I wrote about our home schooling philosophy a bit last week here, here and here. I want to wrap it up today. Well, mostly. I have a few other thoughts for extra-credit that I may publish soon.

The most important thing is the most important thing. Right? So what is it? What is the most important thing we can do in preparing the next generation?

Get out of the way.

Look how easy it is.

But it’s not that easy. Getting out of the way means releasing control. Shutting your mouth. Allowing mistakes to happen. Being supportive but not controlling. Drying a lot of tears when mistakes happen. And mistakes will happen along the way to success.

Let’s look at two possible futures together. The base assumptions are that I have a herd of cattle generating a positive cash flow for the farm and a child who is interested in taking over.

Child (boy or girl): “Dad, I’m anxious to find my place on the farm. The part that interests me most are the cattle. In fact, I have a few ideas in mind that could really push the ecology, the genetics and the profit margins forward. Is there room for me to explore these ideas?”

There are two paths before me. I could get out of the way or I could be an obstruction to my child’s progress. Let’s be an obstruction:

Me: “You know, I’m glad you want to find a place on the farm. Your mother and I have prayed for a long time that we would be able to make room for you here BUT…I have spent X years building that herd! We are finally to a point where I can say our shorthorns are relatively uniform and well-adapted to our environment. My gosh! those cows cost us a fortune! And you want to just step in after all the work I’ve done and expect me to start some new business to support myself? Further, you are going to change what I have worked all these years for in favor of your crazy new ideas?”

Obviously we want our kids to make their home near to us…here on the farm if possible. That’s going to require some planning between all of us and a measure of sacrifice. I’m going to have to release control, reserve judgement and allow things to go new directions. If I won’t do that…well, why would my kids stick around? And why would they want to buy me out and argue with me about control of the farm when it would be simpler and less emotional to just go buy a farm of their own?

So I have to get out of the way. I have to plan for this and plant the seeds now. At some point, sooner than I would like, my children and I will have this conversation. They will be ready to manage the farm, turning to me for advice but making decisions on their own. I’ll be the janitor.

To wrap up the home school theme of this series, the same thing has to happen with our children’s education. At some point, sooner than I would like, the kids will direct their own learning. We work through several phases of learning with our children. At first we work to show them love and give them a frame of reference for the world they are discovering. Simple concepts, lots of time: You are loved. There is right and wrong. There is truth. You were created and were created for a purpose. Work is valued as is your contribution. The world is an interesting place. While teaching these things we spend large quantities of time playing games, reading aloud and exploring the world together. This progresses through learning a broad array of information and skills largely at the student’s pace…everything from algebra to housework to positive interactions with others until they are fully-trained young adults. Around ages 13-15 we let go of the reins and allow each student to sort of major in a topic. Note the part about letting go of the reins. Our 13 or 14 year old child has a strong foundation of education and necessary life skills and is able to pursue their educational passions. We let go early so college, if attended, won’t be an overwhelming experience…away from home, away from loving guidance. They learn to do it on their own…to discover their own passions. Then, if they choose to go to college, they will have both direction and independence…purpose.

Like the cow thing, the time is coming when I will have to stand aside on education. I’m still around, I’m still able to advise but the direction is chosen by the student. I just have to get out of the way…standing back to watch them stretch their wings…however hard it is for me to do that.

Some of this post is just snippets of discussions that happen around the dinner table…or around the chicken evisceration table. Some of this post is stuff we have formally written out. Most of it hasn’t been spoken of outside of our immediate family. All of it has been prayed over…and hard. Just as I focused on budgeting a few months ago as we prepared to buy the rest of the farm, I am focusing on multi-generational farming now as I’m realizing how big my kids have gotten. If this isn’t your bag I hope you enjoy the pictures. You’ll probably get more posts like this now that Fields of Farmers has arrived in the mail.

Our 11 year old daughter asked me, “Dad, in 50 years when I have lots and lots of children…will you still come out here to help us process chickens?”

Well, I hope I will still be useful when I’m 87…and you are still helping with chickens when you are 61…but I suspect you will hand it to the next generation before then. But, yes, I would like to be out there with my great-grandchildren telling the same stupid jokes.

