Dear Farmer's face was one of terror, agony, and disbelief.  Why? Why would anyone want to leave the wonderful country for even a day???
But Dear Farmer, being the wonderful husband he is, said (in a shaky voice) "Sounds great!  We'll plan the whole day!"
It's not going to the City, per say, that the Wife really wants to do.  Really, it's spending an entire day with Dear Farmer out of his element.  Dear Farmer in his element just works.  And works.  And works.  And even on date night, he works.  Out of his element, away from his wonderful country farm, he has to stop.  He has to look at the Wife and have a conversation that doesn't start with the word "FODDER".  Instead conversation can drift into paint colors, future and dream vacations, and personal jokes.
Away from his element Dear Farmer is just a boy trying to impress a girl.  And the Wife is a girl trying to impress a boy.
So, off Dear Farmer will go, to the City for a day of shopping.  Just because he loves his Wife.