"Leaving the Farm, You're Gonna Lose Something"

"Leaving the Farm, You're Gonna Lose Something"
Leaving the farm

What is on your to-do list when you are about to leave your nest for a spell?  Perhaps you'll clean out the fridge, empty the house of trash, water the houseplants (Go with God), maybe put your mail on hold?  I personally love when I remember to slip a crisp set of sheets on our bed which we can slide back in between after the rigamarole of travel concludes and our bodies deserve max comfort.

A couple of times throughout the year, we leave the farm to catch up with the New York contingent of our family, OR to 'forget about life (on the farm) for a while' and vacation. If only the houseplants' lives were the only ones at stake in our absence.  About a month out from departure, my brain launches into the engineering of our master plan for farm coverage.  Depending on the season, the amount of scheming varies.  But best we can, we try to let our hair down in the winter months...a time when doing so won't come back to bite us too hard, and when harvests are light.

Perhaps if I didn't anthropomorphize all the life we have coddled in the field, I wouldn't find it necessary to ruminate over how to keep as many of their little souls alive while we are out gallivanting as possible.  Rich has a healthier relationship with the farm, seeing it as a life source that will give as it can but will succumb to loss when when conditions are insufferable.  Try as I may to play it cool when we lose a bed of this or that and begin again, I regret the missed opportunity for all those little seedlings to harvest energy from the sun and the soil and manifest their destinies.  If you can't tell...they are all my children and it's about time they are listed where they belong as our dependents alongside May and Jack :).

Well, being that we have no hired hands or regular volunteers on the farm at this day and age, we have not a single soul trained on the complexity of this place's needs.  What we do have is our incredible Ohio family who we have convinced to care for Meldog and the barn cats, to water the sheep and be sure they didn't leave us for greener pastures, and even to water plant babes for us.  And while we've managed to twist their arms over the years to grant us peace of mind that all is well on the homefront, it's about time we find some trustworthy farm sitters who can relieve our family of the duty.  There's no doubt about it that it's tough to fill your family's shoes when it comes to a task like this.  Failing to provide water for the sheep for a few days would be devastating.  Calling all compassionate farm sitters!

A farmer friend of ours who is a generation ahead of us regaled Rich and me with stories of off-farm travels: one time he left the farm for two weeks to travel to the southern hemisphere, about the furthest he could be from his herd of cattle with no fallout.  In another instance he left during sunflower harvest and lost a potential $40K in earnings from his fields.  He knew the risk he was running, hoped for the best, and came home from traveling to a dear friend's wedding to find that he had missed his harvest window.  "Leaving the farm, you're gonna lose something".  He's lost cattle and sheep and crops to trips away from his farm over the years.  But in other years, he his bumper crop boons smooth over such losses.

The reason I admire him so much is that he doesn't think that it's a mistake to take these trips.  BUT he does advise that we enlist 4 players to be a part of our master plan.  Person A to care for the farm...and then B,C and D to fall back on in succession.  And the answer is Yes, he has had to make it all the way to person D before returning home in one instance.  This gemstone of a friend enlisted in our plan as a B, C, or D person (depending on who else we have in our pocket) before we even adopted his idea of having a line up at all.  This offer exceeds generosity as he is a full-time farmer who lives 40 minutes away from us.  But being a good friend and farm sage, he reiterated the offer would stand no matter our rebuttal.

So we have Farmer Dan on the hook...in the the worst case scenario, he'd be here getting sheep back in their paddock or putting some other fire out.  But we fully intend to pay our dues to Karma and Mother Nature and God and all who may allow the LEAST case scenario to play out during our upcoming times away.  And we might also put in a word with the powers that be that a great, local farm sitter who might want some cash and have a caretaker's heart crosses our path: a sturdy plan A.

As much as we are bound to the land, it is its own master and we'll simply hope to be responsible stewards of the domestication we have unleashed upon it.