Versatile Blogger Award

A while or so back, two kind blogging friends nominated me for the Versatile Blogger award – independently, bless them, which felt like the honour it is.  The deal with awards like this is that you’re supposed to pass on the favour – it’s a way of giving others an “attaboy/girl”, and at the same time highlighting some blogs that you enjoy that others might not yet have found.

The thing is, I’m not in a super bloggy sort of mood these days, and so the rules of the award made it seem too daunting to bother with.  So I didn’t.  But now I’ve decided that in the interest of tying up loose ends before the end of the year, I should really share some blogs/sites that I find interesting.  Nothing like leaving it to the last minute.  At least one of my regular readers is already in 2014, thanks to being in Japan!

So, the two bloggers who nominated me, and whose blogs are delightful, well written and diverse in subject matter, are: Dark Creek Farm and Wuppenif.  Go check them out.  And thank you so much, ladies; your creativity and energy inspire me.

I haven’t gone back to the nomination posts to see what I’m supposed to do next, but it’s probably something like tell you 7 interesting things you might not already know about me.  I don’t feel terribly interesting these days, but here’s a few:

– I work in a library.  I love my job.  And you should know that public libraries are not “shush” zones anymore.  They are noisy, bright, chattery places, a place to connect with your community, and yes, a place to borrow books, movies, music and downloadables.

– I grew up speaking with an English accent even though I was born and raised in Canada.  For all of my childhood and early adulthood, I was “bilingual” in that I used “English” with my family, and “Canadian” with everyone else.  My brother, six years younger, just spoke Canadian, though he says my name in English even now.  I don’t speak “English” anymore, as our grandparents and parents are all gone now.

– I became horse mad at the young age of 5 (I lived in a city at the time).  I started riding lessons when I was 8 (almost the minute we moved to the farm), got a pony for Christmas (tied under the apple tree outside, in the snow – yes, it was an amazing Christmas) when I was 9, fell off said pony a week later and spent a few days recovering from concussion in hospital, and a month off school convalescing.  Didn’t get back on that pony till June, but rode her and two subsequent ponies/horses daily from then till university.  And have barely ridden since.

– I went to boarding school at age 15. There were good and bad things about those 3 years, but  suffice to say, I would not consider private school for our own daughters, even if we could have afforded it.

-I have a BA in Anthropology.  I have never had occasion to use it, except on my resume.  And I suppose you could say the study of mankind was handy in surviving a very male dominated work environment in the Navy.  Kidding.

– I threw up in Paradise.  Really.  Digby scallops disagreed with me, and Paradise is a tiny hamlet just up the road from Digby, Nova Scotia.  I upchucked behind the church.  I think I was 20.

– I asked for the Cat Stevens version of “Morning Has Broken” to be played at our wedding.  Still my all time favourite.  Maybe I’ll ask for it to be played at my funeral.  I can still play it on the piano (more or less), having first learned it in when I was a teenager. A long time ago.

The other half of this award is to share some interesting blogs with you.  These are mostly not on my blogroll, and different from the list of blogs I shared last year for another award.  I don’t visit all of these regularly, but when the mood strikes.  These span food, farming, permaculture, TEOWAWKI, child raising and more.  I like them for different reasons – sometimes the writing style, sometimes the photography, sometimes the subject matter.  In no particular order then:

Ben Hewitt
Contrary Farmer
Owd Fred (Countryman)
Deliberate Agrarian
Le Petit Canard Farm
Surviving the Suburbs
Casaubon’s Book
Essex Farm
Sugar Mountain Farm
Milkwood
Taranaki Farm

All the best for 2014 to everyone.

Farmer’s Handwarmer

So warm, I could feel it through my glove this morning.

I had 5 more in the pockets of my fleece as well.

I say had.

Farming tip:  never shut a door with your hip when you have eggs in your pocket.

Real Farm

From time to time, someone newly met finds out that I live in a rural area. “It’s so beautiful there, do you have any land?” Oh, yes, about 14 acres. “Wow, so like an actual farm?” Yeah, pretty much – we do both have other jobs, so it’s not as active as some farms, you know. “Really? Like, what do you grow?” Well, we have a laying flock for eggs, we raise broiler chickens every summer, we grow and sell hay…”oh, yeah…sounds nice”. And they move on, disappointment slightly evident in their body language and voice.

But this year when I added “…and pigs” to the list of animals, suddenly everyone’s interest was piqued. “Pigs? Cool!  So it’s a real farm”.

Why do pigs add the cool factor? Why was it not a “real” farm before that? What if what I grew was vegetables? Do carrots have a cool factor? If you’re a veggie producer modestly saying “Oh, I’m a farmer” when engaging in small talk at your spouse’s office party, do you get the “oh, that’s interesting” comment as they slip sideways to find the wine bar? Or do they say “wow, carrots, how fascinating!”?

What if my farm consisted of 2 blue sheds with computerized climate control to keep a couple of thousand broilers comfortable, a different batch every few months? Would I be called a “real” farmer by new acquaintances?  Is the place down the road a “real” farm, that sea of glass and plastic greenhouses, with automated venting and lighting 24/7, used for growing both veggies and flowers?  What about the couple hundred acres of daffodils planted around my area, on land leased by a “real” farmer?  Would I be a “real” farmer if I kept a riding stable, had 20 paddocks with horses and an indoor riding arena?

