This One Idea Turned Us Into Farmers

Get excited.

Today, we’re here to fill in a gap in our blog.

We’ve shared the story of how we became farmers. If you missed that series, you can find the first post here.

But in an effort to keep that story engaging and focused, we steered the narrative around the tempting deep dive into the thoughts that made us so attracted to the farming lifestyle.

We may even have left some of our readers wondering what made us so interested in learning to farm in the first place.

If you, dear reader, have been annoyed by a nagging feeling that we were holding back on some of the details, fear not! Today is the day that your questions will be answered. We’ll be going into the “why’s” that led us along this path of farming. Read on!

Philosophers Turned Farmers

We can think of three general reasons that town people like us might have for choosing to move into the country and start a farm.

1. They are on a quest for highly nutritious food that can’t be found in grocery stores.

2. They think it prudent to establish a certain level of independence from an unstable food supply chain.

3. They like farming as a lifestyle.

We’ve certainly come to value reasons one and two over the years. But the first thing that drew each of us (separately) to farming was actually the third category. The idea that farming, in itself, was a good way to live.

It may seem hard to believe, even rather impractical. But what first attracted us to farming was not the delicious food we might thereby raise, or even the undeniably tempting prospect of shaking off the dust of our feet in the general direction of Big Ag and its suspiciously brightly colored beef.

It was doing the work of the farm as a family.

That’s right. The prospect of fresh milk in the fridge sounded good. But the prospect of milking a cow every day sounded even better.

As a sidenote, we must admit that these thoughts provided little comfort on the handful of tragic days when large quantities of fresh milk were accidentally spilled.

“Well at least we got to milk our wonderful cow.” Is not what we said.

So where did we come by such a strange attraction for farm work? You may well ask.

A rather unlikely place, actually. A philosophy classroom.

Philosophy of the Household

Huh? Philosophy? What could that possibly have to do with farming? Don’t philosophers just busy themselves with obscure intellectual topics far removed any practical use?

Well, the student of philosophy does spend a certain amount of time dealing with various metaphysical questions which are not of immediate practical relevance.

But philosophy also covers what might be reasonably be considered the most practical topic of all: what must one do to live a good life? This branch of philosophy, called ethics, includes topics ranging from the morality of an individual’s decisions to the far-reaching questions of how a state should be ruled (political science).

In between these two, comes a lesser known branch of ethics (but one still recognized by Aristotle). It concerns the family and household and how life should be lived in this smallest and most crucial of communities.

We might, at this point, suggest to all the lawyers, engineers, and computer scientists, that despite appearances, our philosophy degrees were actually far more practical than theirs.

What could be of greater relevance for a group of college students, than to engage deeply in the question of how best to organize the life of the household?

We had the privilege of undertaking this study under the direction of Dr. John Cuddeback, and he certainly succeeded in flipping certain of our pre-conceived notions about family life entirely on their heads.

Households in History

One important element of our study was a consideration of how families have lived throughout history. What is the “natural state” of a human home and family?

First, some context:

In our modern culture, most families live lives that are quite alienated from the home. Fathers, mothers, and even children leave home on a daily basis to conduct their “business” of the day. The home is primarily a place where people relax and consume the goods that they procure elsewhere.

Our childhood families, and those of most of our friends, were structured differently. Fathers left home every day to go to work. Mothers usually worked at home to manage the household. Children busied themselves with schooling, play, sports, and hobbies. They might be more or less helpful in performing household chores.

This second model, as far as we knew, was a normal and desirable way to run a household. But as we learned in a few “blow your mind” kind of moments, fathers leaving home every day to go to work is actually not normal in the broader context of human history.

Unlike the households of the modern world, the majority of households in history were places of production, not consumption. They were the setting for most of the work that was done by anyone. And all the members of the family played a role in producing what they needed to live.

In an agrarian setting, for example, children might be usefully engaged in tending animals in the pasture, while husbands and wives both worked on the many other tasks necessary to provide food, shelter, and clothing for themselves and their children. Their efforts often produced enough surplus to sell or trade.

True, there have been cities for many hundreds of years. But for a long time, they were inhabited by a much smaller percentage of the population than today. And the work done in these cities was still often done in a household setting. Children could observe their fathers and mothers at work, and often joined the family trade as they became of age.

It was the industrial revolution that began a steady procession of work and people away from homes and towards a “new normal.” Men were the first to leave the home. But if you’ve read your Charles Dickens, you already know that lots of women and even children were forced by poverty to follow their men to the factories.

At first, women whose husbands could afford to support them stayed at home and managed households. But over time, many women came to see this division of labor as undesirable. They wanted to join the work force too. Their preference for the office cubicle over the kitchen must, in part, have been due to the fact that the work of the household was (wrongly) seen as taking a background role in support of the husband’s “more important” professional work.

We were amazed to find that many of our assumptions about normal family life were based on a model only around 250 years old.

Practical Benefits of the Productive Household

Now, we understand that “most people in history did x” is not by itself a sufficient reason to choose x for oneself.

But the reason this historical study was so fascinating was that it brought into perspective the practical benefits that have been lost by the removal of production from the home setting.

First, is a simple loss of opportunities for families to work together towards shared objectives, and especially for children to observe their fathers at work.

Another significant loss comes in terms of the role of children in the home. In a household that is primarily organized around the consumption of outside goods, each child is an additional strain on resources, another “mouth to feed.” But in a productive household, children are assets and contributors. They arrive at a sense of themselves with the knowledge that they can make real and important contributions to meeting the needs of the family.

In other words, assigning children to collect eggs does a lot more for their self-esteem and confidence than telling them they are special, special snowflakes.

Now, we live in the 21^st century, and can’t entirely break free of the system. Our family is largely dependent on outside income. We have, you know, to pay for a mortgage, and various bills, and health insurance, and a retirement fund, and coffee, and various other foods that we can’t or don’t raise ourselves. The farm isn’t ready to cover too many of these expenses.

But by starting the farm, our goal was to take a step towards reclaiming the practical benefits of the productive home for ourselves and our children. We wanted to make our home as productive as we could. We wanted to give ourselves more time to work with our family. And we wanted to give our children the chance to help put food on our family’s table.

So is My Family Doomed to Dysfunction if I’m not a Farmer?

No!

The simple fact is that everyone does not have the opportunity to own enough land for a farm. And lots of animal bodily fluids, early mornings, and year-round outdoor work might be the stuff of which some people’s nightmares, not dreams, are made.

Farming is not be a good fit for every family’s tastes, talents, or abilities. Nevertheless, we do think it’s important for families to find some way to go against the mindset that the home is merely a place to relax and consume things. Shared production can become one of the most rewarding aspects of family life.

We happen to think that raising a certain amount of food is one of the best ways for families to be productive. But it’s certainly not the only way. A small garden might be a good solution if there isn’t room or time for a full-blown farm. Another idea might be a home-based business for selling baked goods or another handcrafted product that children can help to make. An even simpler path is just to get serious about involving children in cooking, cleaning, and the other daily tasks required to run any home.

We’ll end with a list of suggestions from noted agrarian writer Wendell Berry for incorporating production into a modern household:

“Such a household economy may employ the disciplines and skills of housewifery, of carpentry and other trades of building and maintenance, of gardening and other branches of subsistence agriculture, and even of woodlot management and woodcutting. It may also involve a “cottage industry” of some kind, such as a small literary enterprise.” Wendell Berry, “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine,” in What are People For?: Essays by Wendell Berry.

What do you think are the best ideas for making production part of life in a modern household? We’d love to hear them in the comments.