Sailor’s Small Farm left a quick comment on a recent post.

Very good plan, teaching your kids to find the awesome. I’ve had mixed success with it, and looking back can see where I’d change quite a few things I did or didn’t do. They are helpful and proficient around here – I mean, I left 250 chickens in three stages of development and 2 pigs in their capable hands for two days and left the country. They were happy to be entrusted with the whole shebang. But neither of them wants that kind of work for the long term. They want the awesome without the grunt. Eat ethically raised meat? Absolutely. Move broiler shelters every day for 4 weeks? Not so much. Home grown veg? Love it! Dig six rows of potatoes? Later.

Let’s look at things from a child’s perspective. After all, it was a mere (hmmmfannmum) years ago that I myself was a child. I have some memory of it. At 10 I wanted to build airplanes and spaceships with Lego. I was also exercising and training daily to help Mario save the Princess and to lead Link to his destiny with Ganon. I was paid to cut the grass for dad, I shoveled snow from as many driveways as I could to make extra cash and spent whole summers at the city pool. My dad did a little carpentry work here and there around the house and I would help…ish. He would mechanic on our vehicles and I would be underfoot.

Let’s overlay that onto my 10 year old son. He wants to build Lego airplanes and spaceships. Link and Mario have been replaced with other characters but if he could, he would train daily. He cuts a little grass and looks for odd jobs. Given his choice he would go fishing at the pond every minute of every day. I do a little work around the farm and he…well…helps. Sometimes he’s underfoot but I’m always glad to have him around.

But when it’s time to kill chickens he’s on the swing set. I think killing chickens is at least as cool as racing Bowser. Maybe even cooler. Doesn’t he know that?

It appears that I’m operating from the wrong perspective again. Let’s change my child’s point of view. Dad has a lot of jobs. What does dad do and why?

• Dad works on the farm. Works. Lift heavy bags, shovel smelly things, drive dangerous tractors, felling big, thorny trees and cows kick when you milk and dad is rewarded by maybe making the farm payment and delicious cream for his morning coffee.
• Dad works in the city. Sits at a desk and gets paid enough money to buy our family the things we need plus Legos…plus pays for the farm.
• Dad works in Florida. Stands in front of a classroom and makes enough money to pay for a modest family vacation.
• Dad does extra work on the side at his computer…whatever it is that he does he can, apparently, do it on the internet.

Any reasonable person would look at their needs and decide how best to meet their needs. My kids need legos, books and a warm house.

Q: What is the best way for me to provide these things?
A: Go to the city and sit at a desk.

That’s why the farm isn’t awesome.

It won’t be long and the farm will be free of thorny things. The perimeter fence will be in good repair. Our marketing reach will be well established. Our cattle herd will thrive on grass alone. The farm will generate sufficient revenue to support our modest needs. It won’t be long.

But while our children are young and impressionable it’s all work all the time…plus driving lessons.

But while they are young the only thing they think they need me to do is to pay for a house and buy legos.

So what, exactly is the problem I’m trying to solve?

One goal here is to establish in my children’s minds that riches have a high utility but wealth is the real goal…if we continue with our definition of riches as money and wealth as time. We certainly want to be wealthy enough to pursue our own productive interests. We certainly want to reinforce that money can be useful but more money is not, in itself, a worthy goal. But at the same time we acknowledge that a little more money would sure be handy.

I’m still not getting there. Why the farm? We see the farm as the future source of our family wealth. My job is our present income, the farm is the future security. The future home. The place we recline in the grass reading a book with the cows cropping nearby. We explore. We climb. We run. We build fires and roast hot dogs. The place we hide when the world has turned against us. The place we return to celebrate, to recover, to rest. Working with percentages, nobody else has this anything like this. That’s the problem we’re trying to solve. We hope to help our kids to recognize the problem and encourage them to support our proposed solution. Or, heck, maybe they will show us the error in our thinking.

My jobs in town generate the cash required to just keep our heads above water. But only just. We don’t want our heads just above water. We want a cushion of security. We want to produce…to create…provide…we have this crazy idea that we can make the world a little better and eat well at the same time. By choosing not to spray our apples we don’t have to eat apple sprays. We also preserve the vast majority of insects that are not interested in apples but are affected by insect sprays. Those insects prey on our garden pests and help to feed our bird population. The more bugs we have the more manure we put down. The more health we build into our landscape. The less topsoil I send down the river. The more resilience and productive capacity we retain here on the farm and all because we didn’t spray an apple tree.

