Farming in Community

2023 was the most mind-bending year to date here at Yankee Rock.  It feels like one we will look back on and point to.  Thinking yes, that’s when the shift occurred.  I’ve shared before that we attended Ranching for Profit’s weeklong school last January and had a blast.  We came home from the experience bright eyed and bushy tailed, actually excited about a future in agriculture for the first time since “you can’t make a living farming” became the unofficial moto of our elders.  We got to work rewriting our business’s vision and mission statement, a deeply introspective and collective experience.  Hired a bookkeeper!  That was huge, I’m a miserable bookkeeper.  We waltzed through lambing and carried on into a strong shearing season that was finally feeling like going through the motions instead of spinning like a top for weeks of uncountable hours headed in a million different directions.  The year ahead looked promising including actual business strategy (very grown up, I know) and more confidence behind the wheel of this business, our livelihoods.   All was well, really.

Alas, burnout is a master sleuth.  Stalking my upbeat moves through the spring flush taking note on personal vulnerabilities.  Lying in wait until May when it finally struck.  No one occasion could be to blame, nothing had gone wrong but I realized it when I stopped enjoying the one thing that put me down this path in the first place – my sheep.  I stopped enjoying the sheep.  I have to pause after writing and rereading that.  How did I ever get to that point?  By all measure we were still having a great year except I was deflated.  Tired.  Unexcitable.  Not my first brush with the big bad B-word, I knew how to make it through shearing then it was summer at some point (I don’t really recall) then my fair and festival season ensued during which I had fun!  I always do, I live for the ag-to-average citizen interface and visiting with all the amazing people organizing these events along the way.  Still, deflated.  All the way to December when finally, we do our annual unplugged home vacation and time was for recovery. 

The undeniable truth festering for eight months: something had to give.  We’ve been working on big moves for the future of Yankee Rock, and us personally, but my head was a foggy landscape of meh when clear and constructive thinking was essential.  I could identify motivation and fake excitement and push on!  Still, it was time to face the music.  What we had built up to this point was not going to last.

Sustainability and welfare, you know.  Hot topics, the center of the anti-big ag (and really in big ag as well) conversations, front and center of marketing every single small farm business whether the businesses want to consider the deeper meanings or not.  Fine, but what’s completely missing from the conversation if not depth?  Sustainability for the self-employed.  Welfare for the small farm owner.  I’m not the first to point this out and now is when I must credit The Pasture Pod for being my revivalist after the seed was planted at Ranching for Profit.  Colin for pushing me to give the “It’s About Time” series a listen, which Michael Blanche put together earlier in the year. 

The last two decades we have been sold on (collective we, as in everyone in small-scale ag space, that’s probably you if you’re reading this – yes, even if you’re a consumer!) enterprise diversity and later social media’s free sell-your-story marketing to make a successful farm business!  Big smile!  There’re some good tools hidden in the above but we cannot continue to gloss over the fact that small-scale direct-to-consumer models take the “farmers do it all” ideology farther than ever before.  With less privacy than even before.  Why I no longer believe in this silver bullet solution to save the small farm is a conversation for another day but here’s what I wish we’d talk about first.  What does it do to the farmer?  As a human trying to make ends meet?

I can answer that one!  It’s burnout.  Even for those more resilient than I, it stretches out the all-powerful yet thin farmer thinner to develop more skills across widely varying job titles that require more physical assets to do stuff we might not really enjoy or even be good at for that matter.  We drank the cool aide, tried it out, did it all!  Because it was the only example we’d seen for successful modern farming.  I’m glad for the experience but relieved to be on the other side of it now, having found more realistic examples to inspire.  Some small farmers are good at the juggling act, a few might enjoy it.   It is not, however, the circus I wanted to sign up for when I found my passion for agriculture.  More importantly, I don’t think it should be the farming goal we all (producers and consumers, I’m talking to you both still) put on a pedestal.

With the onset of my mid-spring slump I coped by doing less.  The bare minimum to fulfill commitments.  Most of my focus was put to tending the flock as they inadvertently took care of me.  It wasn’t long before the sparks of joy were back when amongst my sheep but we were still in a position to find outside support.  Years ago, the budding agriculturalists in me was sprung from the gospel of rugged individualism.  Do-it-yourself is a cost saving measure, the harder you work the more you earn, the more applause you will receive, the more likely customers will choose you to give their dollar over the next booth at the market, a booth with a neighbor growing very much the same things.  When I could (had to) take a step back and quit trying so damn hard I realized how foolish it all felt.

And just like that, we quit doing so much.  Really, that’s it.  We started to build stronger partnerships with people that could’ve just as easily been competitors when what we needed were collaborators.  For us that looks like selling more raw goods and less retail-ready products, more wholesale, absolutely no value-added handmade anything, purchasing feed instead of making it, and hiring professionals for the tasks we really don’t need to tackle ourselves, especially the one’s we’re not good at!  I’ve asked my shearing clients to value my time and I started, finally, valuing my own.  I quit trying to expand into too many things I am not meant to be for a hyper-competitive niche marketplace flooded with consumer-facing talent.  I laughed off the pressure to do it all.  I found pride in the number of other small business I give my money to or source materials for, which in turn prop up our exceptional work raising sheep and marketing wool.

Hold on, I’m not done because it goes beyond the power of the dollar; in collaboration with more of those neighbors (near and far) we also become each other’s consultants.  Sharing ideas, pooling resources, swapping advice, and playing on individual strengths.  Partnerships become a networks wide and sturdy that are also safety nets.  My cup was full to the brim the day we could drop everything to help a neighboring farmer this summer.  On a day we had the time and they did not, when we were physically able and they were not, tools already in our toolbox that were missing from theirs.  It was extending a hand to someone who had done the same for us before but it was the start of something more.  Because we had not insulated ourselves in the image of the tough farmer who works through it all, does whatever it takes, strains at the yolk of any load no matter the cost to health and family.  We are too tired for that and we’re finally going to admit it.  We’re going to be vulnerable with each other.  In this year of my personal meh we asked for more help but also gave back more than ever before.  I came through a rough patch that seemed silly in the end because in the end we were better for it.  Colin was along for the ride of course, dealing with his own highs and lows but still dishing out the reality checks I so often need to hear.  He said it best.  Farming is meant to be done in community.

Shame thrives in silence.  Farmers, for as long as I can tell, have held close this right to a moral high ground by being tougher than.  This work is strenuous and stressful, no doubt, but I finally looked down at what we were holding and discovered rot.  Once we looked at our farm and our business and our lives with fresh eyes, we started building a plan to do less and do it better.  Young people are fleeing this industry, small farms disappearing.  The solution is not to diversify (a.k.a. increase) the workload.  Collaboration up, down, and all around the supply chain pulls more of us into the fold while doing more gratifying work.  Partnerships that make scale possible can produce high-quality farm goods that are more accessible to a wider demographic of consumers.  Asking for help and being around to return the favor, when you’re able, can save a farm.  Dare I hit “publish”?  Feel’s vulnerable, this one.  That’s what it takes to make a change though.

Now go listen to The Pasture Pod’s “It’s About Time” series! No matter you’re line of work, it’s relevant.