I Had No Idea

There are things that farm kids don't really realize until they leave home and move to the city.  I know I have definitely learned a lot from living in the city and then in town for the past few years while I go to school.  I've also talked to some of my friends who have had similar revelations.  I'd like to share some words of wisdom for those farm kids who will soon be graduating from high school and moving to the city.  These insights come from my personal experiences and some are corroborated by various friends.


1. Winter is hard.
I can hear every reader saying, "Well, duh," to the screen right now, but hear me out.  On the farm we tramp through snow to do chores, shoveling out the troughs before we feed grain.  We have to go out in the cold to check the calves to make sure they don't freeze at night.  When we go sledding in the pasture, we have to be careful not to hit a frozen patty.  Worst of all, we have to plow our ridiculously long driveways every time it snows lest we be blocked into our own homes.  Yes, winter is hard.  But on the farm, that's all just part of life.  When you get to the city, it really gets bad.  Let me give a few examples.  In the city:

• there are no tractors; you have to shovel everything by hand or face a fine from the city.  (Hint: Never live on a corner lot; it'll double the amount of shoveling you have to do.)
• if the ice builds up on your sidewalk, you have to remove it or face a fine.  That's a lot harder than it sounds.  Also, ice builds up a lot faster than you might expect.  I mean, you step on a patch of snow, come back an hour later, and it's ice.  
• residential areas get plowed last (okay, so do country roads), and none of the neighbours have tractors to do it themselves.
• the snow doesn't stay white.  It gets all brown and nasty (sounds like the corrals, but it's not like that at all) and slushy, so instead of a winter wonderland, you end up with a winter yuckyland.
• some houses don't have a garage, so you have to park outside on the street.  Then, if you want to go anywhere, you have to brush the snow off your car and scrape off the frost, too.  Every time.

2. You don't need a vehicle.

Let that blow your mind for a moment.  We farm kids have all grown up driving, operating equipment from the time we can reach the pedals, and "helping" our dads steer before that.  But in the city or town, most things you need are in walking distance.  If they aren't, you can take public transit or a taxi.  Seriously, there are city people who never learn to drive.  Is your mind blown yet? 

3. Everything is concrete.

I mean everything.  It's ridiculous.  Even when there are patches of grass, you often aren't allowed to walk on them.  It's awful.  I don't understand how city people don't all have serious problems with their backs and knees from walking on the stuff all the time.

4. You actually have to exercise.

This more applies to students.  There are no cows to chase after or feed in the city.  There are no crops to go check.  There are no machines or grain bins to climb onto.  You just sit and walk between classes all day.  They have these things called gyms here, with all this fancy equipment.  There are weights to lift and bars to pull yourself up on and treadmills so you can run in place.  If you want to stay reasonably fit, you have to go to the gym and use the equipment.  Or shovel snow for all the neighbours.  It's weird.

5. Stars don't show up real well.

They call it light pollution.  You know how you can see where your neighbour's yard is at night, even if it's behind the trees, just because you can see the glow of the yard light several meters into the night sky?  Imagine thousands of yard lights all doing that at once all in a concentrated area.  The light blocks the light of stars, just like the sun does during the day.  Oh, you can usually see a couple of particularly bright stars on a clear night, but it's just not the same.

6. You can't see anything.

There are buildings upon buildings and sometimes you have to look straight up just to see the sky.  Back home (unless you live near the mountains) you can usually see the horizon.  Even in the bush, there's always something to see.  But in the city (not so much in small towns), there's just man-made stuff everywhere.  There's so little of God's creation to see that you almost don't notice it at all.  I actually didn't realize that there were trees in the city until a friend of mine (who grew up in the city) was talking one day about how he likes to drive around and look at all the trees along the streets.  Actually, if you have a friend who grew up in the city, they can point out a lot of interesting things that we can't even see until they do.  

7. Things change really fast.

You can live in an area for months while you go to school, go home for the summer, come back and barely even recognize the area.  The people of the city are always building and updating stuff.  Back home, it's big news when a neighbour knocks down a patch of bush or plows up a pasture.  In the city, change is just normal.  I don't know if that's good or bad.  Maybe it just is what it is.

8. There's almost always something to do.

We've all seen the movies where some city slicker comes to visit relatives on the farm and complains because "there's nothing to do."  We also all know that there's always something to do on the farm; but that's usually work.  In the the city, and even in town, there are endless ways to entertain oneself if you have the desire to do so.  You can usually find someone nearby to hang out with.  There's mini golf, bowling, swimming, movies, plays, concerts, and stuff I don't even know about.  What I'm trying to say is that social activities aren't restricted to church and community hall suppers (not that there's anything wrong with those - some of my favourite events are the community hall suppers).