A series of small choices, made over a number of years, cascade into big results. That morning doughnut multiplied by 10 years adds up on your belly. I could buy that Lego set, that video game or that soda but what else could we do with that money? What if we saved up and bought a heifer instead?

We have to walk out to our imaginary heifer’s pasture twice daily to make sure she has everything she needs and is where we expect her to be. Our investment in cattle is also an investment in our health. If things go as planned, that heifer will give us a calf next spring. We could either sell the bull calf and recoup a portion of our original investment or retain a heifer calf and continue our compounding efforts. Let’s pretend it’s a heifer. Now we are managing two animals for every walk out to the pasture. More bang for the walk. The next spring there will be three animals. The year after that, 5. Then, possibly, 8.

Assuming we have thrown heifers all along or that we have sold our steers to buy additional heifers, our original investment has grown from one heifer to eight animals in five years or a 160% annual return on our investment. Beyond the increase, we have been outside building fence, walking, enjoying the fresh air. We have probably handled hay in some way or otherwise lifted heavy things. And at the end of it all there is a large cut of beef, entirely grass raised with a delicious rind of fat on one edge. Food that nourishes us as we entertain guests with tales of investments and adventures in the pasture, celebrating the animal we knew well.

Certainly I have to expense the land we used to graze the animals but at this point, here in Illinois, I could get by with the above 8 cows on 10 acres. I may have to buy a little hay but we’re talking a ridiculous maximum of $100,000 for land when the median home value in the US is $175k. Heck, you could buy 10 acres in Shropshire for £55k. You may have to live in a tent or remodel a drafty old farm house but, you know, it might be fun.

Compare that to a video game.

No really. Let’s compare it. I’m something of an authority on this topic. The video game won’t reproduce. The video game won’t get sick or get into the road and cause a car accident. A video game won’t poop in your neighbor’s front yard. It also goes down in value almost exponentially after purchase. We could play the video game with our guests and regale them with wild tales of high scores as we sit on our ample seats, draped in pale, plump, soft skin untouched by the sun or wind but we would have to order in pizza.

So without making my children into boring workaholics (like me) I need to show them the awesome of the farm. I need to show them that we can heal the landscape, eat well, produce a surplus for the benefit of our community and stay trim and healthy by making boring choices early on. We could buy fun things now. Or we could look forward to the day when, suddenly and without warning, we wake up to realize we no longer have to work our city jobs. Our farm production more than meets our obligations. We now have more time to manage things here. We now have more time to read and play tag. We now have true wealth.

Time is the key ingredient. Keeping cattle is anything but boring but building a herd, as with any investment, takes time, especially if you don’t have any money to begin with. That’s where we are. That’s why I work in town. We know where we are going. We know how to get there. We want you in the picture.

Will the kids go there with us or will they just run from the work when the opportunity arises? In large part, that depends on me.

I recently wondered what it would be like to fully stock and graze the entire state of Illinois. In short, I would have 55 million hooved animals covering 400 square miles each day, followed by 110 million laying hens. We also included plans to plant millions of fruit and nut trees and leave room for people to live their lives and pursue their own interests. Surely some of them would be beekeepers.

But let’s scale it back. Let’s put my money where my mouth is. I have cows and chickens. I have walnut trees, oak trees, hickory trees, black locust trees. We are planting apples and cherries and plums and hazels and chestnuts. But we aren’t covering the entire 60 acre farm.

To cover the farm I would need 27 cows. Remember, I have to leave an acre per person out of production for roads, buildings, gardens and recreational area so I only have 54 acres available for agricultural activities. I suggested each cow/calf pair needs two acres in Illinois so I need 27 cows. Also 108 ewes and 270 laying hens. Those animals are not here yet. I’m not ready for the marketing, I haven’t built the equity and I don’t have the education required to manage them. I mean, on that scale I would be producing something on the order of 24 calves, 200 lambs and 5000 dozen eggs. Maybe throw in a couple hundred pigs on deep bedding too. That’s just the picture Henderson painted in The Farming Ladder…though he had 100 birds per acre.