That’s not what she meant to say. She meant to ask if I would still be out there when I was 50. Bear with her, she was cutting feet and oil glands off of chickens at a rapid pace.

Oh. Well. 13 years from now is much more visible than 50 years from now. Still uncertain but much closer. Yeah. I expect I’ll still be butchering chickens when I’m 50. Will she still be here when she’s 24? What will she be doing? Will she be married? Kids? Will she choose to make her home here? Will she work here?

How can I express my vision of a preferred future without imposing my will on her life? It’s tricky. If you’ll allow, I’ll tell you what we see through the fog and try to do so in a way that doesn’t enslave our children. I have no idea what is really ahead of us but I do have direction. Let’s look that direction together.

5,000 cows.

I know, right? That number has been with me for a long time. I read Julius Ruechel’s book years ago and he suggested that cattle don’t really act like a “mob” until you have 500 head in one group. Then I read about Ian Mitchel-Innes having 6,000 cows in one group, introducing 400 bulls each summer!

How do I get there? It starts where I am. Then it grows. Ultimately I would need to lease around 5,000 acres of good ground. I also need to breed a nativized or adapted herd of cattle that are fertile, can produce with few inputs and, really, don’t ask for much from me. But you know from my posts about budgeting that cattle alone won’t pay the bills. They are a great way to cycle nutrients through the farm but I’ll need an employee (or child or grandchild) for each 1,000 head of cattle. We’ll eat well but will we be profitable? Selling 10 steers/year is doable. Selling 2,500 steers/year as direct retail freezer beef? At some point (I’ll suggest around 150 cows) we transition to commodity production or depend on selling wholesale. It may require a dedicated salesperson. (Do I have enough children?)

But that’s just the beginning. We’re taking the long-term view here. 5,000 cows requires 5,000 acres in Illinois…more elsewhere. That’s a big area on a map. Not as big as some of the ranches in Texas and Oklahoma but big in Illinois terms. I am necessarily counting on a fall in land prices and lease prices (brought on by an increase in interest rates, crushing and cleansing the economy) to make land available for low-cost producers (like me). Can you imagine converting corn ground that sits tilled, empty and idle for 7 months each year into a year-round carbon-sequestering, sunlight-catching, cow-fattening meadow filled with songbirds, bugs and spiders? Rather than produce a mere 200 bushels of corn we could produce 30 tons of hay…but we won’t cut hay. We’ll just let the cow do the work. Grass with roots 15′ deep. Rows of trees planted on contour. Ponds snuggled into every valley…every hollow hydrating the landscape, preventing flooding downstream, Trees, grass and swales working to prevent agricultural runoff…can you imagine enough farmers getting this idea for the the muddy Mississippi to run clear? I can.

But we haven’t started yet! I mean, if we’re talking about 5,000 acres and if each of my 4 kids has 4 kids of their own…we’re going to need more than just beef cattle to keep us all busy and fed. What about dairy? A grass-based dairy herd has to have time to eat each day. You really can’t grow a dairy above 200 head because every step the cow takes to the milking parlor is time the cow is not grazing forage or laying on the hill chewing its cud. Could you grow bigger by building a milking parlor every 200-300 acres so we can milk larger numbers of animals at each milking…rotating through the larger farm over time? Could the farm’s beef cattle prepare better pastures over time for a dairy herd? Could the dairy herd lead the way through the pastures allowing the beef herd to follow and clean up what is left over? Or should I build a herd of thrifty dual-purpose cows? Maybe move South and buy a herd of criollo cows and select for milk production.

But what about pigs? What about chickens? What about lumber? What about a machine shop? What about a hotel? What about an interstellar launch pad? What about ideas my children will generate that I can’t even imagine yet! I don’t know. Each of the things we currently do are small-scale. I can see that any of them will grow beyond what I can handle alone. As these things grow I’ll need my kids to step up and take on a larger portion of it…to continue to grow the operation. The 5,000 cow herd example above is a good illustration of that. Starting with 10 cows today I would be (according to my spreadsheet) 63 before we hit 5,000 cows (bringing in a gross income of something close to $1 million at today’s prices). Moving cows between pastures is not full time work, sorting and working 5,000 cows is more than one man can handle alone. Anyone involved in the farm is going to have to wear multiple hats to be busy full-time. There just have to be enough hats.

