Children on the Farm

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Playing in the Rain

RainyDay

Sunday we had a strong wind out of the South, warm temperatures and an inch of rain.  The kind of rain that paints the ground green.  Mom was out of the house so I took the kids on an adventure.

I have to cut wood.  Have to.  I have a number of trees down and I’m running out of time.  But we don’t have to kill ourselves cutting wood.  I told the kids I would use one tank of gas in the chainsaw while they dragged limbs and stacked firewood and then we could have some fun.  Well, we had fun the whole time.  Dripping, soaking, pruny-fingered, wet sock fun.

Our chores behind us, we tromped off through the pasture to the branch to see how deep the water was.  It was deep.  And swift.  Normally the branch is just a trickle.  It’s the weak point in the fence that the neighbor cows use to come steal food.

Branch

We threw sticks in the water and watched them float away.  We probed the water to see how deep it was.  I warned the kids of the danger.  The youngest fell in anyway.

I have a million things to do.  I don’t have time to splash through the puddles, exploring pastures I have played in my entire life but if I don’t do this now, when will I?  The farm is a family experience…I have to experience it with them.  That’s kind of the point.  I can sacrifice sleep to get the taxes finished.  The kids won’t wait.

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Snow Day

I can telecommute to work when the weather is poor.  That means there are no days off.  It snowed a lot today starting around noon.  It’s now 5 and we have something like 4-6″ out there.  It’s time to go sledding.  I ditched work at 4, sprinted through our chores and headed to the hill.  The kids caught up with me later.

Now, if you are at all familiar with the John Cusack movie “Better Off Dead” you’ll understand when I say that this hill is our K12, dude.  It starts by the big, overgrown octopus of a hedge tree (which is not long for the world).

SleddingK12

Then we sled a greater-that-45-degree hill, ramping over cow paths and hoping not to hit any stumps.

SleddingK12_2

And just as we reach top speed, the ground levels out for about 10 feet.  We have to stop immediately or we’ll meet our death in the hedge-tree-guarded creek bed.

SleddingK12_3

The oldest daughter calls it “disemmemberment hill”.  Yes, that’s how they spell it.

SleddingK12_4

The snow gave way to ice pellets and high winds.  Time to head inside and dry out.  I think semi-perilous adventures like sledding disemmemberment hill are important moments in my children’s lives.  By the way, no one was disemmembered today, though I did catch several ice pellets in the eye.

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Absolute Failure. Well Sort Of…

Total.  Complete.  Unequivocal.  Failure.  Well…failure-ish.  You’ll see what I mean.

Ugh.

So, Chris, how much money did you make this year?  You ready to buy some additional land and quit your job and farm full time?

No.  Not really.  Maybe more land since grandma passed and we need to exercise our option on the East 40.  But I’ll be sitting at a desk for a long time to come.  I don’t want to publish my whining for all the internet to see.  Many our readers share our dreams and I want to present a realistic picture of what goes on here.  We have a ball on the farm.  Not every day but overall it’s a hoot.  Part of the fun is laughing at ourselves and learning from our mistakes.  Learn with us.  Also, I want to make clear that if we do make it as farmers it will be because of my own incompetence.  Give me the chance to hand the reins to one of my children and I’ll run out of the way.  They are the future of the farm.  Thank God.

ChicksInBrooder

We sold around 950 broilers this year (600 were cut-ups).  Add to that 14 pigs, 3 goats, around 200 pullets, a dozen or so stewing hens, and, based on some back of the envelope math, 1,000 dozen eggs to date.  Pulling out our little envelope again I calculate that we sold roughly 7,500 pounds of meat from our little 20 acres.  This doesn’t count the 600 or so bales of alfalfa hay we put up, bushels of produce from the garden, duck eggs, a gallon or so of maple syrup or the fish we caught from the pond.  I am also not including the pigs we butchered for ourselves (3), chickens we ate (about 1/week), the three turkeys we raised for ourselves, the four goats we still have, the three cows we still have or the mountains of walnuts I have ignored in the pasture.