I’m casting vision I really can’t see. It’s too far out.

I mean, it was fun to imagine the numbers involved in managing 37 million acres but I have my hands full managing 60 acres. It’s worse than just peddling all that production. I have to pull white snakeroot where it grows. I have to cut firewood, build fence, keep the tin nailed to the barn roof and participate in family stuff.

And we aren’t even dealing with the 70 or so walnut trees that have dropped their walnuts this fall. How many have I picked up? Zero. Aunt Marian’s three apple trees proved more than my match. What would I do if I planted 8 apple trees on every acre? How about 20 on every acre?

If I can’t handle the abundance of a mere 60 acres what chance do we stand trying to scale that up to the whole state?

What I need is some division of labor. I need somebody who cares about apples to pick and deal with the apples. I need somebody who cares about walnuts and somebody who cares about sawing lumber and somebody who wants to sell product and just leave me alone to watch my livestock graze in the afternoon sun.

That would have to happen on a grand scale. That would have to happen on the farm scale. That will have to happen on the family scale.

Family scale is where things usually break down on the farm. Kids get tired. Are they valued members of the team or are they slave labor? Are we living out their vision or mine? Whose dreams are coming true here? Who is taking risks and being rewarded? Where is the awesome?

It can’t all be about cows and sheep and electric fence and work, work, work. Work stinks. Nobody wants to work. But you know what is fun? Making the cows happy. Harvesting fruit from trees you planted with your own hands. Opening the chicken coups in the morning under a blood moon lunar eclipse.

That’s not work. That’s awesome…to me anyway. What do each of my kids think is awesome? If my kids can learn to experience the awesome on the farm, maybe I can help them buy another 60 acres of their own…set them up with a whole generation of stock from our own farm too. Send them with 13 heifers, 100 ewe lambs, a dozen or so gilts and as many hatching eggs and walnuts and chestnuts and hazels as they want. Same with my grandchildren…and thus, through the course of time, we will stock and graze the entire State of Illinois!

I don’t have 27 cows, 108 ewes and 270 chickens on 54 acres. I don’t have 200 trees per acre either. It will happen and it will happen soon but it can’t happen yet. I have to bring the awesome to a new generation first. I still have my town job so we can afford not to maximize our production…so we can afford to learn…so we can afford to teach our children to find the awesome. We can farm the whole farm after I teach my children to love it here.

I don’t want to farm alone.

We were gone. Both of us. Gone. Away from the farm. Kids were with grandparents.

Weird. 3 weird days. Lonely. I strangely missed doing chores as I studied in my hotel room.

It took a bit of planning, a bit of negotiation, a little fiddling with things to make it a success but it was a success. A complete success. Our older kids, aged 14 (almost) and 12, with help from grandpa (age withheld), ran the farm for three days while I was working and Julie was goofing off in Florida.

So what has to happen when we are gone?

Well? Everything.

Chickens need to be opened in the morning and closed in the evening. Ideally, eggs are gathered at 11 and again at 3 and the drinker is filled at those times too.

Pigs don’t need much, just top off the feeder and make sure the water is available. Bedding is always in style but they will be fine for 3 days.

Cows need to be moved. Every. Day. The forecast was calling for cooler days so I set up a long strip on the clover field, segmented it with cross fences like a long ladder and left instructions to move the cows in the afternoon when the clover was warm and dry. Unfortunately it got hot so we had to open up some back fence to allow the cows access to shade. Water is automatic, just have to check it. The water trough is much more likely to overflow than to go dry so it is important to check to see if the cows have churned the area around the water into a muddy mess. If so, move the water. That proved to be more work than can be handled at age 13. Otherwise, no big deal.

Dairy is a different thing altogether. We were only gone for three days. Three days. You with me? Three days. Tuesday Julie left the calves with the cows. All you can eat. Wednesday the kids didn’t milk. This has its drawbacks and limitations, not the least of which is the concern that the calves will overeat. But one day shouldn’t be cause for concern…especially since the calves are big enough to wean. Wednesday afternoon it was back to normal schedule. At 3, when you get the eggs and water the chickens and move the shorthorns, find the dairy calves (they ignore the fence) and lock them up at the barn. Good luck. Thursday morning they had a bit of a rodeo milking the cows but they got the job done. First they forgot the water to wash the udder. Then they forgot the rubber ring for the milker. But all went well and they got the normal amount of milk. They didn’t milk again on Friday but separated the calves so we could milk Saturday morning. No ill-effects. No big whoop.

