OFI 954: The Emphasis On Common Sense And Trying Until You Succeed

I had an interesting day yesterday, and I want to tell you all about it.

I have been thoroughly enjoying this holiday season and a bit of a break from my normal routine for the past four days or so.  However, even though I haven’t been podcasting every day or conducting interviews every day, I am still working on the farm every day during this holiday break.  I had a couple of observations to share with all of you from that.

To start, on Christmas Eve Day I wrapped up my work for the week and have been focused on friends, family and farm ever since.  We had a nice but small gathering for Christmas Eve at our house and then two Christmas dinner’s on Christmas Day.  You heard me correctly, we had two Christmas dinners.  Here is what happened.

As you all know, I grew up in the Central Valley of California.  So, I still have friends and family that live down there.  We had two different families call us to see if they could come visit us in Idaho during Christmas break so that they could escape the regulation and monotony of living in a California that is completely shut down with no sign of opening back up.  One of those families drove up here on Christmas Day with an arrival time of about 6pm on the schedule.

So, on Christmas morning after the chores were done and Autumm, Hattie and I opened presents I started cooking.  I made a Christmas dinner for our friends who would be arriving at 6.  I made stuffing, mashed potatoes, cut up brussel sprouts for cooking later, baked a pie and stuck a ham in the Traeger by about 2pm.  Then I hurried and did my evening chores early and went over to our families house for our official Christmas dinner that started at 3:30.  By 6pm we had wrapped that up, and we headed home.  Our friends were already here, and we got got the rest of dinner cooked and served and started a multi-day visit.

These are close friends, and they are city folks.  So, coming to stay on the farm is a novelty for them.  They always leave with stories they can share with the rest of their friends who also have no experience or knowledge about the way that we live our lives.  In truth, these are very close friends that have been a big part of our lives for a long time.  But, our lifestyles could not be more different, and when it comes to how and where we live, our values are far apart as well.

These friends have never been to our farm in the winter before.  Every time they have come it has been in the summer, and they have only seen summertime activities.  So, this time would be a whole new experience.  I had extra clothes, boots and gloves for the husband.  And to his credit, he did chores with me every morning and evening.  And, he was helpful.  It was a pleasure to have an extra set of hands to help get gates and do the feeding.  And it was cold and moist.  An inversion set in while they were here, so there was frozen condensation on every gate we had to open and it was never above freezing.

There were two events that took place while these folks were here that really made me appreciate this way of life.  The first one happened on Sunday afternoon at about noon.  All of us, except for their eldest daughter, took off at about noon to go grab a hamburger and shoot some pool.  It was cold and foggy out, and this seemed like a great way to spend a couple of hours.

The daughter that we left at the farm was out on a run when we left, so the front door remained unlocked for her to get back in the house.  We hadn’t got far when we got a call from her that she could not open the front door.  I was the last one out of the house, so I was positive that I had left the front door unlocked for her.  The latch on the door can be tricky every now and then, and I tried to talk her through getting the door open.  No matter what I tried, I could not get her into the house.

I had left the door into our garage unlocked as well, so I told her to go around to the back of the house to try this one.  This required her to go through our back gate.  Now, to preface what happened next I should tell you that for the two days that they had been there so far she had told several stories, but they all involved something she had read or something she had learned in one of her college classes.  Not once did she talk about first hand life experience in any of her stories.  So, earlier that morning I had talked with her and suggested that in the upcoming summer she get a job that was way out of her comfort zone in a place that was way off of her radar so she could have some experiences that would be new and challenging.  It just felt like she needed to do some problem solving and actual work outside of a school setting to broaden her perspectives.

When she got to the back gate I was proven correct.  This girl is unbelievably talented academically.  However, upon reaching the gate she asked me how to open it.  I was a little stunned at this question, but I told her to just lift the latch, pull and swing the gate open. She then asked me what a latch was.  I described this to her and then gave her instructions again.  However, she could not figure out how to get the latch to open.  This went on for a few minutes to my amazement.  And, I was never able to give her sufficient instructions for her to figure out how to open the gate.

In most cases you just tell someone to go through the gate and they make it happen.  You would never think that would have to instruct them on how to open it.  So, I was totally unprepared to give verbal instructions on how to open this very simple gate.  Ultimately she gave up on the gate and climbed over the fence to access the back yard.  As an instructor I had failed.

I couldn’t help but think of the difference between the way she had grown up and the way that Hattie is currently growing up.  This girl probably has never had to open a gate before.  There is probably a lot that she has never had to do before considering this world of electronics that we live in.  With no significant employment during high school, a lot of free time because she grew up in a subdivision and the ability to have everything brought to you living in a city you could actually find yourself not knowing how to open a gate or how to do a myriad of things that those of us who work with our hands take for granted.

