Women as Farmers: Is it Biblical?

This post is a response to my earlier post, "Are Female Farmers Feminists.". In that post I was struggling to figure out if I am a feminist because I am a farmer and, if so, if that was wrong.  My conclusions were, for me, less than satisfactory.  I have been revisiting my thoughts on that issue and this is the result.

I have been thinking, agonizing actually, for several months, trying to figure out if I am stepping outside of God's will in becoming a farmer.  I know I am certainly stepping outside of society's idea of the proper role for women.  This Sunday was a tipping point.  I had to know if I was doing the wrong thing.

I think I have mentioned before that it gets back to me when friends, relatives, and people of the church express their disapproval of my becoming a farmer to others.  Just so you know, I know if you don't approve.  And it troubles me that you don't.  It troubles me because I hate to disappoint people who I know are concerned for me and want the best for me.  It also troubles me because I wonder if those people are right: maybe I can't do it; maybe I am stepping too far outside of God's set boundaries for what women should and should not do (I'm not exactly sure where those boundaries are, but I am becoming more and more convinced that they do exist).

Most people who disapprove of my venture don't show their disapproval to my face.  But there are a few, those most firm in their beliefs about what women should and should not do, who have suddenly changed how they act around me.  There are a very few people at church who will not even look at me anymore.  That hurts deeply, especially since these are older people who used to teach me in kids clubs and encourage me in my walk with God.  I looked up to these people and now it's as if I have completely fallen flat in their expectations of me and they have given up even calling me a sister in Christ.  I felt that scorn this Sunday as one older gentleman greeted my father after church and then, looking resolutely at the floor, rushed past me without so much as a "Good morning."

That was the last straw.  I had to know if I was wrong or not.  After stewing over the incident all day, I dragged myself out of bed late at night, found some of my sister's textbooks from Bible school, and set to work researching and looking up passages.  By the time I had finished, I was nearly in tears out of frustration.  Every passage I found dealt with married women and had little to do with economic roles.  I'm not married!  I need to support myself somehow!  It was most frustrating.  The only passage that I have ever found dealing with unmarried women is in 1 Corinthians 7:34-35, which says,

"There is a difference between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman cares about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit. But she who is married cares about the things of the world—how she may please her husband. And this I say for your own profit, not that I may put a leash on you, but for what is proper, and that you may serve the Lord without distraction." (NKJV)

Tired and frustrated, I put the textbooks back on the shelf and returned to my Bible to search out the description of the Proverbs 31 woman, which is where I generally turn when I'm trying to figure out if my actions are proper or not (even though the passage actually is describing the ideal wife).  That's when I found this verse that I had never really noticed before:

"She considers a field and buys it;

From her profits she plants a vineyard. 

She girds herself with strength,

And strengthens her arms."  (Proverbs 31:16-17, NKJV)

Whoa, wait!  This woman, this virtuous wife, buys a field?!  Without her husband, apparently!  And then she plants a vineyard from her profits!  What?  She's farming!  Not only that, but the second verse here  completely blows the standard "women shouldn't have to do hard manual labour (especially if they're married)" argument out the water.  This virtuous wife "girds herself with strength and strengthens her arms."  I can't say it better than God, so I'll leave it at that.

This whole passage blew my mind.  I was done searching for the time being.  I needed to let that sink in for a while.  However, I realized that I had not yet done my daily devotions, so I turned to the book of Judges and read the story of when Manoah's wife is told of Samson's coming birth.  And then that story blew my mind!  Check out the verses that completely messed up how I've been told women should behave in society:

"God heard Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman while she was out in the field; but her husband Manoah was not with her. The woman hurried to tell her husband, “He’s here! The man who appeared to me the other day!” Manoah got up and followed his wife." (Judges 13:9-11, NIV)

Now, I'm not sure what Manoah's wife was doing in the field.  The New King James Version says she was sitting in the field.  I'm just wondering why she would be out there in the first place if there wasn't work to be done.  It reminds me that in Biblical times, women often worked in the fields.  It was only when "improvements" and technology were brought to agriculture that it was thought that women should not or could not be in the fields.  And by the way, what is Manoah doing while his wife is in the field?  We don't know, but he's he's obviously sitting down.  I'm sure he was doing something productive, praying maybe, but he sure wasn't out in the field right at that moment.

