It is the backside of August, and we are on the other side of the dog days of summer. I have always thought this was the time when farmers are wrapping things up for the year. The post harvest period of putting the ground to rest for the year; that’s not true here.
We just planted another round of carrots on Thursday, and we are most likely to plant a bunch of brassicas today. The cycle of planting, cultivating, and harvesting is a wheel that keeps turning year round for some farmers. The image of the conventional farmer growing a large crop and doing a large harvest for a once a year payout is a type of farming that I probably will not end up doing. I will most likely be a small-scale farmer growing specialty crops for the duration of my farming career.
With farming year-round, or close to it, there is a constant cycle of planting and caring for plants. There is a constant battle against pests. There is a struggle to stay motivated to produce.
In the farm school environment, I’ve gotten to a point where the challenge is to stay motivated. There’s not a lot of new that is happening at this point with regard to the daily labors. Instead, it is repetitive and the working conditions are extremely hot right now. There are a lot of factors that challenge the daily motivation levels, but I am persisting.
It’s like when I look at this plants and think, “are y’all going to produce anything or do we just call it?” I think there grows an apathy to the process at this point because I’m not producing, harvesting, and selling for personal profit. There isn’t more of a return than the actual growing, and with 12 people sharing the experience there just can’t be enough adulation and excitement to go around for everyone all the time.
So I have to find individual motivation. Something to keep getting me up and dressed in the morning and heading out to the heat. Something to encourage me to show up with fresh eyes and an enthusiastic mindset. Something. For me that something at this point is duty.
When I was in the Coast Guard, there were the three core values of service that I had ingrained in me: Honor, Respect, and Devotion to Duty. It’s that devotion to duty that I call upon when all other motivators run out. The commitment to doing something simply because I said I would, and so I will. It doesn’t have to be fun, it just has to get done.
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