Farming is defined by the Oxford Dictionary Online as:  the activity or business of growing crops and raising livestock. Livestock is defined as:  farm animals regarded as an asset. Actually, that’s kind of interesting, and I’m tempted to pursue asset and see where it takes us, but let’s not for now.

So does that equestrian centre have a breeding programme?  It’s a farm.  Greenhouse operation – farm; blue chicken sheds – farm.  Carrots? Farm.

Many, many people homestead, or practice self sufficiency, or run some kind of monoculture operation – all of which produce crops or raise livestock.  Whether they make money or not is not what defines them as “real” farms.  Contrary to nostalgic wishes, farms are not just bucolic landscapes with cows, sheep, chickens and pigs dotted around the green meadows.  I have my own ideas of what constitutes good farming practices, and other people have ideas on that topic which differ from mine.  I lean toward the bucolic image style of farming, but that’s just me.  There are other ways of doing it.  That’s fine.   The fact that I do not earn my whole livelihood from it in no way lessens my reality as a farmer.  I grow food, sell some of it – people eat all of it.  How does that make me less of a farmer than buddy down the road with 240 acres instead of 14?

It’s bad enough that non-farming people are unaware of the huge range of models, styles and methods of farming around these days, but it’s even worse when that lack of knowledge is apparent from a farmer.

A local “real” farmer (self-described) read out a letter he had sent to the Agricultural department of our provincial government the other night at a meeting attended by many farmers and like minded folk from our community on the topic of farmland protection.  The gist of his letter was a request to consider that protecting farmland was not in the best interest of “real” farmers – it merely preserved land for pretty landscapes via people with hobby farms or who grew hay – not “real” farming.  What is desperately needed, he was saying, was some latitude for “real” farmers (his term) to be able to use creativity and his resources to make a decent living. If that means selling a portion of his land that is not suitable for farming, even though it is under farmland protection, he should be allowed to do it. Compensation packages might be an option to consider to help “real” farmers have more viable businesses.  He made reference in the letter to the fact than only a few “real” farmers were left on the peninsula – dairy, beef, vegetable growers, orchardists – all gone due to the financial reality of farming challenges in our area, like processing, transportation and distribution.  One had to wonder who he thought he was reading the letter out to, if not a bunch of people who farm with the same restrictions he faces?

I respect this particular farmer for his persistence in the face of considerable adversity. He does indeed raise crops (Oxford Dictionary Online: cultivated plant grown on a large scale commercially, especially a cereal, fruit or vegetable), selling them at several local grocery stores.  He is under tremendous financial pressure to pay a substantial amount of the value of the total farmland he owns to his estranged brother (who left the family business some years ago), something that has been hanging over their family for more than a decade. Schemes to bring a chunk of land out of protection to become medium density housing (about a mile from the nearest service area) failed, as they didn’t meet with the official community plan. Commercial composting was promising but eventually shut down due to neighbourhood complaints about smell and noise. A major warehouse fire. A freak winter storm that destroyed a number of greenhouses. His attempts to sell separate parcels of land, 3 that I know of each around 40 acres, each with an asking price of $1 million or more – no buildings, no services – and because they are within the farmland protection area, very restricted land use. They’re not selling like hotcakes, needless to say. This guy is definitely in a hard place.  But to consider himself a “real” farmer because of the scale of his operations, and all others who grow crops or raise livestock on a smaller scale as less “real”, well, that gets my goat (livestock).

Time was that farmers were people who grew crops and raised livestock, and sold the surplus beyond what they needed for their family.  Some of them planned a pretty big surplus, mind you, but still their primary goal was to feed their family first.  That’s where our mind’s eye picture of “farm” comes from, that historical farming model.  Farms were, by necessity, very diverse.  As specialization came in, the amount of surplus for sale grew, the amount raised for family use shrank, and was instead purchased with profit from that aforementioned “planned surplus”.  Eventually of course, we got to large scale farming as we know it today, which is very efficient at providing food in sufficient quantity for processing and grocery stores.  I’m guessing that many large scale farmers now buy most of their food from a grocery store.

I grow hay. That’s a crop. I keep a flock of laying hens which provide me year round with eggs, which I sell as well as use for home consumption, making them not just an asset but an investment, probably with better returns than whatever my remaining financial investments might be doing – which is to say they are most definitely livestock. Broiler chickens? Yup, livestock. Let’s not forget those pigs.  Livestock plus a freezer full of ham and sausage.

And just in case there is any doubt, I do these things not just because I love the lifestyle (I do), but also for profit.  I make money at it.  I have no debt.  That might just mean that I have more net worth than the “real” farmer who thinks someone like me is not “real”.   I’d rather be an unreal farmer with money to show for my efforts and a freezer full of sausage than a real farmer whose bank owns most of what he touches and whose greenhouses are full of flower bulbs, which may indeed be a crop, but are not good eating.

Bottom line:  I have a real farm, with or without pigs.  And though it irks me that a farmer in my community considers me to be less real than him, in the end, it doesn’t matter.  I know that bigger isn’t always better, and I know just how real I am.