farming and the margins of consequence
by Lynn R. Miller of Singing Horse Ranch
Why would anyone choose, today, to be a farmer when the life of a computer programmer, a college professor, a pharmacist, a law clerk, a venture capitalist, a government systems analyst, a bio-chemist, an advertising executive, a realtor, or a stock broker, could be theirs? I don’t like the question, whether it’s meant sarcastically or not. I like even less the inference. Heaviest for me though is my negative feeling about the human failing which generates such questions. Yet the question begs an answer.
Perhaps farming would be chosen because many of the alternatives worry or frighten people, because intuitively we know or suspect what it will feel like at the end of our days to look back on a life spent without nature, adventure, creativity, physical challenge, self reliance, connectedness, cultural membership, roots, romance, and the chance, however fleeting, of owning some small measure of accomplishment or contribution: Elements, each and every one, which we can and do take with us when we go.
Farming at its best is a marriage of nature to beneficial endeavor and its direct rewards to us as participants would come from the margins of consequence from that marriage, those mysterious spaces where our gratitude for our life and work allows us to be truly humane .
The mysteries of humanity often seem to rotate around cruelty, greed, intolerance, and short sightedness.
“How could we be so cruel? How could we be so stupid?”
The mysteries of nature point always toward interconnection, complexity, depth, intelligence, genetic memory, terrible necessity, beauty, perfect design, humor and back again to mystery itself. Nature as a working place and a guiding force has the power to lift and shape human spirit and human history. To work within nature on the task of producing food, fiber and fertility fits a person out for a richly rewarding life, one in which place and work permeate the absorbent human spirit. For we are sponges, lay us in dirty water and we soak it up ‘till it becomes us, lay us is clean water…
“Within such an arduous world, the words themselves had circulated like a precious currency, an evanescent gold. Used sparingly, they were often the only means of exchange these mountain people possessed. In so many breath-bitten segments, they had cultivated a language that spoke almost exclusively in terms of felling timber and sluicing water, honing sickles and stacking hay, fumigating beehives and preparing unguents, infusions and herbal remedies. Cabassac, himself had compiled an entire lexicon devoted to nothing but grain. It included every word he’d managed to collect, in regard to the grain’s harvesting, thrashing, winnowing: in regard, finally, to how these quintessential kernels got milled into flour alongside some frothy splashing mountain cascade.” – from The Fly Truffler by Gustaf Sobin
Some of us at mid-life and beyond sit up, startled and terrified, with the realization that we have let our lives slip by, never to have attempted what we always wanted to do. We don’t feel membership in a place of mystery. Our language is thin, our clothing is unattractive decoration, our steps are heavy – each and every one. Most often, that frightening revelation is centered around the memory of an illusive idea or dream of attractive rewarding work, not leisure. In desperation we wake up and decide we want to quit our job and write a novel, learn to play the piano, do sculpture, garden, farm, build something; all ventures which we see as attractive and rewarding but each of them also requiring a great deal of hard work. Seldom do we think of quitting everything so that we can do nothing.
People are drawn to the vocation, the life, the craft, and the art of farming for reasons similar to those which attract some of them to join the circus, take up ballet, become a rodeo cowboy, become a painter, a song writer, become a mountain climber or professional skier, a field research wildlife biologist, clothing designer, musician, acrobat, a theatrical set designer, a jeweler, an actor, a ceramist, etc. All vocations and endeavors which are too often seen as frivolous or useless or self-destructive. And they are seen that way by that piece of human nature which will always fear free flight, will always feel undeserving, will always beg of us that we be responsible, will always demand calm steady membership in the rules of the day.
It is only when a blanket of these so-called rational arguments are laid over the choices that the picture gets clouded, confused, and almost frivolous.
She says, “Oh be serious! You can’t make a decent living farming today! And it takes piles of money even to get started. Besides its hard filthy work. And think about it, who looks up to a farmer? Not exactly what you’d call a sexy vocation.”
He says, “Tactical weaponry or bioengineering or political demographics, now there are three sexy vocations. You’ll get invited to parties, be welcome at all the right clubs, make tons of money without heavy lifting, and never have to touch animal manures! And compare the wardrobes here to what you’ll have to wear farming. You might even have a shot at a cabinet position or the vice presidency!”
Financial security from a no risk job which requires no hard labor and dresses you well? Who’s not serious? There is no guarantee of financial security from any vocation. Risk is everywhere. Avoidance of hard labor results in soft limp individuals of short empty lives. After all, it is the consequence of our lives which matters most. And it is in the margins of consequence where we find the mysteries which will lighten our steps, flesh out our language and give us place.