I'm not saying that these two small passages are conclusive, but I'm going to keep looking.  If ever I find something that seems to indicate that a woman shouldn't work in the fields and care for livestock, I'll stop and take a good hard look at my life, but for now, all I'm getting from God's Word is a green light when I ask, "Is it okay for me to be a farmer?"

So, if you or someone you know is concerned about me, please bring your concerns to me.  It hurts a lot less when I don't have to hear what you said about me from someone else and I want to be able to assure you that I am seeking God's will for my life.

Tough Times

I am writing this post from my uncle’s house in Edmonton.  I was supposed to arrive home for Reading Week last night, but the weather had other ideas.  I’m currently stuck here, awfully thankful for relatives who routinely take me in at a moment’s notice.  All I can do is wait for the snowplows to clear the roads and the ice from the freezing rain that we got last night to melt away.  By the time I post this on my blog, I will be home.  I’d do it right away but my computer is playing dumb and won’t connect to the internet here.

It’s not such a bad situation, but it certainly isn’t the way I envisioned my weekend starting out.  I thought I’d be at home helping Dad with chores right about now.  I suppose that’s how life is.  We think everything will be nice and rosy and then something completely beyond our control comes up and we just have to wait out the storm (or the storm’s repercussions).

That’s how it is with farming.  Farmers are eternal optimists.  We have to be to survive.  In a tough year, you’ll always hear the farmers saying, “It’ll be better next year.”  We’ll always look ahead and see what good will come next year, even as we keep in mind all the bad that could happen.

Oooh!  I just got the internet connection figured out! 

Ok, where was I?  Oh yes, optimism.  I think we as humans also like to be optimistic about what we don’t know.  We like to think that only good things happen in industries that we are unfamiliar with.  Sometimes, we do assume the worst, though.  A lot of people don’t know what goes on in farming.  I think they envision farmers out in their fields bonding with their cattle, nurturing their crops, being surrounded by all sorts of baby animals in the spring, and making plenty of money at the end of the day.

It’s not quite like that.  It’s hard to bond with cows that just won’t go where they need to go.  Sometimes, we get angry and need to go take a lunch break to cool down.  Sometimes, the cows try to kill us.  We cull those ones.  Sometimes, they just get stupid and tear down fences.  As for nurturing the crops, I think we spend more time fixing the broke down equipment than walking through the fields running our hands over the full heads of grain.  We do get to interact with a lot of baby animals, but even that can be hard.  Why?  Sometimes, no matter what we do, the babies just don’t survive.

One of my cows calved the other day.  My dad told me about it over the phone.  She had twins.  One of them had died inside of the cow and it made her calve too early.  The other twin lived only a couple of hours.  That was hard news to take.  I depend on my calves to pay for my schooling.  Losing one is never easy, regardless of whether I needed the income or not.

Speaking of selling calves, I’m sure you’ve all heard that a case of BSE (mad cow disease) was found on an Alberta farm.  I found that out yesterday morning before class.  Had I been standing up, I think it might have taken my knees out from under me.  You see, I was planning to sell my calves this week.  With cattle prices reaching record highs, I was hoping to be able to make enough money, combined with what I will make over the summer, to not have to worry about paying for school next year.  Now the reporters are saying that this likely won’t affect the cattle price.  I hope they’re right.  Unfortunately, I know that market prices are based on how people currently feel about beef.  If they panic, if borders close (which they shouldn’t unless more cases or BSE are found), if people just stop eating beef, the prices will crash and some farmers will lose everything.  Even though I try to be optimistic and think that it’s just the one case and it won’t affect the price too much, I worry that something big and terrible will happen, because it has before.  It’s scary to think about.

I don’t want whoever reads this to start worrying.  That won’t solve anything.  We just have to keep looking forward.  Hope for the best and plan for the worst.  That’s how we survive the tough times.  We look forward to the good times because we know that they will come again.  It’s how life works.

Calving Duty

It is currently a few minutes to midnight.  The first ominous signs of sleep deprivation are beginning to creep into my consciousness.  I have no idea if I will sleep at all tonight.  I am on calving duty.

This semester I'm taking a beef cattle management class.  Instead of having a lab for this class, we are responsible for doing various jobs around the college farm: processing feedlot calves, selecting replacement heifers, and calving out the college cows.  When I first learned of this lack of a lab I was rather relieved.  I have five other classes this semester and all of them have labs.  Right now, though, I'm  rather wishing that we had a real lab for beef cattle management.