But that’s all micro. Let’s go macro.

Does Illinois even want me to be here? Is it in my best interest to ONLY have cattle in one place where one tornado can wipe it all out? …or one new state tax policy (in a state where the pension is only 49% funded (if you are really optimistic about future returns))!

So what do we do? I work in Florida a lot. Can I lease ground in Florida? Yup. That plants our flag in another state. But should we diversify internationally? Wow. I could see a real argument for that. Can I still learn Spanish?

Julie has a long, written story of waking up early one morning with her granddaughter patting her on the face. Three of our children and their families are at home in Chesterfield helping us to wrap up our seasonal work at this farm as we leave it in the farm manager’s hands and the rest of us join the fourth child at the ranch in Chile. Our parents, our kids, their kids all go with us. She wrote this as part of a business class the is taking through a coach. In short, the exercise was to imagine where you hope to be in the near future. Believe it or not, that 60 acre farm with 50 or so cows is attainable even if you are of modest means (as we are). The exercise forced her to imagine, not the trip from A to B, but the trip from A to C. If you’re going to C, you’ll pass B along the way…and keep going. Our immediate goal is to grow our farm to the point that it provides our family’s primary income with my parents in partnership. To stretch that, we hope our kids can earn their income here. To stretch that we may look for multiple locations. To stretch that, we may say goodbye to winters by living in the Southern Hemisphere half of the year. But it all starts here. Feet on the ground…covered in manure…building fence at night…wearing a head lamp in the cold rain.

Tomorrow may be out of reach today…but I’m reaching for it anyway. What are you reaching for?

If it helps, Julie and I sit down together at the first of each year and write down specific and measurable goals. We keep that list in front of us every day to help us stay focused. A new year starts in just under two months. You might start working on your list.

This is the third in a series about how we are home schooling and preparing our children for their futures…the future of the farm. Sustainability is the real issue. If you are just joining us, go back and read parts one and two. I have worked to condense this post down to bare bones but I could go on and on. Forgive me if some of my transitions are …less than smooth.

We, as parents, plant seeds on a daily basis. Some of it is intentional, some of it just scatters about. Genuine comments like “Wow! that’s a great drawing!” or “I really appreciate your help” mean a lot to us as humans and, if you were uncertain, children are humans. Those comments are nurturing but they aren’t seeds. The gift of paper and pencil are the seeds. The opportunity to pitch in where needed is a seed. Comments help that seed to grow or cause it to wither.

Have you ever heard that little voice in your head attempting to defeat you? Let me open up briefly and tell you what I hear on my worst days. I am a worthless, ignorant, arrogant, selfish and generally bad man…hardly a man at all. I talk too much. People don’t really like me, they tolerate me. I just get in the way. All of my ideas are ridiculous. I’m too skinny, too weak, too tall, too short, too ugly, too hairy. Julie made a mistake marrying me. I’m a lousy father. I’m terrible at my job and I’m just faking my way through my career. Somebody is going to find out…and soon. This (whatever crazy idea) will never work. My cows are not getting what they need because I lack the skill to manage grazing correctly. The list goes on but that’s enough.

Is any of that true? I don’t know…probably some of it to some degree. But those thoughts and others like them are on a near-constant loop in my head on rainy days. I’m not seeking a therapy session. I’m seeking real-life examples. Those are weed seeds. And I am not alone in having a mind littered with weed seeds trying to take root. You hear the voices too. My children hear the voices too.

I have to fight that. I can’t let the weed seeds take root in my children’s minds. I have to reinforce to my children that they are good enough. …that they are not an accident. …that their mother and I love them, cherish them and do not regret having them. …that they can make a difference. My children have purpose. They can work to fulfill that purpose and positively impact the world around them…and for generations to come.

To have this opportunity we, as parents, have to work to build personal, intimate, ongoing relationships with our children. With that foundation in place, we can begin to scatter seeds of our own…nurturing those seeds and working to out-compete the weeds.