All from 20 acres.  Any money we made was poured back into fencing, livestock housing, repairs on equipment or new equipment.  Julie and I didn’t take a dime in pay.  There is just enough left to carry our pigs through the year and start up again in the spring.  We (quite literally!) worked our tails off.  It shows.  The barn is full.  the pasture looks 100% better.  Our freezers still have a little inventory.  Our larder is stocked.  But there’s no cash.  Business failure.

Canned Peaches

Each year we add to our infrastructure with whatever little money we make…and it just keeps sucking whatever money we can pour into it.  All so I, with my limited ability, can flirt with disaster hoping and praying someone somewhere will buy another dozen eggs.  Begging friends and family to take a free chicken, taste the difference and tell a friend, scrambling like a madman to hustle another half of pork.  Nearly every customer returns.  I couldn’t tell you what percentage but I can tell you their names.  They return telling me they can’t stand store-bought eggs anymore.  The pork is the best they have ever eaten.  They are grateful they can trust that our chickens are clean and safe to eat.  But there is only so much pork and chicken a customer will buy.  I need more customers.

More customers mean I have to produce more food and anticipate demand.  I have to attempt to anticipate the needs of the market when increasing my production.  Take my chickens for example.  Right now we are looking at sales figures from the past few years and looking for consumption patterns.  This is information we didn’t read in any books or blogs.  It looks like customers really want spring to arrive early because we have many requests for whole birds in February and March, the time when our freezers are empty.  Fried chicken is popular for Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Father’s Day and the 4th of July.  Then there is a period in mid-summer when the heat sets in and nobody wants to cook anything.  I have to sell out before the drought starts (whenever that happens) and have empty freezers until I butcher again in the early fall.  I can’t order chicks when it’s 100° outside or they will die in the mail so I can’t order chicks until mid-August unless I drive to the hatchery.  Then I have to have them off of pasture before the second week of October so the pasture has time to recuperate before we get a hard freeze.  Besides, in October the sun goes down early and the chickens stop eating early and grow slowly.  I have to hit a small window with just the right amount of production to meet fall and holiday demand as well as carry enough inventory to last until I butcher again because, as I said, there is a late winter demand for chicken.

Helper

And don’t get me started on anticipating commodity prices.  Should I buy corn out of the field?  Is it better for me to buy bagged feed from the elevator or grind it myself?  What will prices do in 6 months?  Ugh.  Chick prices are already up.

I have to find a way to grow animals, grow my business, remodel and reshape the farm landscape in a positive way, continue learning sales, farming, accounting, tax laws and researching Illinois chicken regulations.  All this as a part-time job I can only squeeze in evenings and weekends.

Absolute failure financially but we are getting pretty good at the work.  Maybe next year as the kids grow they can find better ways to do this.  Or the year after…

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The Family Stronghold

You are the same today you’ll be in five years except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read. – Charlie “Tremendous” Jones

Well, Charlie, I just read the book and I’m different already.

We have been reading Bill Bonner’s Family Fortunes slowly over the past few months, taking our time, chewing through it and pausing to ruminate on concepts presented chapter by chapter.  I am the latest in a long line of family farming the same ground but, unfortunately, there is no family fortune.  We have eroded, North-facing hills, very little fertility and a couple of nickles.  We are lacking Bonner’s description of a council of family elders, a family bank and millions in cash and equity available for investment in coming generations of family entrepreneurs. I didn’t inherit the land I live on.  I am buying it with money I make, not money my dad gave me.  The only wealth I recieved to date from mom and dad was my faith, my work ethic and an insatiable desire to learn.  College was not a choice and was on my own dime.  Family sweat, not family cash, helped us reclaim the farm from the thorns and brambles and that’s where my dad has really contributed to the cause.  We have spent years clearing thorny things out of the pastures and fixing fences with years of work still ahead of us.  My job is to hold onto this land so the next generation can take the reins from me.  If I do my job well they will not only have the opportunity to inherit the ground, they will be getting something of greater value than I did.  That’s stewardship.

