Hello Again

I haven’t blogged in a really long time and I tell you, I’ve missed it.  I’ve had lots of stories but when I sit down to write I get stumped.  Maybe I’ve had writers block.  Well, all I can say is…I’m baaaack! (imagine me saying it in a sing-song voice and you’ll get the picture).

It’s spring break and we’re getting geared up for our CSA.  Yesterday we planted plants.  1000 bell pepper, broccoli, and pointed-head cabbage.  1000.  My legs are feeling it today.  I couldn’t get over the nostalgia as I did it though.  When I was little I used to stay with my grandparents when school was out.  My Uncle Pat raised tobacco back then and I remember being The Boy’s age and working in the greenhouse some during spring break wading through water an inch or two deep to help move trays of tobacco plants around so they could set them out (best job ever because I got to play in the water!).  Later, after I had a car, my sister and I helped with the setting out.  She was too young to be a super great setter, so her job was to wash the trays down with bleach.  My job was to walk behind the transplanter with a couple of plants and a peg and when the setters (my Aunt Patricia and Mrs. Brenda Scott) forgot one they’d holler to me that they missed and I’d plant that hole.  Sometimes when one of them would have something else to do I would take their place on the transplanter.  I liked that job way better for obvious reasons, until one of the last days we set.  It was cold and rainy and I sat on the back of that thing wrapped up in trash bags shaking with cold trying to set out with numb hands.  Even now I still say it was the coldest I’ve ever been.  We got a drink and a nab at 10 and 2, and an hour for lunch.  It was my first paying job and it was awesome…way better than taking it barns after the tobacco cured, which I also did, with much less success.  Hot weather and I have never gotten along well.

We didn’t ride on a transplanter yesterday.  The husband ran down the plastic with the water-wheel transplanter and punched holes in the plastic and once he went down a row he stopped and he and I and The Boy stuck plants by hand.  The Girl planted some too, because the plants were ‘so cute’ and needed homes.  But then she got distracted by lady bugs and asking constantly if she could go to grandma’s and would the ants sting her and a butterfly and picking strawberries.  Yes, we do have a few rows of strawberries.  No, unfortunately they’ll probably never produce enough for us to be open for picking.  We had to plant them so late because of The Flood that they didn’t get the root development they needed before they went into dormancy.  The way the weather was this winter (if you could call it that) didn’t help.  It was so up and down and then we had that horrible cold spell in March.  It’s turned into our personal strawberry patch, or The Girl’s strawberry buffet.  We wouldn’t have planted them at all but we didn’t plant the year before and while it was so nice to have the spring ‘off’, we missed having spring school tours.  We hoped we’d get enough to still do those and have some for the CSA, but it looks like that’s not going to happen so, Plan B.  Anyway, back to what I was talking about which was setting out plants.  While we were setting I kept thinking back to helping my Aunt and Uncle set out tobacco, and how great it was that my son was out there planting plants with us, and while we might not be taking some glamourous trip or something this spring break he was learning that hard work means something and if we work hard this spring and summer and fall maybe this winter we can take the glamourous trip.  Welcome to farm life.

I maintain that everyone ought to have to work a week on the farm.  If it does nothing else it will teach you the value of your education and an appreciation for those who choose to work with their hands (either because they have to or want too).  One of the best things it teaches is teamwork.  If we all work together towards a common goal there’s no telling what we can achieve. I can think of another place or two that concept might work…

Our poor strawberry plants.

She said "they taste like fruit punch."

The Boy is picky like me.  He said "they'd be good without the sesame seeds on them."  Bless his heart.

The sunset we were rewarded with as we prayed for rain.

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like...Christmas?