But there is a tendency to plant weeds of our own. To scatter seeds that work against our children. Have you ever heard or said any of these gems?

“You should go to college because you are too smart to be a farmer.”

“There’s no future here. You’ll never make any money.”

“If you don’t go to college you will never succeed in life.”

“You can’t do that because it would take a lot of money (and you’ll never have any money (cause we don’t have any money (and my ego can’t stand the thought of you succeeding where I have failed))).”

“This country is going to Hell and there’s nothing we can do about it! It’s all the blue team’s fault (or the red team…both the same really). THOSE people have taken away your whole future! We are helpless.”

Don’t send your kids away. Don’t tell them there is no hope. Don’t teach them to be victims. Don’t seed discouragement.

This isn’t a post telling you to boost your child’s self-esteem. That’s a false god. A whole generation of kids who have accomplished nothing believing they can do anything! That lasts until reality strikes. Then they turn to Pfizer for help.

There is a school of thought that we should fill our homes with tools, not toys. Give our children opportunities not entertainment. Those opportunities are the seeds we are looking for. It’s not enough to believe you can. You have to do it. Book learnin’ and believin’ won’t cut it. You have to do it. Kids have to do it. What are your kids interested in? What do they want to do? What chances have they had to really try something? …to really fail at something? …to learn that failure is a beginning? We have tools, stacks of lumber, musical instruments, paper, pencils, crayons, markers, scissors, glue, computers, books on beginning programming, books, books and more books! Pallets for club houses, old tarps for roof tops, messes everywhere! Adventure everywhere! There are rabbits to raise, chicks to play with, chickens to dress, fencing to build, hay to stack, hay to play on, veggies to plant, weed and pick, cows to move and water…all of these are jobs the kids can help with. Look at the opportunities!

We scatter these opportunities in front of our kids hoping they will pick something up. When something sparks their interest we, the parents, have to be attentive and ready to run. An interested learner will consume massive amounts of information in a short period of time. As a mentor you’ll have your hands full trying to keep up…stay ahead…anticipate which direction the learner will go next. That anticipation requires an intimate understanding between learner and mentor.

There are certainly phases of learning where we are just dumping information in front of the children. Phases where nobody is particularly motivated to chase down a specific curiosity. At those times we read aloud, play together or just hang out. I am always surprised how things work out. In a recent rut I borrowed a video game from a friend. That led to pages and pages of artwork and stories about favorite characters by our youngest two. You never know what will allow the opportunity for encouragement and growth.

And those opportunities can grow. Each of the kids has a preferred set of chores. Daughter #1 has her own chickens. She just muscled in and pushed me out of the way. Now she takes care of them. That’s GREAT! That’s what we are after! And each of the kids know that there is a place for them here. That they can succeed here. That I’m laying a simple foundation for all of us to build on. “You can expand the pig operation, you can expand the cattle. You can grow and sell cut flowers. You can supply nurseries with stock. I’ll clean the toilets!” All of these businesses help each other, build on each other and share and expand the customer base. We are planting those seeds now! There is no reason to wait until the kids are 18 to say, “you know…you and your husband could just live right here with us.” By that time our kids will have defined themselves. It may never have occurred to them that we want them here. We say it now. Maybe my oldest will grow up to be an astronaut…or the manager at a Starbucks…or, worse, the president. He may not want to live here. We all have to make our own choices in life. But I’m giving him the opportunity…and I’m giving it now. We will nurture that seed as it grows…even if it doesn’t sprout for 50 years.

That’s how we believe we can achieve sustainability. To get there we have to separate cheap comments like “Good job, Billy” from nurturing comments like “Billy, you did your very best and I’m impressed. I think you have a real talent for …” Nurturing comments are like a ray of sunshine or a cool drink of water. But you can only nurture seeds…seeds you have to plant. We also have to be careful and purposeful about what seeds we plant. What seeds are you planting in your children’s minds?

Next time I’ll share how we attempt to get out of the way of our children’s successes.

This is the second in a quick series about farm sustainability…sustainability gained by preparing the next generation.

