Farm livin’ is NOT the life for me

Farm in Rural OhioIf you have any romantic notions about country living, I am here to dispel them for you. Living in the country sucks… a lot. I should know, I spent 19 years experiencing it first hand. I learned two very important things while living here. A) That you can blow stop signs at 120 MPH only when the corn in the corn fields is under your sight line and B) cows deserve to be eaten.

I am at my parents’ house this weekend. My first visit back since the accident. My father’s hand is healing slowly but healing nonetheless, thank you for asking.

My parents are not farmers, but, when I was quite young, they made the choice to leave the more urban landscape of commuting distance from NYC to come live in the rural supposed bliss of farm country Ohio. Somehow I think I got the shaft on this move.

I grew up going to school with farm hands and 4-H members. Future Farmers of America was (and is) still an active club at my high school. The county fair really was about who raised the biggest pig and the tears that came after because you did not.

Growing up among farmers teaches you a few things about gardening and growing things. Most of those lessons have to do with how easily things don’t grow, no matter how much money you spend or how long you have been growing things or how much you really need them too grow. I saw more than one rainy spring or dry summer ruin a crop for the year. I have seen more than a few farms close their doors forever because there was just one too many seasons like that. Gardening as a hobby is fun. Gardening for a living is a little scary.

Growing up among farmers has also shaped many of my views on organic and non-organic growing. There are things you can do (and should) on a small scale in a home garden that just are not monetarily feasible in a large scale farming operation. Compost is always one of the first to come to mind. Looking out over a full sized Ohio corn field (which is just a spit on the ground compared to a Nebraska corn field), I cannot even imagine how you would spread compost over that much ground and where that much compost would come from to begin with.

That, combined with the fact that most farms in the US are not growing direct to consumer food products, unless we start eating organically fed meat, buying organically made plastics and using organically enriched gasoline, your average farmer has very little incentive to grow organically. Their profit margin is slim as it is and a farmer selling ethanol corn will not be doing so for long if he can’t compete price wise.

Along comes GM corn which greatly reduces the need for chemicals and we pitch a fit about that too. We really need to make up our minds on what we want from rural America. Less chemicals, cheap food, cheap products, small farms… these things do not fit well into the same equation. The small farmer just can’t do the math on that one and so they do the best they can until they just can’t anymore.

Yep, country living sucks. It’s a romantic notion to say otherwise. Cows are not cute. Lazy summer days get real boring, real quick. And large scale organic farming is not something as easy as spreading the compost from the worm bin out back

4 thoughts on “Farm livin’ is NOT the life for me
  1. Pingback: Country Living - Sometimes I think I was wrong

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  3. Ryan McReynolds on

    I’m a city native who lives out in Farm Country and let me tell you, living in Farm Country sucks, especially when you have no license to drive, no one to train you to drive, you can’t even afford a Car due to no job and the Government paying you to sit on your butt which you have tried very hard to convert from lazy butt to hard working butt.

    Yes I tried and tried to get job in my sucky farm town but no one hires me, most don’t even give me a lousy interview when my English is way better than those job stealing illegals that can’t even speak English.

    And my family has tried hard like slaves to sell my House so that I can move to big city and have a hard working butt again, cause my goal is to have a working butt instead of a lazy butt, and I want to work hard and sweat hard too.

    Farm country sucks and no one will convince me that it’s better than the city, I know better, I want to be the hard worker bee I was trained to be but Farm Country hinders this for me.

    If one would rather I be a worker bee instead of a lazy butt, then please pray for my hosue to sell, so I can get out of Farm Country and form a band and record a song about just how much Farm Country sucks.

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  6. Seiko on

    This is totally true. There is nothing to do in the country. It is o boring it’s ridicoulous. Only caveman actually want to live there. Suburbans are the best places to live and always will be, take that!

  7. Seiko on

    Not to mention that nothing is open late. No midnight partying. There is never a amusement park to be found within less than 1hr, scratch that 2 hrs. If your off the coast you will never reach a beach unless you are on vacation.
    People should’ve never left waterside anyway, we all know this to be a true fact.

  8. Seiko on

    Another thing to mention is that they always say people int he country are nicer, but it’s a false appearance. Country people feel they must be nice to people because it is socially acceptable in their society. “Being nice” at first rather than being reserved or unfriendly is simply the socially acceptable action, where no such thing really exists in city or suburban areas. Isn’t pretending to be a nice a total lie? Yes, it is. They are actually less accepting-you can bet your bottom dollar that they all hate gays and hate your appearance too.

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