Mechanized, a Capitulation

A post of this title has been sitting in my drafts folder for at least a few months. Every now and then, I dig it out and start to work on it, but each time, I invariably give it up. I am not sure why I am having so much trouble putting this post together. I suppose at least part of the struggle is that I do not want to admit that I do now and will forever have my ass belted down to a tractor seat, when I very much would prefer to be walking out in front of a yoke of oxen or trailing a team of mules or horses.

It is frustrating to have so many of my ideological visions dashed and swallowed up on and by the Scylla and Charybdis of the small farm dream. I suppose a more committed ideologue would find a way to keep those ideological visions alive. Karma and Michael Glos have, but, they live in Ithaca where the straits of the small farm dream appear broader and more easily navigated.

So, here’s the admission, the capitulation: my farm is now and will probably always be a mechanized farm. My main source of motive power and traction will be a mechanical tractor—tractors, actually. Primarily, this is a matter of labor resources. If there were multiple workers on the farm, using draft animals on the farm would work. With a single farm operator, however, the time and labor demands (many draft animal powered tasks require more than one person to complete them) preclude their use. Jennifer and I have no children and we do not plan to have any. We have a gaggle of nieces and nephews and I do hope that at least a few of them will find a home away from home on the farm, but their presence will be seasonal, and limited to a single, albeit more or less the busiest, season, summer, unless I can convince one or two of them to skip college and go straight from highschool to working full time on the farm — the parents of the nieces and nephews in my universally successful and professionally driven in-law family (Jen has six sisters) would love that! Furthermore, I can only hire non-family labor if I am able to pay a living wage (currently $12 per hour in a family with two working adults, nearly twice that if there is a single worker*) plus benefits, so I am unlikely to ever be able to afford hired labor.

No, it will be me, a couple of tractors, and equipment like a round baler that makes it possible for a single farm operator to successfully operate a full-time pasture-based farm.

*I would prefer that we return to a culture that supports single worker families and/or multi-generational households. If the family is single worker, I do not care about the gender of the stay at home person. It should be whichever person has less earning potential and/or whichever person has the stronger desire to take care of the kids and the home.

 

The Ox-Driver and the Ram

Yesterday I drove out to Zoar Farms near Oneonta to pick up my new Icelandic ram, Jason. Zoar Farms is a mixed-power farm farmed by the sisters living at the Eastern Orthodox Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery (use the farm link above for information about the monastery). They use a skid steer, tractor, and utility vehicle on the farm, but they also use two Milking Devon oxen for work on their steep hillsides to minimize erosion and damage to the fields. In addition to the ram, I got my first goats from the sisters a few years ago. I enjoy working with them and supporting them in their efforts to live simple lives of material poverty. I wish that more of us would live similar lives.

When I stepped out of my truck yesterday, I heard the sound of Mother Katherine walking the oxen down the hill. “Haw, Mike! Haw, haw, haw! Back, Mike! Back, back, back. Good, Mike. Whoa boys! Whoa!” I looked up the hill. Mother Katherine and the oxen were mostly hidden by a hedgerow, but from the sound and look of it, she was bringing them through a gate and closing it behind them. A few seconds later she got them moving again. “Giddup boys! Gee, Sam! Come up! Sam, Sam. Gee, gee, gee. Good, Sam! Good, Mike!” The two oxen, close to three quarters of a ton a piece and yoked together across their necks by a wooden yoke lumbered down the hill under the command of a 90-pound woman who strode along beside them, occasionally tapping at their knees with a long wooden rod.

When Mother Katherine and the oxen arrived at the edge of the road, which they needed to cross, she stopped them, looked both ways, listened for a moment, and then urged them forward, across the road. Just about when they were across the road, the ox on the left started to take an interest in me and tried to turn towards me, but Mother Katherine regained his attention with a few quick taps on his knee and the use of his name. After they crossed the road, Mother Katherine drove them around the side of the monastery building. I walked around the other side to meet her over by the sheep barn. As I walked past the goat barn, the Greater Pyrenees livestock guardian dog that was laying at his post just outside the goat barn leapt up and ran over to the fence barking insistently at me to let me know that I wasn’t welcome near his goats. As soon as I passed by, he stopped barking and walked back over to the barn and laid down.

By the time I walked around to the back, Mother Katherine had hitched the oxen to a post and was walking over to meet me.

“Hia,” she said. “You ready for your boy?”

“Sure. How are the oxen?”

“Good. We were out spreading manure earlier. I’ll take them back up and do some firewood later. Come on. He’s over here,” Mother Katherine said, gesturing over her shoulder to the hoop barn, which was across the way from the other sheep barn.

There were a few pens made up with panels in the barn. I like hoop barns. They are wide open, airy, and full of light because they are covered with white fabric that lets most of the sunlight through.

“Here he is,” she exclaimed to the ram as she approached the pen he was in. “Hi Jason. Are you ready for your girls? Are you ready to make some babies? Yeah? Huh? Are you ready? Yeah, I bet you are, good boy.”

Unlike my half (three quarters!) wild ewes, Jason is not only tame, but leads, so Mother Katherine just looped a lead rope around his horns — he doesn’t like halters across his nose — and led him out of the pen. I walked ahead and put the trailer ramp down. Jason only balked at the edge of the ramp for a moment before giving in to Mother Katherine’s pull. I closed the ramp behind them and told Mother Katherine that she could go out the side door.

A minute or two later, Mother Katherine and I said goodbye — she made me promise to send pictures of the babies — and I was on my way after checking the trailer over once more to make sure I had closed and latched all of the doors.

Back at my farm, when I stepped into the trailer and over to Jason to loop a lead rope around his horns, Jason reminded me that he didn’t know me, he didn’t like me, and that he was a 200-pound ram with horns and head as hard as concrete by butting me, thankfully half-heartedly, in the shin. With a throbbing shin, I led Jason out of the trailer and into the barn. I took the lead rope off of his head before opening the stall door. When I opened the door and he saw the ewes, Jason charged right in. He immediately went from ewe to ewe sniffing them, kicking out at their rear ends, grunting lustfully. The ewes all circled around him. Within thirty seconds, it was clear that two of the ewes were in standing heat, and within two minutes of that, he had mounted and bred both of them about five times. Just like that.