Up close, in hand to hand and mind to mind verbal combat with people we know, and the conscience we created, perhaps the most powerfully persuasive argument is that one about responsibility. It is also the cloudiest and most confusing. It can be easy to accept taking personal risks while in pursuit of a dream if you are alone. But if that same pursuit puts loved ones at risk, then it becomes deceptively clear what direction must be followed. It seems you must sacrifice the dream in order to feed, clothe and educate your children. It seems that way. But often that’s no choice at all, or a poor one at best. Most especially if the dream has room within it for partners and/or the family. An exciting life lived and worked together, complete with deprivations, will always out shine the well-healed, well-oiled, well-fed life of inconsequential boredom or unrewarded stress.
Yes, it is confusing, complicated and frustrating. In my own life there have been parallel dreams, a couple of which have called to me constantly to drop everything and go that direction. I haven’t done that. It has been my choice to say no. But that does not mean I chose tedium, boredom or servitude. Quite dramatically the contrary.
I have been fortunate that one of my working dreams, farming, has allowed, even required, my family’s involvement. My two oldest children, Justin and Juliet, are both rapidly approaching 30 years old. They are deep into their own personal adventures. And I have been blessed to hear from them that their growing up years, on the three farms we have had, gave them strength they can feel and use. Our younger daughter, Scout Gabrielle, at nine years old is in love with the ranch and happy to cart around pocketfuls of the mysteries of the life. As we struggle to keep business and life’s demands on an even keel, she may be deprived of elements and aspects which most of her counterparts take for granted, but there can be no doubt that she enjoys the best life for her. That the life she has is growing her well.
These last couple of years our farming has, of necessity, slowed to an idle. We found we needed to sell down our cattle herd to keep the publishing business afloat during a collapsed economy. Time was budgeted away from farming and crops and into difficult management efforts. The effect was to create an atmosphere of stress and anxiety which put us at risk. Now, though we still struggle with the economy, we are driven by emotional and internal urgencies to return more fully to our farming and ranching. It is not just a working which we know and which attracts us, it is a realm of experience, a place, to which we belong. Away from it we are less.
Seen from outside and above there may be sentimental comic fluff to the image of parents excited by their young daughter’s enthusiasms and curiosities about projects to incorporate a band of goats and a flock of geese into pasture weed control or the raising of a purebred flock of Royal Palm turkeys for breeding stock; but the image is evidence of an energy with the power to embolden and enhance lives. Do weed-eating goats and Royal Palm turkeys translate to money? Perhaps. Influence? Power? Wardrobe? Leisure? Why do you want to know?
Are there cautions, instructions, directions, admonitions which go with the move to farming? No. There may be some which go with YOU but not with farming.
When someone says to you “you must go this way in order to get there” or “never do that or you’ll fail” suspect that the opposite may be true. Be careful what formula for farming you follow. Be wary of those who insist that farming is strictly a business and that you must approach it as such. Be suspicious of those who, without investment or involvement, would warn you away from your dream of farming. Try to understand the motives of the messenger. Perhaps you should be wary of those, present company top of list, who would argue shamelessly and often that you should be one of those old fashioned farmers. You should ask yourself why do we, at SFJ, say these things, what is our motive? Politics and religion. Believe it or not, our motive is to have you join us as farmers if it is your wish. If you do, we all are better off for it.
As our thick-walleted, heart-dead and brain-limp leaders continue their horrific game of global chicken, this constant brinksmanship throws humanity’s hope into the wind as so much confetti. The larger picture is mayhem. As we register our loud clear vote of dissent, cast as it were over our shoulders, we must then focus on the smaller picture, on that small piece of earth where we can have the best effect. Set against that backdrop, a life of raising food and fiber, growing fertility and craftsmanship, is a powerful option for anyone. And with each small increment of growth in our numbers we are all just a little closer to a good humane world.
But this view towards more farmers is not a linear picture. It’s not a march to a target. Its not a steady gain forward. Its many little steps forward backward and sideways.
We have amongst our readership people who, a decade or two ago, made the leap to farming only to find it didn’t work out for them: too hard, not enough income, too complicated, too many risks, various reasons. So they gave it up, went back to the so-called real world. Then after a few years of conventional work they found themselves, once again, chucking that “normal” world with the single-minded pursuit of old-fashioned general farming. There was a place they needed to return to.
Farming is a calling, much as we see religious ministry, or the fine arts, or philanthropy. We know what often becomes of those who would make of a pastor’s calling a “successful modern business.” Similar trade offs occur with farming. Good farming can be highly profitable and as such strong in its future. The profits measured must include all advances, all gains, be they finances or fertility, health or happiness. Good farming must never be controlled by the yardstick of commodities or gross production or scale. Good farming must always have room for the energy of excitement and enthusiasms. Because farming IS a margin of consequence. It’s the vocation we pursue but it also is the shining edge of our chosen endeavor. As we call ourselves farmers we name the consequence of our work, we identify with the place we have become.
