People often ask my wife Krista and I why we don’t own our own farm. We have three horses. We have barn clothes. We even have a farm pickup truck – complete with a bale and a half of loose, wet, mouldy hay and about a quarter mile of baler twine (tangled beyond all recognition) in the back. But the short answer is that we don’t have our own farm, because we don’t want one.
We both spent our childhoods on farms. Krista, on what my father would refer to as a “hobby farm” – 50 acres, with a few horses, a goat, one small, semi-reliable tractor and zero automation. I grew up on a dairy farm, where we had hundreds of acres, scores of cows, lots of automation, massive machinery and zero horses. But there were things about that upbringing that made both of us more than willing to pay the horse board instead.
One might suppose it stems from an aversion to work; but it isn’t the work, it’s the fact that the work never ends, never goes away and never takes a vacation. People who have farms know what I’m talking about. When you’re warm and cozy by your tree on Christmas morning, opening presents by the fireplace, people on farms are feeding, watering, cleaning, thawing and freezing.