It really wasn’t the lack of experience opening gates that stood out to me.  It was the lack of experience problem solving and looking at things mechanically.  I found myself feeling very happy with our decision to purchase our farm and raise our daughter the way that we had been raised.  The house that we lived in, prior to purchasing our farm did not have a fence.  Therefore, it did not have any gates. Had we stayed there, this could have easily been Hattie.  However, we made a conscience decision to live in a way that requires problem solving and self-reliance because we strongly value those skills and virtues.

Two springs ago Hattie had got off of the bus and walking down our driveway during kidding season.  Autumm was at work, and I had gone into Boise for some reason.  She saw that one of our goats was kidding but having trouble.  She called me and asked what to do.  I told her that she was going to have to pull the kids.  She had seen me assist before, but she had never done it herself.  However, she was the only one there and it had to be done.

Hattie was scared and unsure of herself, but I insisted that she do it.  She hung up the phone and got busy.  In about ten minutes I called her back, and she reported that she had successfully delivered twin kids.  The first kid had its head back, and she had to reach in, reposition it and get it started through the birth canal.  After that, everything went smoothly.

I was an am proud of Hattie for this, and she problem solves like this every day.  So much so, that we almost take it for granted.  But thinking of this in contrast to the college student who was staying at our house and could not open the gate, I know that based on our value system we made the correct decision.  I have a lot of things about living on a farm and living rural that I love, but being a self-sufficient problem solver is definitely in the top five of the reason that I value this lifestyle so much.

Later Sunday afternoon, after we returned from lunch, I had to load 8 pigs to take them to the butcher.  I had set things up the same way I always did, giving them access to the trailer days before so they would be used to going in and out.  I was supposed to be at the butcher to drop them off at 5pm, so I decided to start loading at 3pm, just in case I had any problems.

I thought I had my system of loading pigs down to a science, and I especially thought this time was going to be very easy.  I figured I could load them by myself, but if I needed help I had all of these people at my house that could help.  I tried loading them myself, and it became apparent very quickly that this group of pigs wasn’t just going to jump into the trailer like so many others had in the past.  So, I headed back to the house and told Hattie to get everyone a pair of boots and to head out to the pen to help me.

So, I had the entire family that was staying with us out in the pig pen, helping me to push and block and get these pigs loaded.  And yes, the college girl was there too, and she did a good job and demonstrated courage in the face of an activity that she never imagined herself being part of.

This particular load out ended up being quite arduous for some reason.  I was able to get three in the trailer immediately and then close them in with the center divider.  The following five all required individual attention, and they did not want to go.  We used panels and people and got them all right up to the back of the trailer.  However, on the previous night they had rooted some of the dirt up at the back of trailer and dug a little hole.  This did two things.  First, it made it more of a step up into the trailer.  Second, it made it see to the pig that they could sneak away from me, under the open trailer door.

The ultimate result of this was a bottleneck with the two pigs that were right up at the trailer door burrowed down in the dirt with their heads, and vision, below the trailer.  On a couple of occasions I literally had to lift their heads so they could see into the trailer and understand there was another way to go.  I was pushing them from behind and working to keep them from turning around.  On more than one occasion I stopped and hit the reset button and started all over.

After about an hour of frustration and pushing and sweating we got them all loaded.  I couldn’t help but think back to the very first time that we raised pigs.  When it was time to load them out I had had a similar experience.  I got to the point that I gave up, and we actually had the mobile butcher come out and take of business in the pen because of this.  However, those pigs were for us.  These pigs were for customers and had to be delivered to the butcher facility.  So, giving up was not an option.

When it was done and the pigs were loaded I was reminded of how far I have personally come since purchasing our farm.  There have been many experiences over the past nine years that seemed like they would be impossible to succeed at.  And there have been many times that I have had to hit the reset button and start over and try again and try again and try again until I finally figured it out and solved the problem.

Having this farm and owning my own livestock is really the first time that I have pushed myself beyond my comfort zone without a safety net.  On all the other farms or ranches I have ever worked on, there was always somebody above me in the chain of command that I could turn to for help or guidance.  This was the same when I was a police officer.  But being the owner of my own farm has forced me to face multiple situations in which I had to keep trying because there was nobody else to turn to for help.  And this has taught me the value of never giving up and having the attitude that failing is not an option.

This is a major way that having our farm has helped me grow as a person, and as I think back to Hattie pulling those kids the farm did the same for her on that day.  The emphasis on common sense and trying until you succeed have to be the greatest character traits that you develop taking on an endeavor like this.  No matter what I do in the future, I will always be grateful for chasing this dream and forcing myself into situations in which I am forced to accomplish more than I thought I was capable of.  Ultimately, this is the strength and the most enviable quality of those of us that choose to live this lifestyle.

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