Farm life is a lifestyle full of
hope and no promises. No promises
anywhere, anytime. There is no promise
that tomorrow will be like today because livestock and the weather, by their
very nature, are going to change things up for you.
Today you have 10 chickens but
later today a coyote might come through and now you have six. You look again 25 days later and you have 7
and number seven has 7 little chicks in tow.
The sow you were sure you had bred turns out she was just fat, but 20
days later you find you were just off on your breeding date and now she has
little piglets suckling on her. There
was hope, but no promise.
You can’t make any promises
either. You can have plans but you had
better get used to being fluid on those plans.
Yes, you planned to meet your friend for lunch but as you were pulling
out of your drive you look over and see your precious Petunia Pig on the wrong
side of the fence tearing through your neighbor’s garden. By the time you have lured her back to her
pen, fixed the fence, and cleaned up you’re well beyond late and looking at an
early dinner if your friend still has time.
You did promise you wouldn’t bring
home any more farm animals but, “It was a good price” “It was abandoned” “We
don’t have one like this! Think of the breeding possibilities!” Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
Hope. Hope springs eternal and hope is sometimes
all we have to cling to in this precarious lifestyle. There is hope that the pigs will all stay
penned. The hope that when we finish
this grow out we will have a freezer full of food that we trust where it came
from. The hope that with the work of
raising, growing, and caring for one thing we will be able to trade for the
items we still need. The hope that our
friends, that live differently, will understand when we are an hour late because
farm life happens. The hope that even
when one of our herd/flock dies and our heart is broken that there will more
life to follow. The hope that that tiny
seed we pushed into the dirt will spring up as food later this summer if we
water it. It seems unlikely but 30 days
later, there are the leaves, pushing up and encouraging our hope. When the hail comes down and batters those
leaves, we persist and plant some more because we hope.
I write this the day after finding
a cria that died over night. Yes, he
showed signs that something wasn’t quite right but I couldn’t find anything definitively
wrong (not without $$$ of tests) so this was unexpected. I am sad.
His birth was the hope of bringing in new blood, new color, and new temperament
to my herd. In his death, following the necropsy,
I have found a weak point in the genetics of my herd and learned that I need to
move a different direction. The loss
hurts but we cannot mourn for long because just around the corner is the hope
that last summers’ breeding will bring new life this coming summer.
Farming is not a lifestyle for
those who need promises. There are no
promises that even when things seem ok that tomorrow a different truth might
emerge. The learning curve on this point
can be quite steep. You can hope and as you learn to go with the
flow of things your hope will become grounded and your optimism will grow. You will find that hope is worth waking up
to.
I promise.
I promise.
