Tag: Agriculture

Three Farming Poems

~ sanebishop ~ 5 Comments

THE GARDEN SPOT

That patch of land beside the road,

below the old barn, is Kendrick land—

those terraces thrown up by a Kendrick man,

long lost the art of nine up, three down,

moving dirt by plow,

gone the cotton boll and wagon road.

All that’s left is hayland, cut by another,

and vegetables, worked and watered.

NEW FARMER

I wonder what the sight of it all

(the ground as hard as the fact of drought,

the corn so pitiful

and tasseled out at two-feet tall)

means for him who hasn’t seen

drought, flood, weevil, and wrath of God,

and if his corn is cause for doubt. 

THE BLACKBERRY ROWS

The men and women of the blackberry rows

work long: a long, long way from somewhere.

Some still have shirts draped over head, though

the moon is kinder than the sun, kinder but queer,

people picking blackberries at night, ghosts  

flowing in and out of flood lights, fingers

stained from blood or blackberries or both,

(those are no thornless canes, I assure you)  

with no sound but the electric hum

of generated light and the loud silence 

of men and women a long, long way from home. 

Gluttons for Punishment

~ sanebishop ~ 4 Comments

Not to get religious, but one thing I find interesting about the story of Adam and Eve is the fact that God punished the first couple by farming. That seems about right. Out of all punishments in the primordial soup, and I’m sure there were some tasty ones in there, God chose boring old “soil cultivation” as his foundational punishment. Eventually, God added some spice with plagues and floods and such, but those wouldn’t add nearly as much misery without farm crops to ruin. 

The point here, though, is farmers are gluttons for punishment. Year after year, farmers come back for another round of woe and bear the weight of original disciplining. In my innocence, I used to think farming was fun and exciting (a belief quickly dispelled when I planted and picked a quarter-acre patch of strawberries by myself), and I see a lot of new farmers come into the agriculture office where I work thinking the same thing. But most quit after a few years–sadly, can’t take the pain.

Not to get even more religious, but I’ll bring up another point. Right there in Genesis, written thousands of years ago, are the first documented descriptions of the two farm paradigms: (1) the organic, ideal, untainted, natural, sustaining garden planted by God and (2) the cursed and fallen land outside it, destined to be worked by the toilsome efforts of man. Whatever you make of Genesis, the point here is the two conflicting paradigms of agriculture are accounted for thousands of years ago. 

Humanity has been in a state of cognitive dissonance ever since. Which is kinda reflected in my own thoughts about agriculture: I support farmers who shoot for a higher ideal (we may not be able to get back into the garden, but maybe we can get closer to it). Meanwhile, I also support conventional farmers who undergo the toilsome and often thankless labor of feeding the vast majority of Earth’s inhabitants, and in so doing bear the brunt of original disciplining while the rest of us eat and critique their farming methods. 

The way I look at it, there’s no perfect paradigm of farming, no perfect farm, no perfect farmers. Just people, most of whom are exhausted and trying to make it through the day, doing the best they can with their particular helping of primordial soup. 

Whimpering Into the Wind

~ sanebishop ~ 13 Comments

If there is one thing I’ve learned while working in agriculture, it’s that farming is a high-frustration field. Cattle farmers are frustrated because beef is sky high at the grocery store but dirt cheap at the sale barn. Grain farmers are frustrated because they have to haul their soybeans all the way to Georgia to the nearest soybean processing plant, increasing transportation costs. Blackberry farmers are frustrated that the wholesaler refuses so-called “overripe” berries just to keep the supply down, sticking farmers with tractor-trailer loads of perfectly-fine and highly-perishable berries. Poultry farmers are frustrated because their integrators keep forcing them to upgrade their houses, for no other reason than to keep them in debt and leveraged to the hilt. Farmers’ market vendors are frustrated by Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods and the .75 cent gallon of organic milk at Aldi. 

And what ties all the farmers together is a general frustration–that everyone else is oblivious to their particular frustration, that they’re left to shoulder these problems alone amidst an unsupportive, if not hostile, public. 

Maybe not unsupportive in words, but certainly in deeds–at least when it comes to politicians. If I had a dollar for every time I heard a politician talk about how their granddeddy was a farmer, how they love farming, how we need farmers, I could probably afford to farm. But if there is a second thing I’ve learned in my time in agriculture, it’s that even a light-weight politician will produce more steaming heaps than a full-sized cow. 