But what if the pigs get out? Or a cow? Or the bull?!?!? What then?

I don’t know. Call the pigs and put new temporary lanes up to return the cows to their pastures. But it didn’t happen.

Not only are we proud of our kids for doing such a great job, we got some feedback from dad on how to make things better. Everything from managing the water for the birds to concentrate ration changes for the milk cows. We are pretty intentional about not feeding for increased milk production as we value the longevity of the cows and calves over the volume of (otherwise worthless) milk produced but dad wants to see a little more fat on the cows. I do too. Dad also pointed out that my new layer flock is a little heavy on roosters. Strange because I bought all pullets.

With a little planning, a little training and a couple of crossed fingers, everything worked well. The kids were tired but it was nice that Julie and I got away for a little bit together.

I should also add that it was Julie who lined most of this up. I left directly after the funeral to begin school on Sunday morning. Julie was home washing eggs and preparing the kids and grandpa for the chores until she flew out Wednesday morning. This was a total team effort. I am both proud and thankful.

Oh, the things I don’t know about my great aunt. I was looking at magazines on her table recently and asked her how her parents spelled her name…her mail was addressed to Marian and to Marion and I have written both on the blog. I don’t think she gave me an answer, just a laugh. It must not have mattered to her.

We asked her about her uncle French…was “French” a common name 100 years ago? “No” she said, “I only knew one other person named French. That was French Fry.” We all started laughing. It took her a minute then she realized why we were laughing and we realized she wasn’t making a joke. She said, “I never thought about that before” and laughed with us. I still think that’s funny.

Aunt Marian recently celebrated her 95th birthday.

She passed away on Wednesday.

When I was a kid Aunt Marian was just some lady who lived near Grandma and Grandpa’s and made me itchy clothes. I love pumpkin pie but she didn’t make pumpkin pie. She made squash pie. Squash pie? SQUASH PIE? Mom makes pumpkin pie from real pumpkins out of a can. Now that’s pumpkin pie!

But as I grew I learned more about her and gained a tremendous amount of respect for her. In the last few years I noticed she only slept when she was driving. Otherwise she was working. She made dresses for all of the girls at Christmas and Easter. I think I broke her of making boy clothes. She always gave me blue dress socks at Christmas. I don’t wear blue dress socks. I think she had a sense of humor. She somehow managed to keep her flowers growing, her garden in, her lawn mowed and her apples canned. I can’t do even one of those things. She volunteered at the local food pantry. She made grape pies for the fish fry. She helped at church functions. She kept her thistles chopped. She loved us.

Grandpa and Aunt Marian had an older brother named Billy. Billy was mentally handicapped (hydrocephalus). From what I have put together, Aunt Marian kept Billy with her when she was out picking berries and she had to pick 100 quarts of raspberries every summer. Imagine that. Beating through the brush to pick 25 gallons of raspberries, stabbed by the vines, tromping through the poison ivy, brother in tow and probably horses cropping grass nearby. And not only that she had to milk the cows.

She was in our kitchen about a year ago and saw our milking machine. She said, “What do you need that for? You only have two cows.” What response can you give to such a question? She continued, “I milked 14 by hand.” But it’s worst than that. She milked 14 twice each day by hand. We only milk in the morning. Same barn. Same stanchions. Jersey cows grazing the same places where her Jersey and Guernsey cows grazed. We don’t even churn the butter. We just skim off the cream for our coffee. How lazy are we?

She made time in her schedule to tell us a little about milking. She said her father offered to pay her a nickel if she could milk out one cow before he finished the rest. It took her 5 years to earn that nickel. She also told me that she would milk while grandpa was still in bed. That sounds like something you would hear a sibling say.

But I I have no doubt that she milked 14 cows and tromped through the brush picking berries with her older brother in tow. And maintained the orchard. And made clothes. And rode her horse to school. And worked in a doctors’ office for years. And what else? What else don’t we know about her?

