Editorial

July/August 2009 – Advice to Young Farmers

By TOM HENRY

• Find a good chiropractor, treat him/her like a deity.
• If you need to borrow money, borrow from family, not the bank (banks charge interest and want regular payments).
• Grease is one of your best friends. Use it liberally.
• What may seem like a cockamamie farming practice to you may be someone else’s hard won experience.
• Men: accept that at least one part of the yard needs to look nice, help your wife/partner keep the dahlias weed-free.
• Women: accept that old machinery is, in fact, a sort of warehouse of possibly useful parts. Resist the urge to have it hauled for scrap.
• Be nice to your non-farming neighbours: they are more likely to have time to help in haying season than farming neighbours
• Eat at least some of what you raise.
• Get a gun, learn to use it.
• Avoid unnecessary expenses. As a Greek philosopher said, economy itself is a great source of revenue.
• Don’t move boars or bulls when you are tired.
• If raising livestock, understand that killing is part of farming.
• Have a professional designer make your business cards and website. (Just because your sister-in-law has a “flare” for art doesn’t mean she can create something attractive.)
• Don’t get hung up on owning land: security of tenure is really what you need.
• Do get hung up on soil fertility: constantly add manures and organic matter.
• Accept that you will need an off-farm income.
• Unforgiveable family tenses will arise if you transport a billy goat in your mother-in-law’s Volvo.
• Slow cookers are your other best friend.
• Bill promptly but pay slowly.
• Keep your fuel clean and your tractor seat dry.
• Develop/learn a unique skill: welding, shearing, castrating, artificial insemination. You can charge a high hourly rate for these skills and, more importantly, you’ll be a sort of essential service in your community.
• For every 4 hours you spend in the garden/field/barn, spend one hour in the office (work on the business, not in the business).
• Learn/develop hobbies or pastimes that have nothing to do with farming, like ping-pong or Brazilian folk dancing. Farming can be all-consuming. Best if you can get right away from it.
• Keep one vehicle free from grease and dirt.
• Livestock need a constant supply of water.
• Maintain records: varieties planted, when, and where; harvest dates and yields; breeding dates, birth & growth rates.
• Understand your costs so thoroughly that you know what your per lb, per unit costs are on any given day.
• Accept charity.
• The best fertilizer is the farmer’s boots: spent 15 minutes a day observing your livestock; fields.
• Don’t always bitch and gripe about farming. Be positive most of the time and euphoric at least once a week. You are growing things: hurray!
• Strive to keep greasy tractor parts, bits from recently eviscerated chickens etc off the freezers from which customers buy their beef.
• Be proud of what you accomplish and humble of what you have yet to learn.
• Learn to like yourself and your thoughts: you are going to be spending a lot of time working alone.
• Remember that deodorant isn’t just for city people.