And I say this knowing we need farmers to engage in the political process. Where I live there are no farmers on the planning board, board of adjustment, or county commission. The deck is stacked with realtors, lawyers, and a few general wackos, the latter of which are most likely to commiserate with the plight of farmers, but I’m not sure we want the guys who tote their AK-47s into Dollar General to be the face of modern agriculture.   

Only 2% of the population farms anymore, which is a miniscule number to begin with, but by the time the warring factions within the 2% get done pillorying each other, then the collective voice has been pummeled down to a whimper. All this is to say we need young well-spoken farmers–small, big, conventional, organic–to get involved and at least try to get along sometimes, otherwise I’m afraid we’re just whimpering into the wind. 

The Old Pocket Knife

~ sanebishop ~ 19 Comments

Ah, the old pocket knife–the Sodbuster, the Peanut, the Buck, the Trapper, the Swiss Army. It used to be a comfort to carry a small blade. Now it’s a burden. I had to trek all the way back to my truck to deposit my pocket knife. Moments earlier, with a little Case Peanut in my possession, I had been denied entry into my local county agricultural fair. Imagine that: agriculture without pocket knives. Alas, we live in such a time.

I’m not sure how much damage someone could do with a Case Peanut. As its name implies, it’s a small implement with two tiny blades. I wouldn’t call it a weapon of mass destruction per se unless it’s the hands of a very well-trained criminal. Most well-trained criminals usually overlook it for weapons that pack more punch. Still, the security guard wanding people was just doing his job and banning entry to all weapons, tiny pocketknives included. 

The Case Peanut

I could be wrong, but I believe it was once possible to win pocket knives at the fair. Cheap flashy folding blades were prizes used to lure boys into spending all their money. In hindsight, a knife as a prize may seem like a bad idea, but the games were rigged. No one ever won one, so the knives posed little safety hazard. 

The main reason I carry a knife is because I never know when a woman will ask, “Does anybody have a pocket knife on them?” I’m a happily married man, but thought of being caught empty-pocketed when a distressed lady needs a blade is too much to bear. Since my wife carries her own pocket knife in her purse, I rarely get to indulge that little pleasure of rescuing a damsel from an unraveling thread or over-taped box. The only time my wife has requested my pocketknife lately was when she ordered me to slash tires on a gas-powered moped with no muffler that rides by our old farmhouse at 3 AM every night. 

I got my first pocketknife when I was eight, and it was promptly taken away. As I remember it, the knife was a little red beauty, and so was the wound. As my mom prepped for a trip to the emergency room on a Christmas morning, I could barely hold in my tears of pain I was so elated. The thought of a legitimate scar was exciting enough. Showing off stitches would have made me the most popular boy in second grade. “What did you get for Christmas?” I imagined my friends asking. I would hold out my hand stoically, three stitches in my forefinger. My friends would clamor in envy. Unfortunately, my dad was able to stop the bleeding with old fishing rags and super-glue, so I couldn’t brag about a trip to the ER.

But, like I said, little pocket knives are only dangerous in the hands of well-trained criminals and eight-year-old boys.

The Biggest Problem with Agriculture

~ sanebishop ~ 10 Comments

Some people finish what they’ve started. Others forget. Mind you, it isn’t always easy to forget; in fact, despite my best efforts, a few unfinished projects still rattle around in my brain, causing intense feelings of guilt and overwhelm. Mostly, these are the unfinished projects I see every day, like the new hardie board siding near the back porch door that I’ve been meaning to paint for six months. If I keep my head down and avert my gaze, I can sometimes successfully enter my abode without the unpainted hardie board penetrating my consciousness. 

That said, it isn’t easy to live in forgetful bliss. When we bought the farm, I knew it had a pigweed problem, but little did I know it was fertile ground for unfinished projects. Everywhere I walk and look, an unfinished project is sprouting up and spreading insidious spores. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t rid the place of them. There is the half-built fence I’ve been meaning to complete, right beside the pasture I’ve been meaning to finish bush hogging, right beside a barn I need to finish cleaning out, in which is a tractor I repainted, save for one fender that is still splotched with rust, and speaking of paint, I’ve got about fifty honey supers that have one coat and need another. 

Most other farms I visit are also overrun by unfinished projects, and nobody seems to know how to control them. It’s probably the biggest problem facing agriculture today–well, that and English majors. Poor souls read Thoreau, then try to live off the land; then at the brink of starvation, the smart ones write something with an irresistible title like “Pasture Poultry Profit$: Net $25,000 in Six Months on 20 Acres” and then become millionaires. The dumb ones dabble in agricultural humor and die. Which is just as well. Death may be the only solution I know of to unfinished projects.