Jan 14, 2015
2%... really? Just 2%? My then boyfriend and I, at just 22 years old, owned just 2% of our farm. The bank and the FSA owned the other 98%. Mind you, this is no multi-generational, family land, either. Doubts were high from our families and our banker, so it’s a good thing we were either stubborn or stupid and worked well as a two-man team. That part hasn’t changed. What has changed-- when we started, we knew about 2% of what we were doing, and now through many late nights and early mornings sneaking off to bale while little ones slept, we have turned our hay operation into an art form: analyzing weather patterns, wind speeds, and dew points throughout the night for perfect bailing conditions. This year, and every year, for each of our four cuttings, we (that’s my husband, my very pregnant self, and a toddler or two on my lap) make 1,600 small square bales and run a rake and 3x3 baler to get around 350 big bales. We farm straight alfalfa under a 9 tower pivot sprinkler. Our additional 100 acres went from a back-breaking, pipe-laying, ditch-digging, water-changing flooded field to a simple sub-irrigation system in 2013 with the help of the NRCS. Not working so hard for flooding, paired with being a smokin’ good cook, has increased our body fat at least another 2% as well. We’ve grown corn, sunflowers, sudex, and three babies on these acres. Next year, we are hoping to cut 35 acres of freshly drilled grass and plant the rest into milo, which will provide winter stalks for our 100 mama cows.
Praise God, none of this has come easily! Yes, Praise Him! Through all of our trials in planting crops that wouldn’t grow, enduring devastating hail storms that beat down the corn, and rainstorms that ruined entire cuttings, I am thankful for having experienced the tough times in order to not only learn from the experience, but to also make success that much sweeter. Growing through experience has happened not only out on the field, but in our family as well.
Since we bought the farm in 2008, I have not only become a farmer and rancher as a right-hand to my husband but also a mother of three in four years. I've maintained my full time job as a high school English teacher and began teaching college composition. Recently, with my 3rd baby over my shoulder and computer in my lap, I'm striving to become a writer and Professor too- hopefully sans spit up. After five years of hard work on the farm, living in a 50 year-old farm house, and sacrificing so many other luxuries, afforded us a custom home built on the heart of our property with 360 degree views of cultivation and productivity.
Building up the farm successfully might have fallen more on my husband, but nothing grows on the land or financially without nourishment. Cue big mama! Three pregnancies were spent in an open-cab Massey pulling a rake, and bucking hay well into the second trimester for hauls down to Texas. As the farm grew, and we honed our craft, it wasn’t long before I was steering a semi with a knee and nursing a baby at my breast while singing Twinkle Twinkle with my two toddlers. Balancing work as a mother, work in town, work on the field, and work in the home makes me feel like I’m conducting my own carefully-orchestrated string band! But nothing beats coming home and feeding livestock with a willing and ready three-year-old only steering the tractor because her little feet don’t touch the pedals, or cooking a hearty supper since pizza in town is just too far away. And best of all is crawling into a cool bed with the smell of sweat and dirt still on us.
We’ve come a long way since that 2%. We worked together, literally side by side (forsaking all the fun things most 22 year olds do) in order to build up our $325,000 weed patch into a near million-dollar operation and raise a family right alongside our crops. It would be one thing to be a farmer’s wife, helper, and hand. I am that, that, and that. It would be another to bring up three young children in the tractor, swather, and semi. Check, check, and check. Add yet another component; even though I don’t need to, I keep my job as a 7th- 12th grade English teacher at a tiny country school 50 miles away, simply because I love to work in a rural community… WHAT?!? Plenty of farmers, farmer’s wives, mothers on the farm, or wives that support the farm with their jobs in town might see my job as all those roles more than a little daunting, but I wouldn’t change a thing.
I’m told often, “You sure have your hands full.” I wonder if they really knew how full my hands actually are, what they would say then? I simply reply, “not full enough.” I couldn’t give up any of this and would gladly take on more for the satisfaction of seeing the fruits of my labor, growing our family and our farm. This is a perfect life with each of these roles in perfect balance, and I’m starting to think that I am one of a very precious few with all these experiences. I continue to stockpile my stories to share with others who live life and love agriculture: what they do within it, for it, and to maintain it, even when only 2% is in their favor and rain is in the forecast.
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