We wanted to do a piece on someone who farms in some capacity, perhaps because it's a part of all of our suburban daydreams to work with our hands, grow our own food, and flip the bird to the business, workaday, lifestyle.
Of course in those fantasies we never think about how much work keeping a farm would be. I'm sure Holmes could more than fill us in on the back breaking labor that goes into it (I seem to remember something about a chainsaw in one of his posts).
But with Holmes not here we were left with a Cat named Charlie Sigler who is a computer engineer who also runs a small family farm in Benjamin UT. Cool guy. It was really nice of him to let us hang out at his farm for a morning.
Jed shot this one as well. Enjoy!
Friday, February 11, 2011
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I would retitle this post "This Could Be Holmes" because I'm not where he is yet. What a cool guy. It's encouraging to see the end product of A LOT of hard work. I'm sort of at the front end of this process so it's nice to see someone who made it happen.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of back breaking labor: I view it as my gym membership. I get exercise and when it's done I have something to show for my labor--hopefully something that pays for itself over time and even makes a little bit of money. The hardest part of my farm right now is that I don't have all of the tools I need (read barn and tractor with a front end loader) to do everything I want right now. So, a lot of the work is harder than it would be if I had the facilities and machines. I don't mind though because my philosophy is to cash flow my farm rather than taking on debt for something that is hard to make money on. (And I have a retired neighbor who has offered to help out with his tractor anytime. That's a blessing right there.)
I totally agree with what he said about responsibility for animals. Once you get animals, you HAVE to take care of them no matter what else is going on in your life or what the weather is like. Even if it's subzero with a foot of snow outside. You can't neglect them for a day or two. That's the tough choice--there's no half commitment. Do you want to be tied down or not? If you really love it then you don't feel tied down, it just becomes part of the rhythm of your life. In fact, you miss it when it is taken away. After our first group of chickens got killed or maimed by neighbor dogs we didn't have chickens for a couple of months and wifey and I both felt like something was missing from our family.
There was a family in my ward that sold their place, quit a productive job (in the middle of a recession, no less), and moved to a cheap place on some land in another state because they wanted to just farm. They didn't even last a year before abandoning the place and moving on. I was not suprised because they had no idea of what they were trying to do (they were shocked, shocked! when the goats someone gave them had parasites and got sick because they never dewormed them).
ReplyDeleteSteve, that sounds about how I would do. We're sort of a 'have a garden' and if we're REALLY living the dream 'have a few chickens' type of family. We live in an apartment for the time being, so even a front yard would be nice.
ReplyDeleteCool video. I'm in Tony's category. If I can get a couple of meals a year out of a garden, I'm going to be happy.
ReplyDeleteJust since I'm a pedantic nerd, though: software engineer /= computer engineer. They're totally different things.
Yeah, after Aaron pointed that one out I think it's best we just dissolve this blog and all go our separate ways.
ReplyDelete