“I don’t know. Suspect I’m not supposed to know. Not that stuff, anyway. What I do know is that the sap is running, the speckled-belly geese should have come through by now, and that Badger, the one that was zig-zagging in the daylight and snarling, when I shot him I saw where he had one dead grey blue swollen eye.”
“That would explain how he was walking, if he was blind in one eye, also why he was angry, mean. Probably sick.” I replied.
“Explains more than that.” he said, massaging his neck and looking at nothing. “My great grandfather talked of a time when a one eyed Badger would come to warn us of disease. Of a time when the wild geese would avoid us. Of a time when we would need to be more vigilant in our preparations.”
“Preparations?”
“Yes,” he looked straight at me, “firewood, lamp oil, batteries, fuel stored, food stored, seed protected, feed for the stock – enough for two winters.”
“Come on Joe? Don’t tell me you’re falling for some doomsday scenario? Not you.”
He pursed his lips circling his eyes as he took my form in. Then he smiled, shrugged his shoulders and went on with his work.
For a fleeting moment I wondered after the debilitating power of superstition as I watched my friend move into and through his work with an ease, a grace, a manner, and a power which belied any dependence on a marionette’s future. Joe was one of my heroes, a model to shoot for, someone I learned from, not because he was willing to teach but because his way of moving through his work magnetized me, pulled me to pay close attention. I felt a pause in my thoughts, one of those which comes when a card in your mind has flipped over and you get a fleeting chance to see the back side of it. It was not a classic moment of realization. It was a brief moment of clarity. I could for that instant see that, with all of my education and modern intelligence, I still didn’t get it. I didn’t understand. I wouldn’t be able to understand. Not without a cultural membership I was ill equipped to apply for.
“I’m sorry, Joe. That was a stupid thing to say, I mean, the way I said it…”
He interrupted me, “Ever get a sense something was wrong; wrong and you didn’t know what? Like birds feeling rain on the way or a coming earthquake. That’s the way I’ve been feeling. The Badger just connected it all way back to one of the warnings of my great grandfather. No harm done, me looking after housekeeping, preparing a bit more than usual. In fact it makes me feel strong having my old relation’s voice coming back to me in this way. ‘Nuff said.”
I still didn’t get it, but I felt it and it drew me closer to old ways of being.
There is a deep west, beyond the reach of slick homogenized market culture, it’s a place born of place and of the living in that place. It is a place true to itself. It’s a place coming out of immersion, connection, out of inheritance more than tradition. I want to say I know this deep west as much as I might know it, certainly I feel it coursing through me. I have also seen glimpses of the deep mid west, upper east, south, southwest, on and on. They too, each of them, have their curtains of perimeter, their surrounds, their easy yet illusive membership, their memories, their anticipations, each unique to each. Perhaps most important to us they each have their flavors, their carpet of smells, their song cycles, their look and their looking. They have their weather and disaster calendars. They have their separate favored ways of working, and results of working. And none of it has anything to do with measures of authenticity, a concept which has become a sad pasteurizing filter for mass marketing.
The complexity and magnetic pull of these deeper places confuses market analysis and the enforcers of taste. They desperately need to have large groups of same people with simple to understand same characters and characteristics. To have subsets of folks who may be driven by impossible to explain territorial angst, held in sway by the flavor their own soil imparts to its garlic and wine, stitched together by rhythmic beat which mirrors how their own light and morning fog makes of water surface a knife to the landscape and a melody to their expectations, to have these things in the mix makes it impossible for the marketeers to quantify and qualify specific desire.
The sand hills of Nebraska are responsible for a longing cast to the shadow of the eyes of its true residents. The smell of Bodega Bay in California reaches around behind the visiting facades and temporary nonsense to tilt back the heads of those who must live there, they must. The mesquite of New Mexico runs through the lizards out their tails up the shovel handles and into the waiting pores of those who tend the irrigation ditches because it is who they are. The Okanagon highlands, as if the brow of an abandoned clipper ship, is a landscape adrift and riddled with the memories of Muskrat ranching. Hanging moss and the feigned faints of self-absorbed pampered young women, a snake’s warning breath and the heat-lifted sugar scents, these sorts of things may be of the designing truths of Georgian place.
All of it is farming, all of it is consequence, all of it is place, a corner of it waits for those families who belong there, thickening and light of step.