It’s no secret that I (we) think Mike’s Farm is the I-Ching.  I’m not trying to really promote another farm, but they really have it all.  When you go there, it’s got a down home feel (plus, the restaurant doesn’t hurt.  If you have not eaten there, you NEED to eat there.  It’s fantastic and worth whatever wait time they have to go.  For years I went without having discovered the perfection that is their restaurant, until my friend Lindsey insisted we go and now I have her to thank for my obsession.  Thanks Linds!).  Anyway, so when we plan out our farm, that’s kind of the ultimate goal we have in mind (except for the restaurant.  I can appreciate it, but the idea of having to run it kind of freaks me out. I know we can hire people to do that and whatever but I’m not ready to entertain that yet).  This year, it seems The Husband has managed to somehow talk me into saying yes to Christmas Lights.

First, let me tell you why I am against it.  Number one, by the end of October I am kind of over the farm.  Don’t get me wrong I love my job and I love my customers, but I usually reach a point in October (generally after not having time to do anything but eat, sleep, and be at the farm) where I am burned out and need a break.  It’s been a long hot year starting in April and this year has been even more difficult since he’s not been around as much to help.  I need some time to recharge and get excited about doing this again, and that’s usually not until after Christmas when I start thinking about the upcoming CSA program.  Number two, Christmas is stressful enough (not for him mind you, because I don’t have one of those progressive men who help his wife in every-thing she does.  I have another phrase for it but since this is PG I won’t say it but let’s just say apparently those women possess something golden which I do not have, therefore I get stuck planning and buying and cooking and wrapping all on my own), without adding a Christmas Light circus to it.  Between shopping (and more importantly in my case, figuring out what to shop for since I am not an expert gift giver.  I’m an expert gift-card giver), and family events (my parents are divorced, and I’m not close to my bio-dad, therefore any family event on his side is complicated), and parties and church events…I’m tired just writing that.  My anxiety level just thinking about it goes to 10.  Finally, number three, the weather.  It’s typically raining in December.  The year I had The Girl it rained every weekend, I remember, because I told The Husband I was glad we weren’t doing Christmas Lights because we’d have been in trouble.  Plus you add the strongest El Nino event on record to that mix and it’s like a perfect storm (pun intended).  

Now I can tell you why I’m for it.  Number one, (and I know this sounds hokey) but to me, Christmas is magic.  There’s something about going to see lights on a crisp starry night, there’s something about seeing the colored lights twinkle in the darkness (when I was a little girl my mom always made the best fudge in the world [still does, it’s on the back of the marshmellow crème can and I can never get mine to be that good] and I’d get up before she did, get a piece, and lay under the Christmas tree staring at the lights), and there’s something about seeing your kids light up when they see all the wonder that Christmas brings.  Number two, our customers seem excited about it.  I was amazed by the response I got when I posed the question on Facebook.  Usually when I run ideas by the customers I get a few likes, a few responses.  I wasn’t prepared for 100+ and the wonderful ideas in the comments section.  Number three, The Husbands will can be a force of nature and if he wants it then by God he’s going to make it happen. 

Based on that, we feel like if we build it you will come, so I guess we’re going to build it.  The plan is to make a walking trail in the corn maze, widen out the paths and put some sort of lights or illumination to mark them, then place different scenes along the way.  At the end of the trail, the tractor’ll pick everyone up and bring them back here.  We might sell some trees, but I think the hot chocolate, s’mores, cookie thing will definitely be happening.  The only thing really holding us back now is time and weather.  All we have to do now is cross our fingers and pray the rain comes on the week days and we manage to get it all done before we open, which is probably going to determine when we open.  Though, I do have to say, writing this post has got me a little excited about it…(just don’t tell The Husband.  I’m using this as leverage to make up for the golden thing I do not have and making him shop with me J).

Freshly Untangled Lights

The girls had a little too much fun testing these lights

Trying to fix the broken strands, AND only 2 out of 4 got shocked!

FarmHer

Okay, okay, for all you men who happen to be reading this no, it's not a hand holding sing-a-long-type post so you are safe to keep reading.