Well, I think 8 insights is enough for now.  I realize it sounds like I'm complaining about the city/town in a lot of those.  I suppose I am.  I prefer to live in the country, but life's not all bad here.  It's just different and takes some getting used to.

Are female farmers feminists?

I have been thinking about this question for a while: Am I a feminist because I want to be a farmer?  This question, although not fully formed until recently, has been stewing in the back of my mind for more years than I can figure.  I'm not entirely sure how this question began to form.  Most likely it began at some point in my childhood when I started to realize that men and women are different and that, traditionally, they have very different roles.  When I was young, I wanted to be a farmer, a hockey player, a police officer, and a doctor.  Over time, I gave up on all of these dreams.  The only hockey players I ever saw were men (and I can barely skate).  Most of the police officers I knew were men (and I'm not the firm, authoritative type).  Most of the doctors I have had are men (and somewhere along the way I connected doctors with pain - not an ideal career choice).  Yes, I even gave up on being a farmer.  In high school I decided to believe that farming was just too hard for women.  Besides, everyone said I shouldn't be a farmer.  "Leave it to the men," was the message that was so often hidden in the discouraging commentaries sent my way.  So I gave up.  I enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts degree with the plan to be a teacher, a most acceptable career in the eyes of my critics.  Even so, I always planned to return to the farm.  There were people who even discouraged me from that, though.

I feel as though I am beginning to ramble.  Allow me, if you will, to tell a few stories to bring my point back into focus.

It is June 2010.  I am about to graduate from high school.  The church, as usual, is having a graduation Sunday, a day when all of us who are graduating are celebrated during the service.  We had to provide a short plan of what our futures will look like for the power point presentation (you know, that inevitable slideshow of baby pictures and current photos for everyone to see).  My future plan says something along the lines of, "Valerie plans to attend the King's University College in Edmonton, get a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Bachelor of Education after-degree, and then will return to take over the farm."  For most of the graduates, the slides with their plans are met with a collective and approving "hmm."  That is not what happens when my slide pops up on the screen.  The congregation responds in the same way that individuals have been responding to my plans to take over the farm for years: they let out a collective chuckle.  Now, I'm not talking about a chuckle that says, "oh, that's a good joke...that's not going happen," or even "oh Valerie, what are we going to do with you?  I guess you'll do what you want."  Oh no.  It is one of those chuckles that I myself have emitted while listening to the grand schemes of my uncle's young grandchildren.  It is a chuckle that clearly says, "aw, that's cute...it'll never happen, but it's cute that she thinks it will."  I am mortified and angry.  I know that no one would ever chuckle that way for a young man with the same plans.  I think this is what made me start fighting to make it okay for me, a woman, to be a farmer.

Fast forward a few years.  I have discovered that teaching is most emphatically not for me.  I have decided to put my full career efforts into the farm.  I will run a market garden.  There is some opposition to this.  My mom isn't too happy about it at first.  She worries about me.  It's a mom thing.  Other people are against it too, though.  No one ever confronts me to my face, but comments get back to me.  My sister tells me of a relative who, being concerned for my health and safety, has questioned her about my intent to do such a physically demanding job.  I am a little amused about that one.  In my mind, market gardening isn't even "real" farming (although I know it is a very difficult job).  I mostly ignore the opposition.

Fast forward a few months.  I am not enjoying my horticulture classes.  Oh, some of them are interesting, but I go to Bible Study and listen to the Aggies (students of agriculture, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term) talk about their classes and I am completely fascinated.  I start thinking about switching to Agricultural Management.  It will mean an extra year of school (that will be six years of post-secondary school in total).  And am I really ready to make that kind of commitment?  I've already had a few serious accidents on the farm.  Every day I will put my life on the line, working around machinery, climbing ladders on granaries that were not made for anyone of my short stature, working around cattle several times my size and strength.  Is it worth it?  I finally decide that it is and make the arrangements to switch programs at the end of the school year.  My dad is, to my shock, immensely relieved by my decision.  Apparently he wasn't too keen about turning his "real farm" into a market garden.  Outside of my home, the opposition really starts to pour in.  At first, I don't notice the difference.  There has always been opposition.  In fact, I am noticing more support.  People who think it's great that there's going to be a girl farmer are eager to tell me how great they think it is.  The opposition goes underground for a while because my family is respected in the community.