Did you know she made my sister’s wedding dress? She made Julie’s wedding dress too. And several others. Not just the dresses for all of her great-great nieces each year, she made stuff out of the blue. I hate to think of the time she spent asleep at the wheel on her way to Springfield to buy fabric but dresses were made somehow. Maybe elves helped her at night.

This year somebody else will have to make the corned beef and cabbage. Somebody else will have to bake the pumpkin roll for the church potluck. I doubt if anybody will pick up the baton and make 30+ dresses for Christmas. Apparently I’m not up to the task of making applesauce out of 40 bushels of apples. Who will work at the food pantry? Who will make grape pies? Who will buy me blue dress socks?

I miss her already. She was a fine example of love and sacrifice and she was never intimidated by hard work. We are less one hero. If you would like to share a story about Aunt Marian please post it in comments below. I would love to hear it.

Aunt Marian’s Grape Pie (From the Chism Family Heirloom Cookbook (comment if you are interested in a copy.)

Yesterday I shared that I love owning and toiling over the farm. Though sometimes frustrating, I derive a measurable satisfaction from the work.

But have you met my wife?

Julie is loving. Supportive. Encouraging. But not physically strong.

Much of the work in the early stages of our farm requires strength and plenty of it. Lift this, load that, lug it over there. Stack wood, carry feed sacks, load up scrap metal, stack hay, wrestle this piglet. It feels great to be so physically exhausted. I can fall asleep almost instantly…anywhere (sorry pastor Mark!).

She doesn’t love that. She loves me but she doesn’t love all of the work.

So I try to accommodate her needs. Some of today’s post is exaggerated to make the point but some of it is very real. Please don’t comment that I’m a jerk. I can be a jerk at times. But most of the time I’m a pretty normal guy. You know…a jerk.

Julie recently made a list of her top 15 things that are free and her top 15 things that cost money. Stop reading now and go make that list. Really. Stop. Write down 15 things that you treasure that are free. Now write down 15 that cost money.

…

Done? Good. Post some of your 15’s in comments. Come on. Hundreds of people will read this. SOMEBODY can share a few things they enjoy. May as well be you.

My top 15 include piglets. Her top 15 (of both categories somehow) include chocolate. I love cutting firewood and watching the forest transition from thorny weed trees to dominant, climax hardwoods. She likes the warm fireplace in the winter. I enjoy watching the cows graze and stomp the pasture as we manage toward fertility and diversity. She likes to hold hands as we walk through the pasture. I want to make the chickens happy. She wants to talk to the egg customers.

Our goals are not mutually exclusive but they are not entirely aligned either. They are complimentary. Well, some of the time. Other times?

I want a clean house, well-behaved children, a weed-free garden and no toys on the floor. She does too. It’s unanimous so why doesn’t it get done? What does she do all day? I get up early, care for the critters, solve computer puzzles all day and come home to play farmer some more. What does she do all day? Why aren’t the dishes done? She has four helpers! It only takes a few minutes to wash the dishes! I know, I DO A LOT OF DISHES!

These aren’t productive thoughts to verbalize in argument conversation with your wife.

Julie shared her top 15(s) with me this past weekend after yet another …um…discussion(?) about the milk cows that resulted in me selling the cows. (Fast forward a few days, we haven’t sold the cows. I found a willing buyer within 3 minutes but cooler heads prevailed. For now.) You know what is NOT in Julie’s top 15? Milking the cows.

How can she feel that way? I mean, what is her problem!?!? Milking the cows is totally in my top 15.

No. She wants to hold hands as we walk in the pasture and eat chocolate and buy art supplies and journal her thoughts and …I don’t know…do some other girl stuff. I want to hold a rusty bit of baling wire in my teeth as I save the world once again with a miraculous repair like my super-hero dad. Hold hands? I guess but, “Hold hands? In the pasture?! Baby, we don’t have to go to the pasture to hold hands. Anyway, I gotta collect the eggs. Maybe you can hold my hand while I walk down to the birdies. But can you wear your purple rubber boots? I need to cross the creek and count the cows. I should probably build a little fence while I am down there. And I need to move the water trough too.” And just like that we are no longer holding hands as we stroll through the pasture to collect a basket full of eggs. We are working. Like workey-work. Baling wire in your teeth, cow manure on your jeans, broken fingernail, grunt and smell and save the world kind of work. The kind of work that adds to the already massive pile dirty laundry when you come in from doing chores and have to take a shower because the dog is the only one who likes your smell. And, by the way, the dirty laundry has to be put away when it is cleaned. You know, that chore that isn’t getting done as is evidenced by the baskets full of clean laundry sitting on the bed so we have to deal with them before going to sleep but we actually just carry the baskets to the living room every night because we are so tired from gathering eggs, building fence, moving water troughs and holding hands.