Bonner talks about the need to follow a well-worn path in business…doing something that others have already succeeded at.  We read and follow the examples of leaders in alternative ag.  He talks about how important it is that I not try to go it alone, that I work hard and take one bite at a time until I “find something that works before you run out of time, money and confidence” (p. 126).  He goes on to suggest a farm as possibly the ideal family business on page 141.

What is the ideal family business?  Hard to say, but it might be a large, diversified family farm.
Here’s why:

  • It is a difficult business, perhaps with relatively low returns on capital.
  • It requires active, on-site management.
  • It is physical, tangible, observable – and something to which people can become sentimentally attached
  • There is generally little liquidity, and a “liquidity event” is a very big deal.
  • The main asset – land – compounds in value without capital gains or income taxes.

What does this have to do with anything?  Our greatest assets are our children.  We work hard to teach our children right from wrong.  …that we are endowed by our Creator with certian unalienable rights.  To teach them when to speak and when to be silent, when it is appropriate to joke around, what topics are appropriate sources of humor and which are taboo and when to push the envelope.  We work hard and always put something away for a rainy day.  We think about what we feed our bodies and what we feed our minds.  We are careful about what sources of entertainment we choose and how much we allow ourselves to be entertained.  We love each other.  We value life.  We value community.  These ideas define us.  More to the point, they shape us and build us as a unit and create our family culture.

Though family culture could develop anywhere, Bonner presents that certain locations can function as an incubator of the family.  A place to hole up during a period of unemployment or just a place to relax and write a book.  I like these ideas.  Years ago I hit a crisis point that caused me to re-evaluate my purpose in life and, ultimately, forcing me to re-invent myself.  This happened in the home with my family beside me.  We stayed in our stronghold (playing Mario Kart Double-Dash!) for an entire summer together.  That house in town functioned as a stronghold for a time but, ultimately, it was too small for our needs.  We, as a family, felt a calling to grow beyond a garden and a couple of chickens.  Strangely, we find it to be easier to be involved in each others lives on 20 acres than on 1/8th of an acre.  We have common goals and interests but still have space for individualism.

StrongHold

Bonner suggests “Your stronghold should be a place where you can live almost indefinitely on local resources” (p. 302).  The stronghold should be well provisioned beyond just wine and firewood and it should be fully paid for.  If the goal is to have a refuge point during a period of personal crisis, you shouldn’t be worried about paying for it or what you will eat.  Well, we’ve got the firewood, a little food in the pantry and are planting fruit and nut trees.  Our efforts at canning food are increasingly successful and our gardens are better every year.  These things are nice but the big one in the list is just having it paid for.  Ugh.  We are nowhere near paying for the farm, though it is high on our priority list because it is difficult to do anything in debt.  Mostly, though, it’s because I want to leave my children more than a legacy of debt.

Proverbs 13:22 says:

A good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children, but a sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous.

This house…this stronghold is our last refuge from the world.  The place we feel secure from whatever the world throws at us (including 50 mph snow storms).  If nobody else believes in us, if we fail at everything we have tried, when we are down on our luck and feeling blue this place is home.  This is not just the place where we hang our hats, it’s the place we return to after our long and weary travels.  The place we want our children to return to….their children to return to.  A place generations of us have come home to.  It is our stronghold against the world if necessary.

Our job, a job we have chosen, is to start from nothing on worthless (but expensive) ground in a worn out, drafty house with a leaky roof and build something lasting.  Our job, as a couple, is to lay the foundations of lasting family culture and plant the seeds of future wealth.  Time is on our side.  The overall goal has nothing to do with farming (or even money for that matter) but building a family.  This farm is just where it happens.

Obviously I liked and recommend the book.  Be careful reading it though.  It’s likely to light a fire under your tookus.

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Apple Picking…up

We were invited to pick apples at a friend’s house.  Well, we were invited to pick up apples at a friends house.  Their trees had a bumper crop of silver dollar sized apples this year and during a recent wind storm many of them fell to the ground.  He invited us out to clean them up because he was overwhelmed by the crop.

