Few jobs are harder than being a working farmer.
Burn of the Day
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Don, my late father used to say that if he ever won the lottery, he’d just farm until all the money was gone.
I’m reminded of the 2020 BLM riots in Seattle, when a mob seized a few blocks of the Capitol Hill neighborhood and declared it an ‘Autonomous Zone’, and ‘seceded’ from the city. The occupation dragged on for months, and some of the protesters decided to LARP as farmers, to grow their own food and affirm their independence from the rest of Seattle. The famous photos of their attempt at ‘farming’ made it clear that none of those people knew a thing about raising a crop, and their garden would never produce enough to make a Cobb salad, let alone feed hundreds of hungry hungry hippies.
As for that absurd statement about farming being so simple, whoever wrote that displays an unfortunate combination of a serene but unfounded confidence in his complete understanding of a subject— coupled with a frightening lack of an even basic grasp of the matter. People like that are precisely why the last hundred years have been by far the bloodiest century in human history.
In the fourth year of homesteading and thankfully I have a part-time job. If not, we’d be hungry. Thankfully, I am saved by the fact that vegetables, fruit trees, chickens and pigs routinely tolerate my ignorance.
Once I moved to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, I became surrounded by farms (soybeans, corn, and sod are the big 3 here), and with a couple of the farm stores in short range, I try to patronize them as often as possible, and thank them for their hard work every time.
A dear co-worker of mine began dairy farming in 1979 (at age 23) and sold his cows about 20 years later and found a job on the B & G staff of a local college. Selling the cows took a chunk out of him and he tells me he’d like to get back into food production raising hay on the side. The problem with farming today, he tells me is ‘you have to do everything perfect’. You produce undifferentiated commodities with a low profit margin. There are people who make a good living at it, but the work is just endless.
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Some years ago, First Things had an article on what it called ‘the Skimpole syndrome’ in the occidental world, named for the Dickens character who successfully sponged off others unawares that his consumption was made possible by the productive labor of others. “They think bread comes from the delivery truck”. You see that mentality in that remark.
Agree with all the above. Every city-bred person ought to be required to spend at least one winter and one summer on a Midwestern farm, preferably one with a good deal of livestock, living and working alongside the family and any hired hands. The idiotic perspective demonstrated in the quoted post would disappear in a big hurry.
“Few jobs are harder than being a working farmer.”
So true. I grew up on a Missouri farm. My Dad never had a whole day off. Hogs had to be fed on Christmas, Easter, Sundays, everyday. The return on crops like wheat, corn, and soybeans was entirely dependent on supply and demand which was tied to the weather. If the weather was good, supply was high but prices were low. If the weather was bad, prices were high because supply was low. And that doesn’t even count the investment and upkeep of tractors, combines and balers.
Strange how it is mainly non-agricultural jobs that let you start work after a brief period of on the job training or orientation videos. 🤣
Admittedly, there may not be much genius required to operate a tractor. There’s not much genius needed to operate a subway train either. As with most complicated endeavors, it’s the judgement calls that make or break. There are a lot of judgement calls in farming that deeply rely on experience. Most times, it has to be your own experience.
It reminds me of years and years ago, on CNN (or perhaps MSNBC, I can’t recall exactly which), when a guest said America was great in the past because we were an industrial nation. And while not saying so explicitly, she alluded to the idea that industry is what any simple Simon can do, so naturally Americans were equal to the task in those days. But today we are a tech/science age, and Americans just aren’t up to that level of smarts and never have been.
We moved to a larger house/ property last year and started a vegetable garden. The first attempt was disappointing. These people really haven’t thought out the implications of screwing up one growing season and waiting for the next harvest for your second attempt without the grocery stores as backup.
Mike S, I’ve been planting vegetables in my various back yards for thirty years or more, and every year is a different set of challenges. Without online research I would make even more mistakes than I already do. You are so right, in that trial and error in farming can be extremely hazardous to one’s health.
That person is a troll who probably thinks carrots are made in Costco. Jerk. A particular unfortunate generation that has no idea about the source of food. Or that weather, disease plays a major part in the success of a crop. Im embarrassed for him/her/it. Blame the ignorance on the schooling they received. They have probably never ventured outside and pulled out a weed from the earth. They need a smack across the face with reality. Put them on the farm for a week and watch them squirm. Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie circa 2003. Again- jerk.