The Hard Way

    This is embarrassing. A couple years ago, when my wife and I, not yet married at the time, lived in Randolph, we bought a pair of piglets to raise for meat. We got them all the way home in a dog crate in the back of our car, only to have one of them break the crate and escape into the woods while we were getting the other one situated into their new “home.” Long story made short, the second pig ended up escaping a few days later, and despite all our creative efforts, we never caught those pigs. We felt irresponsible, unworthy of being entrusted with the lives of other animals. We were also out a fair chunk of change. We decided never to bother with pigs again, and to let someone else handle the smart, fast, slippery buggers. Fast forward to a week or so ago. We had a pair of sheep delivered to us on the hoof, to be slaughtered. They got placed into their temporary home, and promptly ran straight at and through/over the electric net fencing, and into the woods. Is this sounding familiar? We did everything in our power to catch them, and they alluded us, at which point we did everything in our power to find them. Despite help from many of our neighbors, including most of Fat Toad Farm, the sheep escaped, not to be found. We felt horrible and irresponsible, and again, we were out a couple hundred bucks. In the end, another one of our neighbors spotted our sheep (“on the lam,” as it were!), and the sheep were shot and field-dressed for us by more wonderfully helpful people. In the sheep adventure, at least, all came right in the end.
    The point of relating all this is to open up the topic of learning via the Hard Way. After the recent sheep fiasco, I came to the conclusion that what we need-- really for a variety of reasons-- is a barn with a few stalls. If you backed a vehicle with livestock up into a barn, and then closed the barn doors, and put the livestock into the stall, they’d never have the chance to truly escape, because even if they got out of hand, they would still be in the barn, rather than running through the woods.
    I’m sure that everyone learns quite a bit the Hard Way, but I feel like we’ve done more than most, though maybe not more than most beginning farmers. As far as I can tell, the crux of it all primarily is not lack of experience, but rather lack of infrastructure. Sure, lack of experience doesn’t help. But if we had a barn in either of the two aforementioned situations, we would have put the animals into the barn. It would be the obvious thing to do. But we had no barn, so we had to rig up a solution in both cases, and in both cases, the “solution” to no infrastructure ended up being more of a problem than a solution.
     Over the past few years, we definitely have gone about things the Hard Way, and had quite a few negative learning experience-- learning what not to do. If we keep it up, I think that by the time we do get our farm, we’ll be very clear on quite a few of the things not to do, and on some of the ways it’s better to do things. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned thus far:
Don’t start a diversified farm primarily producing vegetables if a)your land is crummy soil on the side of a hill b)you don’t have irrigation c) it’s not set up to be at all mechanized but there is only one person working the farm full-time.
Fence correctly, with good-quality fencing the first time, it’s worth it.
Anything you build should be built with an eye toward your future goals and its future uses. Meaning, if you have six chickens that need a coop, but you’re going to expand your chickens in the future, do as much planning and building according to that goal as you can.
No matter what you do, do not let the weeds get too far ahead of you. It is an extremely inefficient use of time and resources to have to hunt for the harvestable produce in amongst the weeds, and the quality of your produce will also be all the poorer.
Make sure you have access to water near your field.
Manage your pasture well, or no amount of fencing will keep your livestock from getting to where the grass literally is greener.
Think about how much money what you’re handling can sell for, and handle it accordingly. The less something is worth, the more the process for dealing with it needs to be streamlined-- for your financial health and your sanity.
Morale is higher when everybody stops and has a hearty lunch together.
Have a nice, solid barn, it may be one of the most important things to have.
Know when a crop is a lost cause and is not worth the time and money to harvest.
Make sure you really know as much as you can about someone before you get into a business partnership with them, and make sure you have agreements in writing.

    We may be doing a lot the Hard Way, but I do feel that I’ve learned from much of it, and because of it will probably be a better farmer in the future. I don’t think that, had I gotten a degree in agriculture rather than anthropology, my experiences would have been much different. It takes money to have infrastructure, and what kind of degree I received in college won’t change that. But I do hope we’re done having animals escape into the woods, regardless of whether they get found in the end or not. That particular Hard Way I would be happy not to repeat again.