Well, something like that anyway.

So she doesn’t want to milk the cows. It’s not on her list.

So I am milking the cows. It is on my list. And it frees up time in her day to accomplish more of the stuff she wants to do.

And it is important that she have time in her day to explore things she is passionate about…and that I support her in those things. So the dishes don’t get washed after every meal. So there is clean laundry on the bed. So sometimes I stop working and just hold her hand in the pasture. Sometimes we all pile in the car and go to the library. Or to visit family. I separate the jobs that I want to do from the jobs I need to do, we do what we have to and leave the rest for later so we can all play a board game together. Same reason the house isn’t completely spotless sometimes. She had more important stuff to do. Same reason there isn’t a new blog post every day.

Sometimes it is important to her that she help me stack firewood. Sometimes it is important to me that we hold hands in the pasture while eating a chocolate bar and doing nothing else. I have to meet her where she is…to invest in her. To put a deposit in her love account.

All of this seems like common sense…and it is. But you forget that when it’s hot and the garden is submerged under a sea of weeds and the cows are out and the kids are grouchy and you can’t see the kitchen counter and things, generally, could be going better. But that’s life…the life we share. She loves me and likes the farm. I should probably adopt her style of thinking.

And I don’t know what else you could want in a free blog post. This is real life. I’m not here to pick at scabs for an audience. I’m also not here to tell you that farming is easy and the best way to make the world a better place is to buy a $250 American Guinea Hog that you butcher at 60 pounds after 6 months and harvest 30 pounds of meat for $10/pound. I keep it real. This is where I am today. Julie and I are fine. Farming is hard. Marriage is hard. Getting older is hard. But I rather enjoy farming and getting older with my best friend. It isn’t always easy but we’ll tough it out. And I hope you will too.

There are days of stress. Days when things don’t go well. For example, cows only get out during a thunderstorm.

But I love it. Every minute of it. It’s just great.

I often write about how greatly we underestimated the challenge of living here because I want to caution readers who haven’t made the leap yet. It’s a lot of work. A lot of hard work. A lot of hard, dirty, sweaty, hot, broken fingernail, stained hands, peeling callous, rip in your jeans, leaky rubber boot, blood mixing with manure and dirt kind of work.

But I love it.

The real challenge for me, as we often relate to our readers, is that I forget that Julie doesn’t always love it as much as I do. And that I love Julie more than I love the farm. (And not just because she is hot.)

Julie liked milking the cows for about two months. Then Julie just milked the cows for another two months, sometimes dragging her feet. Tears were shed. Words were said. So now I’m milking the cows. She has had enough.

And who can blame her? It’s not a lot of fun being hit in the face with a cow tail for a few minutes each morning or smashed between them when they lean against each other in the stanchions.

But I love it.

20 minutes before sunrise…

This morning I let the chickens out into a new area then went to count the cows. The chickens ran and hunted and scratched in the early morning light. I would almost say they played but they were too serious about their work to “play”. They were working. But I think they were enjoying their work.

I enjoy my work.

Even when I’m walking the cows out of the neighbor’s bean field as a thunderstorm begins late at night.

Some of this thinking dovetails with a comment dad left on the blog a few years ago:

Just gotta say, I love putting up hay! I love cutting it, raking it, baling it, riding the wagon or driving the tractor, seeing a wagon full of well cured hay, putting it in the barn, going in the hay mow and smelling summer all winter, remembering which cutting and which field a bale came off of, and planning how I can put up quality hay in the future. I even love trying to outthink nature to get it put up.

Each morning I have to be finished milking by 7 so I can get to my desk on time. Also, pigs have to be fed, both flocks of chickens cared for, cows counted, self showered, eggs packed and children hugged. It’s hard to get it all done but I love it. Thank God for coffee. Gotta go.