Rural Life

Before reading this post on rural life, the reader should understand: I have never lived a rural life. However, I have been reading a good bit about the day-to-day challenges of farm life and have what may be an inexplicable desire to live in the country, work the land, and experience first-hand the challenges and rewards of rural life.

People who are able to successfully contend with life on a farm or ranch deserve far more respect than most people typically accord them. The conveniences I take for granted in my urban life are rare treats for my rural brethren. For them, the grocery store is not just down the block. Blockbuster Video is not readily available for their entertainment, not that they would often have the time to watch videos. I drop my shirts at the drycleaners and pick them up later the same day. I suspect folks in rural environs rarely have a need for a drycleaners...but when they do, it's most certainly not convenient.

I have a lawn service take care of mowing my yard. I call a pest control service when I see evidence of ants or roaches. Whenever my refrigerator runs low on fresh vegetables, I can visit the supermarket to get a fresh supply. If my wife and I are not in the mood to cook dinner, we can visit one of hundreds of wonderful restaurants in our area, dining on anything from pad kee mao at a Thai restaurant to lamb vindaloo at an Indian restaurant. Most rural communities in my part of the country don't have a lot of Thai or Indian restaurants...most have a Dairy Queen, or, at best, a locally-owned diner whose proprietor learned to cook vegetables in the old school: cook them until they are soft enough to drink from a glass.

So what is it that I find appealing about living without all these conveniences that I have come to expect? Part of the appeal is the sense of self-sufficiency that can come from living on a farm or a ranch. Many of the things we take for granted come to us as a result of the work of the farmer or rancher. He or she works hard to put food on our table. And that food also finds its way to his or her table. I imagine it must give the farmer or rancher a great sense of pride to know that, as a direct result of his work, people have food on the table.

How many of us who live the easy life in urban America give much thought to what it takes to run a productive farm or ranch? How many of us view farmers and ranchers, consciously or not, as "hicks" who don't possess the degree of sophistication that we urbanites have? I'm afraid honest answers to those questions would shame us. Rural folks might have similarly jaundiced thoughts about urbanites if they were to see the vacant looks in our eyes when asked about aflatoxin, Power Take Offs, barrows, 3-point hitches, disc harrows, box blades, scraper blades, swathers, jacks & jennies, ROPS, or ridge-till.

Lately, I've been working to learn a bit more about rural life...what it's really like. Like city life, rural life has its ups and downs. Methamphetamine use, I'm told, is actually a much greater problem in rural communities than it is in the city. Poverty is as much of a problem, if not more so, in small towns and in unincorporated areas than in cities. Unemployment is high in rural America (thanks, in part, to the diminution of the small farm, courtesy of corporate agriculture). Rural life is hard, no doubt about it. But it can be exceptionally rewarding, I think, because the effort it requires to live successfully gives people a real sense of accomplishment when things go right.

I have tended to think of life on a farm as being less expensive than life in the city. That may be true of farm-hands, but farm owners are in an expensive business. The costs of farm machinery that is absolutely required to operate a farm today are astronomical. Aside from the money invested in equipment, the farmer must invest enormous amounts of time to learn how to operate and maintain farm machinery, because he does not have the luxury of dropping it off at the dealership for repair. And the farmer must invest heavily in seed, fertilizer, and other farm chemicals. And land is getting increasingly expensive. I'm told that, if a farmer had to buy the land today to grow his crops, he would not be able to do it because the price of land has gotten out of reach. So, today's farmer either works land he inherited (or bought many, many years ago) or he leases land from someone else who bought the land long ago.

I recently came across a television channel devoted to rural life and I am impressed with it. It's called RFDTV (named after Rural Free Delivery, RFD). It's geared toward farmers and ranchers, providing educational content aimed at making them more productive; it also has entertainment content directed toward rural communities. Recent programs I've watched (including AG PhD, Farmweek, Horse Sense, Training Mules and Donkeys, and Farm Bureau Today) have dealt with:

• correcting soil compaction caused by heavy farm equipment (soil compaction can limit root depth; the program sited corn grown in fields that have been properly prepared to address compaction as having up to 100% greater productivity than that grown in compacted fields)
• training horses to follow gentle leads
• comparisons between different types of tractors and implements used with them

I've learned alot about farm equipment, etc. from other websites, including the following, and if you're interested in learning more about rural life, you may find them of interest:

• Massey Ferguson farm equipment
• Yesterday's Tractors antique/used tractor website
• Agriculture Online
• Living the Country Life magazine
• Half Century of Progress
• Farm Videos
• Dairy Herd Management
• John Deere website
• Craig Cameron Horsemanship website