I can’t do this forever. I could work for decades but not forever. Also, I can’t do this alone. I could try but without some level of redundancy something is going to fail eventually. So the first step (following the example of all previous generations who made me) was to find a suitable companion and carry on the family tradition. Not only can my wife fill in when I am unavailable but we have kidlets that are coming along as well. Those kidlets are the future of the farm. They are the key to our farm’s sustainability plan. I won’t last forever and I can’t do this alone so we are manufacturing our replacements. And they have to be willing participants in the manufacturing process. If they don’t want the job we have to find someone who does or the farm goes away.

With that in mind I want to talk briefly about what we feel is the first step in training our children: Preparing fertile ground.

This is easy in the garden. Build up soil humus and add nutrients…same as saying to invest time bringing your soil to life. How is this different from the human mind? We have to bring our minds to life. Maybe this doesn’t seem as straightforward as a wheelbarrow of composted horse manure. Maybe that’s because we haven’t bothered to learn what children need. Wow. That’s a disturbing thought…that we have more innate, cultural knowledge of soil health than we have of mental health. [Shiver] Have to think on that a bit.

Our four children may look the same but that’s where the similarities end. Each have their own interests, abilities, dreams and desires. Pushing each child to follow a set pattern of educational development in a one-size-fits-all approach would probably lead to universal failure. I suppose we could medicate and attempt to retrain where the kids don’t fit but that seems inappropriate and cruel. What seems better, at least for us, is to allow the children to direct the learning process. To discover where each child is in the lifelong process of learning and to encourage them to continue. This discovery process requires more of us as parents but…I mean…we didn’t have kids thinking it would be a vacation. Our children are an investment.

I have to make a conscious effort to engage my children in conversation and to pay attention to them as we interact on a daily basis. What does my oldest daughter enjoy? What motivates her? What is her love language? How can I meet her needs personally and, later, in terms of education? Before I can help my daughter to learn she has to trust and respect me and I have to learn who she is. She really doesn’t want to learn the ins and outs of my profession. That’s not her bag. Before she will trust and respect me I have to make an interpersonal connection with her. It’s not enough that I simply claim her as my daughter. It is not enough that I feed and clothe her. I have to be someone she trusts. Someone she loves. Someone she respects.

If I can earn her love, trust and respect I can begin finding out who is really in there. Once I know who she is we can begin to guide her development. If I don’t know her, I can only force her onto a path of my own design…one she may not be excited to follow.

I am quite vocal about my generation’s tendency to take our children to karate, soccer, swimming, scouts, awana, dance, baseball and gymnastics. Nobody has time to even cook, let alone interact, with a schedule like that. Your children will interact with others while you watch…but that’s not what we’re after! Add in homework and football games and PTO and Bible studies…any of these things, taken individually, could help you build intimacy with one or more of your children. But these activities are more commonly used as a daily distraction to “keep the kids busy and out of trouble”. You know, because having kids is such a burden. Isn’t that what you are telling them? “Oh, what a long day at work. Now get your cleats we have to get to the field! I guess we’ll just have to stop for pizza again. I don’t know how we can afford to continue doing this but we’re doing it for you. Get out on that field with your little friends and I’ll go talk to the parents over here. Maybe you and I can talk on Sunday…after church…after the football game…after evening services…before bedtime.” That schedule does not lead to intimacy…it does not build fertile ground. It probably boosts sales of anti-depressants though.

Finding the fertile ground in our children is a matter of taking the time to learn who they are. Investing that time now gives us the chance to plant seeds of opportunity later. This has nothing to do with deciding what cool new curriculum we are using this year. Fertile ground is about relationships. Why would you want to live with someone who doesn’t want to know you? Maybe that’s why kids grow up and leave home.

To be sustainable I need my kids to grow up and stick around. I need fertile ground to plant seeds into. I have to make an emotional investment in my children. Some of that has to do with sticking around on the farm but mostly, it’s about making deliberate choices to be engaged in my children’s lives. I could probably succeed at engaging my children at a soccer game but I fear soccer is mostly a distraction separating us from them. Be engaged.

Next time we’ll talk about planting seeds…you know, discovering interests, passion and purpose in the lives of our children…and in ourselves.