So You Want To Be A Farmer?

I’ve crossed paths with a lot of farmer wannabes while I travel around the state presenting a travelogue on my book Farms & Foods of Ohio: From Garden Gate to Dinner Plate. Inevitably, someone approaches me after the program and says, “I have been thinking about becoming a farmer and now I’m determined.”

“Wow! That’s great,” I’ll say. You never want to quash a potential food producer. But behind my encouraging smile, I'm thinking, “Don’t quit your day job just yet.”

I too have a rather clouded but romantic vision of myself as a farmer. What stops me from hurling myself from my suburban existence into rural life is that I’ve personally experienced a slice of farm life from watching, working with, and listening to farmers. I’ve heard about the seasonal help that goes AWOL during the harvest, felt the knots in my lower back after a day harvesting strawberries, and watched helplessly as a big (and I mean BIG) rain turn a newly planted field into a small lake. It’s not that I’m afraid of hard work, I’m just not into disappointment. I better serve this profession in writing.

So as my Power Point presentation powers down, I tell the audience that they have just seen the upside of farming: small snippets where everyone is happy, everything in the camera’s small frame is pretty, and everything, from Mother Nature to creditors, is smiling down on this acreage. This is how my dream of being a farmer plays out in my head:

It's just another day on the farm and I rise early and slip into my well-worn, soft overalls that flatter my figure. I walk out on my back porch with my first cup of coffee in hand. A gentle breeze blows across my face and my lush field of heirloom tomato plants, heavy and dotted with bright fruits, stretches before me.

The sun is just coming up and it gently warms my skin. By noon, the temperature hits a high of 78 degrees and I'm thick into harvesting perfectly smooth, sun warmed tomatoes for the farmers market tomorrow. I’m happy they will command a premium price to a legion of 'mater fans wait for me, dollars clutched in their fists, as I pull into the market.

I will invest a portion of my profits in a mutual fund and then take a cruise this winter with the excess money I'm not sure what to do with.

Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Here's the real story:

It's just another day on the farm. I rise early and slip into the dirty jeans I've worn for three days straight. I've just noticed the zipper is broke. Too bad. It's harvest season and I really don't have time to do laundry or mend anything. I down my first cup of coffee—I think that was coffee— and head into the fields.

It's August and already before the sun comes up, it's in the upper 70s, no breeze. I plan on working fast, but the mud from two days of heavy rain showers might slow me down. There seem to be more bugs than usual this time of year. I'm learning that they are an acquired taste as they buzz in and out of my nostrils, ears, and mouth.

The beautiful tomatoes I had a week ago have now cracked and swelled on the vine with the rain and blistering heat. They have to come off the vine—today! They are heirloom tomatoes and everyone at the farmers market want them—and they want them to look perfect. Now I have to spend a lot of time at market educating my customers that beauty is only skin deep when it comes to heirlooms.

This year, I will invest my profits in building a grow tunnel so that I can plant my tomatoes earlier next year, hopefully harvest earlier and be the first at market to offer tomatoes. With the excess money—oh, yeah. Never mind. There is no excess money.

The bottom line here is that the farmers I meet, who hang in there year after year, weathering the constant variables of farming (too much rain, not enough, bugs, pests, heat, cold, frost, broken equipment) have a passion that comes from within, much deeper than just thinking about how wonderful, personally fulfilling, environmentally responsible, and fun it would be to farm.

A lot of us wannabes, including myself, are really just gardeners. When our three cucumber plants contract downy blight and drop dead, we can still go down the road to the local farmer and get our fill—unless his 300 cucumber plants fail. Guess which one of us has a bigger problem?

So you want to be a farmer? Good for you. Work with, talk and listen to a farmer before you sell everything you own to buy 6 acres and a mule. Calculate how much you want to make your first season. Then come up with a figure you’ll feel comfortable losing. And be sure that you recognize the difference between being a gardener and a farmer. One finds pleasure in working the earth; the other regards it as a passion.

The photo is of Lisa Sippel at The Sippel Family Farm in Mount Gilead, OH