We had two hours between morning chores and lunch for three adults and six children (sister and nephews were visiting) to pick up the apples.  It was just enough time to clean up under one tree.

That one tree gave us five large tubs of apples and six feed sacks full of spoiled apples for the pigs and still left several bushels hanging from the tree.

Lunch was at my mother’s followed by a birthday party for our oldest son at our house.  Then we began cooking the first batch of applesauce.  Not time to loaf.  We work in this army.  We’ll be cooking apples for days.

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Playing Around

Play.  When was the last time you played?  Really played?

I have strawberry plants.  I have a 300 gallon tank of water and a bunch of catfish.  I don’t know what I don’t know but I’m doing it anyway.  And having fun.  It’s fun.  But is it play?

I don’t know.  I’m fully engaged.  I’m in the moment.  I’m taking risks and am more concerned with the action than with the outcome.  But I’m also learning.  Experiencing.

But is it play?

What do the kids think?  Well.  We dug a big hole in the greenhouse for a 300 gallon tank.  The kids helped.  For a while.  Then they headed off to the swings.  What happened?  Did they simply have enough?  Can an 8 year old boy get enough of digging a hole?  Maybe he can if the hole is regulated (so deep, so wide, so long and in the greenhouse).

Can this become play?  Can I play with my kids and still get my chores finished?

Those animals have to eat.  They need clean sheets.  Somebody has to cook and cooking/eating requires clean dishes…that somebody has to wash.  Where is the fun in that?

I think it’s all fun.  Sometimes there are aches and pains, sore muscles after a hard day’s work or an impressive feat of strength or endurance (lol).  Sometimes there are bad smells.  Sometimes your sock gets wet or something splatters on you.  Well.  Maybe it’s cause I’m still a boy.  It’s fun.  I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t fun.

But fun is subjective.  Fun is up to you.  I asked Dr. Singh (my botany/microbiology professor in college) how he adjusted to an arranged marriage. He told me something I have always carried with me.  “Chris, you have to decide, DECIDE to love that person every morning.  Even outside of an arranged marriage that’s true.”  Please allow me to twist that back to the topic.  Each day I have to decide to embrace the work before me.  In fact, I usually plan out my day well in advance and finalize plans in the minutes between waking up and getting up by listing the major goals.

Yesterday I moved some catfish to the pond (aquaponics hasn’t cycled yet), fed, watered and moved the broilers, fed the pigs then worked for my employer till noon.  At lunch I hauled a load of manure after cleaning out the stalls.  After work in the afternoon I went to pick up feed at the mill with my dad then came home to build fence for the cows.  The kids had been gone all day and were tired as the sun was setting and really didn’t want to help dad build fence.  I’m happy to slog through it but it’s my dream, not theirs.  Not yet anyway.

What am I teaching my children?  How can I encourage them to embrace my dreams?  to find the fun in the tasks I set before them?  How can I lead them to my vision without convincing them I am insane?

Just as Dr. Singh told me I had to decide to love my wife every morning, I have to make positive decisions about my kids too.  They are kids after all.  It can’t all be about work, no matter how fun the work is.  They need time to play.  They need opportunities to explore.  They need time to fail.  And I need to be right there.  We make tipis, we make cardboard haunted houses, we make paper halloween masks.  We listen to silly songs, read Hank the Cowdog books.  We go swimming when it’s cold, all of us standing at the edge of the pond shivering and daring each other to go first.  Take a moment in your work day to just do something fun, even if there are no kids in your life.  Skip instead of walk somewhere.  Yes, you’ll look silly.  Maybe you’ll make somebody laugh.  Laugh too.

Those things have to be in my planner.  There is so much work on the farm (the no fun, workey kind of work) that I have to be purposeful about planning activities that include the kids.  I don’t want to farm alone.  This has to be a multi-generational deal and I have to be training my replacements.

But it’s not all sunshine and roses.  I’m really not very good at this parenting thing, though I excel at work.  I mean, I’m a machine.  I can work and just keep working.  But I get a little jittery sitting still for too long having tea or playing legos.  It’s also difficult for me to manage my reactions when a little helper tangles up a spool of electric fence as darkness swallows us in the pasture.  I have to remember that failure is part of learning.  They make mistakes, we take a moment to talk about it and I tread carefully so I don’t crush them.  I make mistakes and I hope they will continue to decide to love me anyway.