You might think that calving out the college cows is no big deal.  As long as you pick the right times, you don't have to go out in the cold (my group couldn't have gotten the warm week...no...) too late at night.  Well, unfortunately there are these amazing people here called farm staff who get to have the day shifts.  That means that college students check the cows every three hours on weekends and from 5 pm to 7:30 am on weekdays.  The way the weekday shifts worked out, it was easiest for my group to take one night for each pair of students (we don't need 9 people there every time).  Tonight is my night, along with two other students (for safety reasons, we never check cows alone).  The whole group already did chores and processing at 5 pm.  My small group has now done the 8 pm and 11 pm check.  At 5 o'clock we brought in 202A because we figure she'll calve tonight.  So far, nothing from her.  Nothing seemed to be happening at 8 o'clock.  At 11 o'clock we were surprised by the appearance of a new calf in the last pen that we checked.  We still have 2 am, 5 am, and 7:30 am to go.  Hopefully there are no more surprises.

Finding a calf in the pen is the worst possible situation for several reasons:

• We have to bring every calf into the barn for one night, regardless of weather.  It's so much easier if the calf is just born in the barn.
• Calm cows can become shockingly aggressive as soon as their calves are born.  During my group's weekend shift a couple of weeks ago we had two cows with serious attitudes (401P and 401S).  These cows are not only difficult to get into the barn, but they are dangerous to deal with.  I don't really feel like running for my life at 2 in the morning.
• When it's cold out, calves that have just been born can freeze very easily.  I can only imagine the misery of lying out in the cold, wet from just being born, as your ears, tail, and feet freeze.
• Late at night, we just want to get the check over with and get back to bed.  Moving a cow and calf to the barn just makes the shift longer and the sleeping time shorter.

I just realized that I have not been quite right in my assessment of what the worst possible situation could be.  The worst situation is having a cow that has problems calving.  Pulling a calf takes a lot of effort and energy, not to mention time.  Not to mention that a difficult birth can leave a farmer with a dead calf, a dead cow, or both.

Now that I've finished complaining (for now), I want to talk about what I've learned so far from calving duty.  

• I've learned to tell when cows are going to calve soon.  I'm not an expert, but I notice that I'm picking up on the signs quicker now when we check the pens.
• I've learned to give calves injections properly.  Back home I get to fill the syringes and hand them to Dad and watch as he does it.  Now I can go out and just give the new calves what they need.
• I've learned to use two different kinds of ear taggers.  I didn't even know there were two kinds of ear tagger before this.  I just knew about the kind we have.
• I've learned that calving is a lot of routine work; we walk through pens, replenish water and hay for the cows in the barn, clean the barn once a day, process calves, and move cows to the correct pens.  It only really gets exciting at 2 in the morning (of course).
• I've halfway learned to castrate a bull calf.  I've understood the fundamentals for years and have been putting the rubber ring on the rubber ringer for years and handing it to Dad.  But now, when we process the calves, those of us with little calving experience have to do the hard stuff while our classmates with more experience supervise us.  Maybe by the end of this week I will have actually succeeded in getting the rubber ring in place without having one of the guys take over.
• I've learned that newborn calves are feisty.  Dad always made processing look so easy.  He just lays the calf down, does what he needs to and lets the calf go.  Here, we generally have three people holding the calf down whilst one or two others try to dodge flailing hooves to needle, ear tag, and castrate these calves.  I got kicked in the hip on the weekend shift trying to ear tag one calf.  It's a good thing I had my wallet in my pocket.  This afternoon a bull calf that seemed particularly determined to remain a bull got his little hoof within an inch of my face.  How on earth does Dad keep his calves so calm?
• I've learned that rubber boots are not made for winter.  I would wear my winter boots, but I discovered yesterday that there is a significant hole in one of them, so I wear thick socks and my regular rubber boots.  Unfortunately, the place where I live has no mudroom for me to put my dirty boots until the next shift, so I must keep them on the covered deck outside.  By the time I leave for my next shift, they are frozen solid.  Not only do they do nothing to keep my feet warm, but there is absolutely no give in them.  It makes walking pretty interesting.

It's only 12:30 am now, but I'm not a night owl, so I think I'd better call it quits before my blog turns into some sort of sleepy rambling.  Already, I'm struggling to think of the proper words.  Here's hoping the rest of the night will be uneventful and that I will be able to catch a few winks.

To the farmers who do this on a regular basis, I salute you.  Dad, I expect to learn your techniques when I come home for Reading Week.

Some of our calves at home.