Seeds of Hope

The mountains of snow are melting and our hearts foster hope the power of the drought we’ve been under the last two years will be broken. Time will tell.

Sadly there are other things for farmers to worry about this year.

Fuel price has risen substantially. Propane price jumped. Fertilizer is crazy. Farm budgets are already strained. Input prices have gone up and income stagnant for too many years.

The possibility of crippling losses is too big to acknowledge.

I read a quote the other day -

“To be a farmer means to hope for the future". -

And I believe it’s true.

I think about planning the crops, putting seed into the ground every spring. Intuitively we don’t think about last years failed crop. We believe this year’s seed will grow. We check fields every day. We envision the harvest. When we see green sprouting in all the rows, we are in awe.

We’ve just finished lambing out our ewe flock. And we started a flock of baby turkeys this week. We’re up night after night caring for the livestock. We spend all our waking moments, time and energy for a few weeks looking after every need.  We get excited for all the milestones. The expectation they thrive drives us.

We often walk our land. We dream about the future. We make plans to grow our farm and projects we’ll tackle, crops we’ll plant, and trees we’ll grow. When we do this, we don’t think about our already strained time resources. We possess surreal confidence we’ll get it all done. And have faith our kids will be here farming right after us to enjoy the fruit.

I will be honest – I am a worrier by nature. I tend to think about the negative. All the risks swarm through my brain.

Hope for a farmer though, is more than positive thinking. Popular psychology tells us to think positive and ignore the negative.

Simply ignoring the negative would destroy us in one season.

We not only acknowledge the negative, we plan for it. We go over all the books and our processes scouring ways we can improve efficiency. We take steps to build our soils so they can withstand extreme weather. We diversify, hoping something will do well if one crop fails.

We believe for a prosperous year, sometime, even if it’s not this year. We know our crops are going to be off the charts someday. And the vision keeps us going.

But then death happens, or the storm comes, or we don’t get the rain when we really need it. Or prices jump and we don’t know how the budget will work out at the end of the year.

But the spark of hope never really dies. We change our plan. We adjust the books, and we try again.

I wonder if we’re obsessed or just denying reality some days.

But really, I think farming may be the same as having children. Or working for a cause with amazing goals. Or just being a part of something, anything, that really matters.

There is something so beautiful and organic about investing ourselves, nurturing life, and expecting good results.

It keeps us going. And helps us take the storms in stride. And gives us the energy to try again.

So if I could sum up and say one thing:

I encourage you all to join us this year - let’s all be farmers.

Plant some seeds. Whatever that looks like for you.

And then, instead of worrying, we can spend our time dreaming about an extraordinary harvest.