Am I having fun farming?  Yes.  Am I having fun parenting?  I have decided the answer is yes.  And I have to positively decide to play through my day.  My kids won’t stick with it otherwise.  What’s the fun of doing this without my kids?

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Too Much Vacation

I’m on vacation right now.  I’m not in Florida with my toes in the sand.  I’m neck-deep in work.  No time to read.  No time to write.  I just work.  It’s awesome.

I spent the last 3 days running my sawmill.  We cut and stacked 2,000 board feet of oak and walnut for a customer.

 

This morning I built fence, milked, fed, mucked, cleaned the kitchen, gardened and trimmed goat hooves.  It’s now 10:30.

Here’s a summary of other stuff happening around the place.  Our rabbits are multiplying.

The catfish are…well, catfishing it up.  The bell siphons were a bit tricky at first.  More on that some other time.

And I hauled another load of horse manure to the garden.  My garden is on a slight North-facing slope.  I may have to bury the Georgia wall to get it levelish.

Well, that’s all I can do for now.  We’re out of feed for the broilers and a bit low on groceries.  Gotta do something about that.  Come see us.  Stuff is changing.

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Hard Working Children

I have to stop here for just a moment to say how proud I am of my children.  This is the third year we have been processing chickens.  The first year, my then 9 year old son stepped up to the plate and hit a home run.  He immediately learned to eviscerate.  Further, he started teaching adults who came to see what was going on.

Last year, 3 of my children decided they could help pick feathers but none of them really stuck with it.  This year, each of them stuck with it for every stinking bird.  The youngest said, “Dad, we just have to bite the bullet”.  Indeed.

We do not force our kids to participate.  It’s kinda gross and we are taking a life.  If they don’t want to participate we don’t push.  They are all out there voluntarily so we try to find fun things to do together.  For instance, when we kill the last bird we all stop to do the chicken dance.  Good times.

I’m so proud of my kids.

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My great, great uncle

This is my great, great uncle Dick (in 1896 or 1897).

This is the house that my great, great uncle Dick built in 1912.

These are the children who lay in the house my great, great uncle Dick built in 1912.

This is the field that surrounds
the children who lay in the house that my great, great uncle Dick built in 1912.

You see where I’m going with this?

Thanks Great, Great Uncle Dick.  Happy 100th birthday, house.

(Forgive me for using such dated pictures.  I hate to tell you how long ago I wrote this post…)

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Apples and Raindrops

Let’s start with the apples.  Wife took the kids to pick up apples at Aunt Marion’s house (sometimes the kids get confused and call her grandma aunt marion or even Maid Marion…lol). 

They filled three bags, barely making a dent in the supply.  Aunt Marion filled two buckets with apples that were good enough for applesauce.  Please notice the top of the tree broken and laying on the ground.  Yup.  She didn’t let me prune that tree.  Maybe this winter…

Kids had a ball.  Aunt Marion refuses to slow down.  She was convinced my 7 year old son couldn’t lift the bucket of apples.  Wife was convinced Aunt Marion couldn’t lift the bucket of apples…wheezing as she was.  It was a hot morning but everybody worked hard.  The pigs were pleased with the fruit of their labor.

Then…wait for it…..wait for it……IT RAINED!

It rained and rained and rained.  Four and a half inches in 2 hours!  The pond filled up and there were even puddles in the driveway!  But nothing comes without a cost.  It cost us our computer and our phones.  Lightning struck the phone line outside of our home somewhere and our DSL modem sparked inside the house.  Though the hardware checks out I can’t get the PC to boot.  I’d say that’s a fair trade for a full pond.  Oh, and the roof leaks!  Isn’t it wonderful?!?!?  Merry Christmas Mr. Potter!

Look for before/after pictures of the pond on another blog post if I can ever get my PC to boot up again…