The Saturday Morning Post: Farming

A comment, on comments, then onto our regularly scheduled post.  I was alerted by Bob, that bloggers comment spam filter is suddenly hyperactive.  If you use blogger, go to your posting home page and click on the comments tab on the menu on the left.  At the top of the list of comments there is a drop down menu, one of the options is spam.  Click on that and it will show you a list of comments that have been blocked from your blog as spam.  The first time I checked the list was over 500, including many of my comments on my own blog.  On the right there is a tab marked manage.  That allows you to review up to 100 comments at a time, check on the icon or photo to select, and you can delete as spam, or publish as a real comment all that are selected.  I am checking mine every couple of days, and finding about 50 a week, with about half of them my friends, and the rest being spammer garbage.  Our best defense to fix the algorithm is to fight back and clarify the classification. 

Now on with the show. 

I was raised on a funny farm, 80 acres in the country, with only insects as livestock.  Before my grandfather bought it in the 1940s, it was a very old fashioned working farm with cows in the barn, and chickens running in the garden. Growing up we were surrounded by working farms.  Some of them were large and modern, some of them like the drunk on the corner were still farming as they had since electricity was introduced by rural electrification as part of the New Deal reforms after the depression.  My grandparents installed indoor plumbing in the early 1950's, in a house that was at least 100 years old when they remodeled it.    

I love watching farming.  The pace of the work, the changes in the seasons, the progression of crops, the uncertainty and joy of the harvest.  The landscape changes through the growing cycle, from the earthy smell of freshly plowed fields, to the sweetness of freshly cut hay, to the dust of grain, and the musty finality at the end of the growing season. 

Farmers watch the weather.  The weather changes what they do from day to day, and hour to hour.  Weather can change their futures and fortunes,  too much rain, or not enough rain, a late freeze, and early frost can make a difference between a good year, and a bad year.  In my life I only look at the temperature or rain to decide what coat to wear, farmers look at the temperature and rain to decide if the world will eat next month or next year.  

Farming has changed.  Modernization has moved farming to a much larger scale.  One person can farm 10 or 20 times the land they could in my grandfather's day. Crops are customized for the land and climate, livestock has changed to fit the desires of the customer and to lesson the loss. 

It has been a while since I have driven out of the city, to visit farmers, to watch the work, to catch the rhythm of season.  Mt. Vernon has a small historic farming operation, but much of it takes place behind the scenes, with a couple of cattle penned in for tourists to see, and sheep in the inner barn to entertain the visitors.