One of my classmates took this photo and posted it to social media with the caption, “If you can’t smell this photo, are you even a farmer?” That is funny because if you have ever been in a field with rotting melons on a hot Arkansas afternoon, then you can look at that photo and very quickly draw to mind the smells and feels of that field.
While that is a joke, meant more for commiseration amongst those who have had to work in that field, it does bring up the question of farmer authenticity. As with every profession, there is always the question of when does one go from being a rookie or noob to a true member of the profession. I have entered into a number of professions, in my life, where I started at the bottom and had to endure the “proving myself” phase before I could be accepted as a true member of the profession.
In a profession like teaching, a rookie teacher has a hard first year, but there is exponential growth that occurs in that initial time. By the second year of teaching, there is already a level of experience and knowledge that one has accumulated to set you apart from 1st-year teachers. By the five year mark, I really started to get good enough at all the elements of the job that I felt like I was able to be more creative and impactful in my presentation of the material and balance it with my life outside the school.
That five year mark seems to be a consistent bench mark across many professions. I remember being told that five years was when you stopped being a rookie many times by many people in many different professions, and always kind of bristling at that blanket standard. I was even once told by a very angry supervisor that I shouldn’t even be allowed to speak till I had 10 years on the job. But the fact was that each year as I progressed toward that mark, I would compound experience and knowledge, and I would come more to agree with the sentiment that 5 years was the point at which one really starts to get good enough at any profession to truly be an independent operator without the need for training wheels.
In farming, a new farmer is considered to be anyone with less than 10 years of experience. That is an arbitrary number created by the USDA, and it is mostly a standard used to designate government aid windows and categories. I am in my first year of farming, and I will be a new farmer until I’m 60-years-old, if I farm every year going forward. That’s kind of daunting, but it is also kind of arbitrary.
In my short time farming, I have experienced loss and success; I’ve known frustration and joy. It’s been exhaustively hot and frigid cold. I’ve put my hand through a rotten melon, had dozens of kinds of bugs crawl on me, and I’ve eaten a variety of produce right off the plant. I look forward to farming because this is not a profession of titles and promotions: it’s a dance with nature. Sometimes I will try to lead, but mostly she will lead, and each time the music stops I will be able to feed people.
Therefore, I tend to subscribe to the most simple definition of who is a farmer: do you grow and sell crops; then you’re a real farmer.
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