Last January, The Husband and I attended the NC Farm Bureau Young Farmer and Rancher Convention in Durham, and I went to a session about Women in Ag.  I'd hoped it would be a collaborative session where women in ag could come together and talk about shared experiences and how we can unite our voice to get the changes we want made into reality.  To an extent it was, but I guess I just didn't get what I wanted out of it.  Listening to the other women complain about their situations (which is pretty much all they did.  It was a regular *itch-fest) did get me thinking about mine and I thought this would be the perfect platform for me to talk about it.  I've tried to write it a dozen times and it's never seemed to come out right, but I saw a post on Twitter the other day (follow me!  @ofcinc) about women running farms and women working in agriculture and they called them FarmHers and it reminded me about this post.  Maybe I can get it right this time. 

I come from a farming family.  Both sets of grandparents farmed, for a time at least, and in both couples the women worked on the farm just like the men did (except really it was twice as hard because they had to come home and cook and wash and garden and take care of kids).  In my Husbands family too, his dad's parents owned the farm we call home now and his grandma worked probably harder than his granddaddy.  In those days, farms were smaller.  Most of the time your own family tended your own family's land.  Neighbors would help each other plant and harvest crops.  Women were just as big of a part of that as men.  That generation is not that far removed from ours, yet it seems like ancient history compared to the world we live in now.  The Husband remembers his grandma teaching him to loop tobacco (they'd hang it on poles in the 'pack house' to dry and cure, and they'd 'loop' it together with twine to keep it on the stick).  My grandma tells stories of helping my granddaddy.  It's just what you did.  You saw a job that needed doing and you did it.  Then the world changed.  New technologies made things better and more efficient.  The world became smaller and more urbanized.  People started getting off-farm jobs and moving to the city to be closer to them.  Farms got bigger due to mechanization and greater effienceny (in the 50's the average farmer could feed 25 or so people, now it's 155), also it took more land to support a family.  Now the family and even the neighbors family wasn't enough to plant and harvest and people were hired.  Women weren't needed on the farm (and they had more choices; they could buy clothes in stores, have children when they wanted, have outside jobs) so they moved back to 'just' taking care of the house and the kids or having that outside job and the modern interpretation of a 'farmers wife' was born'.

I was lucky enough to have grown up in a family where both genders were equal.  No one said to me I was worse or better than anyone else.  My mama always told me I could be anything I wanted to be and at the time I really can't remember what I thought when she said that (I CAN say though, it was NOT 'I want to be a farmer'!) but now I appreciate it, especially since I have a little girl of my own (and let me let you she's a spitfire just like her father hoped.  I'd love for someone to tell her she couldn't...based on what she tells me when I tell her that whoever does is going to be kicking a hornets nest).  I combine that with the role model of my Aunt Patricia, who ever since I can remember has worked on the farm alongside my Uncle Pat.  She drives trucks and tractors and takes care of the hogs just like he does.  I add in the other farming wives I know, those who have direct involvement somehow and those who don't.  Lastly I throw in what I've always seen my family do, if a job needs doing you do it.  That's how I was raised.  So when The Husband wanted to raise strawberries, I saw a job needing doing and it did it.  That's what I wanted to tell those women at the conference who wanted to get in there and help their husbands.  If you want to be a bigger part of the farm, if you want to get your hands dirty, get in there and do it.  It doesn't matter if you're a girl or not.  Do it.  When you count your own self out you're no better than the nay-sayers. 

Last fall, The Husband took a public job.  We stopped raising row crops and decided to focus solely on agri-tourism, and it would be pretty much solely my job to run that.  I can't say it's been an easy transition.  For the most part I was already doing the things I do now, I just had someone sort of around to help me get them done.  I don't anymore, not on a regular everyday basis.  The strawberry season wasn't bad. The CSA has been stressful, but rewarding because I've proven to myself I can do it.  We'll see what the fall season brings.  When I get discouraged, I just try to look at my FarmHer role models and take a lesson from them, or look at my kids.  I want there to be a Odom Farming Company around for them to take over (at some point I'll have to retire right?  Don't laugh, a girl can dream!).  I think what we're doing for agriculture is important, I think educating the public about real farming practices and real farms is important, I think the experiences we provide and the memories we help make are worth it, and it's a job that needs doing.  Looks like I'll be the one doing it.