Lessons From the Farm

There is an old saying that “you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy”. Having grown up on a Virginia dairy farm, at times in my life – trying to “escape” – I have regretted the truth of this saying. Many twists and turns of awareness later, I realize that I could never escape my farm roots, and have come to value and appreciate this six-generation family heritage. I now see that farming provides such an extensive, varied, and rich framework for learning that I think of farming as a kind of university – a Farm University. It requires careful observation, theory formation, rigorous experimentation, detailed analysis, and integrative thinking. The curriculum includes ecology, meteorology, animal science, soil biology, emergency management, mechanical engineering, crop management – as well as anthropology, psychology, ethics, business, and organizational culture. I have come to see the farm as a powerful teacher – a seemingly endless supply of lessons from the farm.

After leaving the farm for college, I spent a quarter century worlds away from the farm, living in urban Minnesota, Chicago, and Baltimore, as well as coastal California and the Colorado Rockies. Then, in my forties, my off-farm sojourn ended when Susan and I purchased a small olive grove in California; my life revolved increasingly around farm activities; my acquaintances and clients were increasingly involved in farming. I was once again a “farm boy”.

Now, living on “Tall Grass Farm”, on the edge of the tall grass prairie in southern Wisconsin, my life expresses the time-honored activities of the farm: tending goats, making hay, hauling manure, disking, planting, harvesting. Life on the farm takes on the rhythms of nature: daylight and dark, the seasons, birth and death, the weather . . .

In many ways farm life is a solitary existence. Much work is done alone. Even in group activities, the sound of machinery often precludes conversation. One has a lot of time to observe and reflect – endless opportunity for lessons from the farm. I have come to see the farm as a powerful teacher – education that affords meaning, purpose, and perspective to life.

I learned early to do solitary reflection while farming. Learning to disc at age ten, I soon realized that you can do an excellent job of discing with perhaps 2% of your attention. That left a lot of mental capacity available for observation, thinking, and speculation about how the world works – reflection only limited by one’s imagination and ability to obsere from different levels and perspectives. I think of it as the Tao of discing. It has produced many interesting lessons from the farm.