Basic Farm Lessons

The Lessons:

  1. Hogs: After you have been face down in the muck with pigs thundering over your body, check for broken bones first, launch temper tantrum second.
  2. To-do lists: Whatever I did with my time in the city, my farm to-do list makes that former “active” life seem downright sedentary.
  3. Phone calls: “Are you missing any cattle?” This question usually translates into, “You are missing cattle. And they are on the highway (or in my front yard or garden).”
  4. Fencing: First, it is never done. Second, even a secure fence means nothing to a hungry steer or a horny bull. I’ve watched steers clear a five-foot-high fence flat-footed and bulls uproot a 10-foot-wide gate from its hinges to enjoy the company of a cow in heat.
  5. Deer hunters: They routinely cut fencing, nail slats up trees for steps, leave behind deer stands, screw peanut butter jars onto trees, disturb the quiet and take a one-time permission to hunt as license to spend the winter in your woods. That said, if the sheer number of deer in the landscape is any indication … they are mostly lousy shots.
  6. Closing gates: The injunction to close the gate behind you means it should also be latched. Just pulling it closed doesn’t count. Trust me.
  7. Number of muscles: Most folks have no idea how many muscles are contained in the body. But I know, because over the past 16 years each has hurt at one time or another.
  8. Bad weather: When the temperature is in the 20s and the wind is blowing with gale force and you’re facing the elements as snow and sleet slants sideways, you tuck your head and keep working. Because the sow that needs shelter for farrowing can’t build it herself.
  9. Life and death: Wendell Berry’s “The Mad Farmer” says: “Listen to carrion—put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs to come.” The cycles of life, just barely understood when I lived in the city, are an intimate presence of each day on the farm.
  10. Watch the skies: A circle of vultures over the back pasture is the signal that there is a newborn calf or a dead yearling steer.
  11. Farm life: No one ever reminisces about summers spent with Grandma in her suburban rancher. Our race memories are of the land, and the land is where we return.
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9 thoughts on “Basic Farm Lessons

  1. A beautiful list!

    #3 brought a wide grin with memories from my childhood. Indeed, the sense of community is quite complete when you are on the front end of the call… just recognizing whose escaped critters are out and about (after making sure they aren’t your own 🙂 )

    One has the sense there could be any number of potential future posts here if some embellishment were offered. That is unless the memories of broken bones or frostbitten fingers is somehow too painful to relive.

    The weather now is far more promising for outdoor chores, so I will wish you safety and happiness as you go about them. Take a second now and then to stop and smell all the new scents that spring blesses us with.

    • Clem,
      Thanks as usual. You can read here about the thundering pigs. And I guess I’ll have to dig the post on the escaped herd on the highway out of the archives. That was an exciting evening, let me tell you.
      Cheers,

      • Thanks for the link back. I have on occasion traipsed back into your older posts, but time and tide wait for no plant breeder 🙁

        My favorite line from the pig loading adventure (among so many to choose from):

        “Is it any wonder we work two full-time jobs to pay for this kind of leisure activity?”

        Yes indeed. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. So by now you must look like a super-hero??

        Are you still feeding to 300lbs? This seems much larger than what I’m thinking is a more common market weight (210-240).

        • We like to feed to 300-325. From a strictly commercial standpoint hogs are typically fed to the 250 mark, as you point out. The ratio of growth to feed intake slows. And what growth occurs is largely fat. However, we and our customers like a bit more fat on our pork. So we feed out a bit heavier. But we may introduce a two-tier payment for the pork: lean = less expensive, fat= a premium price. Our hog production, as a small farm, is negligible compared to a commercial hog producer. We market a maximum of fifteen a year.

  2. I started laughing with the very first “lesson” to the hog and laughed right on through. thanks! Dhyan

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