I think this was the point when the idea of feminism really started pushing it's way forward in my mind.  I began to see that people thought I was doing something extraordinary.  In case you are one of those people, let me tell you that I am not trying to be or do anything special and it makes me very uncomfortable when you act like I'm some sort of example for young girls who want to get into non-traditional careers.  I'm not sure, but I think that those who support me and those who oppose my decisions assume that I am some sort of feminist.  I'll tell you right now that I'm not.  Now let me explain how I came to that conclusion.  I first really formed the question, "am I a feminist because I want to be a farmer?" in it's entirety sometime in this past year.  I began to encounter older folks in the community, both men and women, who are very firm in their beliefs that there are some roles that women shouldn't (or shouldn't have to) take on.  Never in my hearing has the topic of women farmers come up, but the idea that I ought to know my place because women will never be as good as men at certain things has been made abundantly clear.  I have been told by an older friend of my parents that there are people who say, "Valerie shouldn't be a farmer; it's not right for a woman to do that."  (This particular individual thinks it's great that I want to be a farmer).  While doing field work this summer I listened to a sermon on the radio that was a vicious attack on the feminist movement.  It was very interesting, but I didn't really believe all of the evidence presented to prove that "feminism is a work of the devil."  While it was mildly amusing and rather infuriating, the sermon stirred me to start really looking at what I was doing.  I don't want to cause division in the church or in the community.  I needed to know why I was doing what I was doing and decide if I'm a feminist or not.

Not knowing where to start, I began seeking out what the Biblical role of women is supposed to be.  Have you ever done that?  Let me tell you, it's very confusing.  I still have not come to any conclusions about that.  All I know is that women are meant to do more than sit back and keep their mouths shut.  What that "more" is, though, I have no idea.  I probably won't ever have a conclusive opinion about this, but I do believe that men and women are to work in partnership and that God has made us different for a reason.  Physically, men are stronger and they have been given authority over women, in a way.  Please note, I said, "in a way."  I, as a woman, am not subject to every man I come across.  I am under my father's authority and when I marry, I will trust my husband to lead me (though I surely won't follow blindly - more about this later).

Feeling a little stuck, I decided to look up the definition of feminism.  The Oxford Canadian Dictionary defines feminism this way: "1. the advocacy of equality of the sexes, esp. through the establishment of the political, social and economic rights of women. 2. the movement associated with this."  Okay.  That doesn't sound so bad.  Sounds pretty fair, actually.  But it's not realistic.  As I said, men and women are built and wired differently.  We aren't equal and even if every job in the world is done by 50% men and 50% women, we will still never be equal because we were not created to be equal.  Each of us is uniquely created for a role that only God fully understands.  Because I cannot believe in equality of the sexes, I am not a feminist.  I will be a farmer.  Have no doubt about that.  I am capable of doing that.  However, I know that a man could do the job much more easily than I could.

People tell me I need to marry a farmer.  I can't lie.  That offends me...but it also draws me.  Boy, it would be convenient to marry a farmer, especially if he didn't have a farm to go back to.  He could run the farm.  I would help him and leave the major decisions to him (although if he ever wanted to get rid of the cows or knock down the bush or sell the homestead quarter, he would be getting a piece of my mind in a hurry).  I really would be okay with being a submissive (but not oppressed) wife and taking on the more feminine role of running the household, while also working in the fields with my husband.  Unfortunately, I have no idea what and who God has in mind for me.  I might end up marrying the most clueless (about farm stuff) city slicker there is.  I might never marry at all (cue a collective gasp and panic among my relatives).  Whatever happens, I sincerely hope that when the time comes, I am ready for whatever God has in store for me.

If you've made it this far in the post, let me thank you for sticking with it.  I know this a long one.  I'm nearly finished.  Let me simply end by recapping what I've said:

• I want to be a farmer.
• I know farming is hard work.
• I know there are those who think I can't or shouldn't be a farmer.
• I know there are those who think I don't know my place.
• They are right.  I don't exactly know what I'm supposed to be doing, but I don't think I'm disobeying God.
• I am not a feminist.  I know there are differences between men and women that will never and should never be equalized.

Finally, let me say one final word about the naysayers: I know they don't understand.  I know they talk to other people about what they think.  If someone says something to you about what they think I should or should not be doing, please ask them to bring their questions and opinions to me.  Yes, they will probably hurt my feelings, but it hurts a lot more to hear it second-hand.  Please ask them to respect me enough to say whatever they've got to say to my face.

Thank-You

Often when I sit down to write a blog post, the words form a rant and I have to erase them and begin again.  Sometimes the rant is missed and is published, but usually I catch it and take it away in time.  Why?  I delete my rants because rants are annoying and it's embarrassing to see that I haven't got the self-control to keep them to myself.  I want this blog to be a place where I calmly present my thoughts to whoever it is that reads it.  Also, I don't want my mom to get after me if my rants go too far; I know she reads every post.

