Friday, May 7, 2010

Hard Work

This one is for Holly. She raised some interesting points in her comment. Ranching and Farming is hard work. It is tough to raise food. If it was easy and paid well more people would be doing it. So, kids flock to the cities where it is a set work day, you are paid by the hour, and recieve benefits and retirement.

When ranching or farming the animals and the crops do not have a clock. You can't tell a cow that is calving you will come back tomorrow because it is five. You can't let a sick lamb die because there is no overtime. A farmer can't take a vacation during harvest time. AND the markets dictate how much you are paid.

Personally, I know how hard it is to ranch and farm. So do many that are working 9-5 in urban America but they don't tell their story. That was the point of Wednesday's post. Even if you aren't doing it now, you still have a legacy to protect. A sustainable (whatever that word means), nutritous, wholesome food source which your parents, grandparents, or great grandparents help(ed) produce.

3 comments:

  1. I too, am concerned with the fact that ranching and small farming is going by the wayside. It's frightening because we will have even less control of how our food is raised and less of a personal stake in it. Big business is not always in our best interests. Look at McDonalds and WalMart.....how they changed with super market success.

    I follow Linda P.'s blog (and if you don't know her you should take a look)Just Another Day on the Prairie, who is a rancher up north. Just recently the weather caused a tremendous amount of extra work for her. As I read the posts about the cows calving in bad weather, building the breaks, etc. I thought about the fact that here I sat in my living room while she and Bossman were out caring for what could eventually become my dinner.

    Sobering thought that.......

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  2. Holly, I know Linda also. And we don't do it for the money, also, no one forces us to do it. We do it for the love of what we do. If you don't have a passion for it, you won't last. MHO.

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  3. I don't know if it's a passon for Linda, but for sure it's a way of life. You have to be comfortable doing it and enjoy it somewhat because it .can't. be for the money. There just isn't enough of it to pay for the hours and hard physical work that get put into it.

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