This morning I listened to a rant.  An older gentleman in the community, who is quite respected, was talking to my mom about Remembrance Day and about how few people actually take time to remember the sacrifices of those who died for our freedom.  As he got more worked up, he eventually let loose with this absurd statement: "I blame the media and the universities for making this just another holiday...those liberal arts universities have faculty members that are just, well, socialist!"  As you can imagine, I was a little shocked.  I went to university.  In fact, I went to a liberal arts university.  My professors certainly weren't socialists.  And there wasn't exactly a lack of respect surrounding Remembrance Day - or was there?  Actually, there were a lot of pacifists among the professors and students (not that I have anything against pacifism; I rather dislike war myself) and they never acknowledged Remembrance Day.  Every year I would forget my poppy at home and have to come home in time to get it or get a new one somewhere.  Every year, my poppy seemed to stick out like a sore thumb as soon as I walked into school.  No one ever called me out for my display of respect in the week leading up to November 11 (although someone did once accuse me of just wearing the poppy because it was what everyone was doing - though at the time there wasn't another poppy in sight).  I figured if no one judged me for wearing a poppy, then I couldn't judge them for not wearing one.  

That always bothered me a little, though.  Here were people who could choose whether they would join the army or not, who could vote in leaders with peaceful tendencies, who would do anything to avoid killing another human being, and they couldn't even take the time to just remember that there were men and women who died to give them those rights.  The pacifists, if you ask them, will say that they don't wear poppies because they don't want to celebrate war.  Fair enough.  I don't want to celebrate war.  But when did pausing to remember sacrifice and our own history become celebration? It didn't.  Remembrance Day has never been a celebration.  It has always been a solemn day of quiet reflection and sometimes, of mourning.

Since I have a history degree, I would ask my readers to indulge me as I go into a few history-based reasons that I remember the soldiers who sacrificed for me.

There have been few times when the Canadian government conscripted soldiers, but it has happened in major times of war.  Those times are moving into the distant past, with few survivors left, but we know that when the government conscripted soldiers, they made exceptions for the farmers.  Our leaders realized that if they could not feed their country and the troops (not to mention the troops of our allies, whose homelands had been ravaged by war), there would be nothing left to fight for.  So, they let the farmers stay home.  Sometimes it seems like agriculture is an afterthought in government policy, but in times of crisis we remember that we need to eat.  I remember because I want to thank those who fought, were injured, and died while the farmers stayed back.  I remember because I want to thank the farmers who kept our nation going while their friends and sons were gone, perhaps never to return again.

The other reason I remember is more personal.  My opa was a soldier.  He left his wife and infant son and joined the army to fight for his homeland because his government told him to.  My opa fought in the Second World War.  He fought for the Nazis.  Sometimes, Remembrance Day is a little awkward for me because we are remembering and thanking soldiers who, had they been able, would have killed my opa because they were fighting for their homelands.  I don't know if my opa fought because he was forced to, or to defend his home, or because the government said he had to.  I never knew my opa, so I couldn't ask.  But Opa survived the war.  He joined his family, who had been forced to flee to Germany from their farm in Poland.   A few years later, he moved his family to Canada.  He could bring them here for a better life because soldiers from so very far away fought to end the evil intent of a few men.  Opa was able to come to Canada because thousands of others went to Europe and never came home.  I remember because there are soldiers who have fought to keep our nation free so that other immigrants can make a new start here, too.

Finally, I remember because a few short weeks ago, our national sense of peace was shattered.  We were forced to realise that our freedom is not inherent and that in some way, it does have to be defended.  We have freedom of religion (I don't care how persecuted we Christians feel; we walk into church every Sunday with absolutely no fear because we are free to worship God here).  We have freedom of speech and freedom from attack.  I remember because I am free and others were killed or wounded so that I could be free.  

To the soldiers who have served and died; to the soldiers who have served and come back with wounds and scars; to the soldiers who put their lives on the line, even in ceremonial duties, thank-you.

Farm Fair

Ah, Farm Fair.  You will forever live in my fondest of childhood memories.

Every November Farm Fair International, along with the CFR, comes to Edmonton and almost every year my family spends a day going through the exhibits and sometimes we see the rodeo.  When I was a child, Farm Fair was magical.  As the years passed, it became more...commercialized.  Each year, the agricultural exhibits seem to be fewer in number, while the number of vaccuum cleaner companies and sellers of pots and pans steadily increases.  Each year I leave a little disappointed, but I keep going back because Farm Fair is tradition. So it was that my parents and I journeyed to the city today to experience Farm Fair 2014.

This time, it was different.  Yesterday I went to my last class of the day before heading home for the long weekend.  There were only five students in class.  Many had already left for the weekend.  Others had taken the day off from classes to attend Agri-Trade, which I've heard is like Farm Fair, but better and takes place in Red Deer at the same time as Farm Fair.  To reward those of us who actually bothered to show up to class, our professor revealed a bonus assignment.  For those who would attend Agri-Trade on the weekend, we could gather promotional materials and business cards from five  booths that we visited and hand them in to prove that we actually talked to people.  I knew I wouldn't make it to Agri-Trade, so I asked my professor if I could do the assignment at Farm Fair instead.  He said I could.

When my parents and I arrived at Farm Fair today, I started to worry.  How could I do this assignment? Anyone who knows me knows that I don't talk much.  The mere thought of talking to new people has me in a near panic.  And my parents would be watching my failure and trying to rescue me and then they would end up basically doing it for me and then of course I couldn't hand it in.  We walked through all of the exhibits and checked out some bulls and all the while, I stubbornly refused to even try to talk to anyone.  I finally gave up.  It was only a bonus assignment, anyway.  I don't really need the extra marks.  But, I did have to get special permission to do the assignment at Farm Fair.  So now my professor will be expecting me to hand something in.  I have to do it!  Oh, the horror!

Around three in the afternoon, I left my parents behind, promising to meet up with them in half an hour and set of to do the assignment and go talk to people.  There was one hall in Northlands in particular that had a whole bunch of booths all together.  I went there first.  I walked up and down through the two short rows of booths, trying to get up some courage and think of intelligent questions to ask.  I passed by a booth advertising CowBytes 5 (a computer program that I had heard a little about in livestock class) and after rather creepily walking past it a few times, I walked over and asked as intelligent a question as I could.  It wasn't a very good one, but I kept on and eventually asked how the program works.  Apparently that's a magic question that gets you the full attention of the representative.  I finally got through the conversation with the representative with a good deal more knowledge and a small handful of papers.  I felt pretty good about that until I realized that there were four more booths to go.  

Next, I found a demonstration of GrowSafe, a feeding/testing system that is used at the college farm.  We have been introduced to the system, but never got much information about it.  I had to wait a long time to talk to the representative.  It gave me time to think of some good questions and to call my Mom and ask for an extra half hour (it was already 3:30).  That conversation was a bit harder, but I got through it okay and left with more knowledge and papers.  

My next stop was at the booth for Verified Beef Production's On-Farm Food Safety Program.  This, too, was something I had heard of at school.  I asked the representative how a person would get into the program.  That led to a rather confusing conversation about qualifying for some contest.  I finally asked the question again, a little more clearly and then explained that I was a student at Olds College and wanted to learn more about the program because we had only really been told about it in passing.  That was another magical sentence because by the time I left that booth, my handful of papers was significantly thicker.

By this time I had exhausted my options in that hall of booths.  There weren't any other booths that met my two personal criteria for approaching: (1) the booth should be relevant to me and (2) it must be manned by an actual human being.  Earlier in the afternoon, my dad and I had been checking out some Hi-Hog squeeze chutes, so I went back to that exhibit, found a representative and learned some fun stuff about the manual and hydraulic chutes.  Four down, one to go.

For my last conversation, I was momentarily stumped about where to go.  Then I remembered that we had walked by a display of alfalfa pellets at one point.  I searched around until I found the booth and talked to the representative.  That conversation also got off to an awkward start, until I threw out the whole "I'm a student looking to learn more about this" explanation.  That got me an exceptional conversation and a pamphlet and business card to add to the pile.  I was done.

Feeling rather proud of myself, though slightly frazzled and stressed out from having to talk to so many strangers all by myself, I worked my way through the crowd to the designated meeting place and found my parents finishing off some ice cream - without me.  No matter.  I still got to go through Farm Fair and this year, it was magical again.  Oh, the displays were still a bit disappointing and overly commercialized, but I learned more than ever before and some of it was even a little fun.  And I did it myself.  My bundle of pamphlets and business cards is sitting on the coffee table now, ready to be organized and handed in for my bonus marks.  Yes, it was a stressful experience, but in the evening, I got to let off steam in a way that I haven't been able to in almost two years.  When I was working on my history degree in Edmonton, I used to come downstairs at my uncle's house late in the evening and hold my cousin's new baby boy and just forget the stress of the day.  Tonight we went and visited my aunt, who happened to be be babysitting that very same little boy and I got to play with him and read to him and just forget about my homework for awhile.  Today was a good day to be a farmer, even if it was hard.  And it was an even better day to be a cousin.