Medic24
Well-known member
It's so odd, I have to wonder sometimes, and I sure hope it's not just me..................But at times such as yesterday, I had to sit, somewhat depressed and worried if I am doing everything I can do right for me, my family, my farm,................why did I make a career ending decision for early retirement to farm full time, and thus work harder then I ever have before, and now make more financially as well as heart breaking mistakes then I ever had before in my life?
Why is it that I have had to learn the same things over and over again, but more often in a different way just to make things continue to work? And I am not saying 'working smoothly'.
This summer's drought was more then harsh in so many ways, I realized finally that most of what I do depends on rain...not too much, but certainly not as dry as we have been. I will actually make less then half of my income from previous years due to that fact. Do I ask my wife to continue to suppliment the farm accounts or do I take one of those low interest emergency loans being offered?
I, like almost everyone else here wakes up everyday very glad to be alive, really I do, but also we daily are faced to make so many decisions alone, as to where we need to take our farms, our ranches, our businesses, and ultimately our family and our lives from this moment onward, sometimes we make these decisions blindly, or on faith.
We take so many chances based upon the information we have on hand that effects us, information that changes literally with the weather, politics, foreign ploicy,economy, human emotion, or something as simply and isolated as case of livestock disease ten thousand miles away. I have learned some time ago, that even with expert advice, most farming decisions have to be made with crossed fingers, hard work, and a bit of luck.
I grew up on a huge dairy farm, but I must not have been paying attention all around, so much has changed, feeding healthcare, input COSTS Vs. net, as my father (whom even at that time, also HAD to work another full time job) always begged us do do something far different then that, yet he stuck with it, with all of it's ups and at the end......down's. We were never rich in the pocket, although we sure had lots of neat stuff that the other school kids didn't have, such as tractors, bailers, all kinds of other equipment etc, etc. Not to mention several hundred dairy cows. I never knew that we weren't wealthy like the other kid's, as were the very last farm in a suburban area until finally the squeeze proved to be to much. And now, I am faced with the same thing. Beef instead of dairy is the only difference.........suburbia is lapping at the very fence lines, I am no longer surrounded by fields, or forests, but my large multimillion dollar homes, with lawns that were professionally landscaped, and dare my cattle get out tread on them, and yes it happens at great cost to me.
I know things are changing by simply watching my local Tractor Supply store, changing it's agricultural stock slowly over to almost exclusively, horses, pets, and items for the home,and garden etc. It took time, and the change was almost inperceptable, but I had to notice it when I went in a few weeks ago to order parts for equipment that I have annually either rebuilt or done major overhauls on year in and year out.........not only were these common parts no longer stocked, but I had to explain in great detail to the sales folks what I wanted. I wasn't even shocked when one young lady asked me if I was a real farmer, and when I answered yes, she point blank stated that she didn't know there were many around here anymore, and what's it like to be a dinasour? Now I am almost 75% sure she was trying to be amusing....but it is starting me to wonder............am I just not seeing something that everyone else is or has?
I awake to a cow or calf bawling at any hour of the night, and wonder if something is wrong? the dogs barking, and again, is something going on at the barn, the pastures with the cattle? Do my neighbors in those high dollar homes worry about the same things? Are these new neighbors keeping the secret from me and each other that they to were once farmers but ashamed to admit that they sold out?
I order more fuel for the equipment and find that I have to sell more then one or two cows and calves to pay for it,a s the agricultural 'discount' no longer exisits.
Everytime I get hurt, it's usually nothing serious, thank goodness, but it's many more times then my lawn mowing, home gardening neighbors. The several times I have been hurt seriously, I was lucky, blessed, and fortunate to have good family and neighbors that were there with genuine offers to help..but, in many cases how can you teach a person all that they need to know to do what comes natural and now simply to us...................but the friend helping you out while you lay in bed, by moving the herds from pasture to another creats a mess when he and his friends drive them through the fences, or they leave a gate open next to the highway, and the local law shows up on your door to let you know you now have cattle walking and running for miles around. Or just as bad.......some one comes to help you by feeding for you....and leaves the feed room doors open, and now you have a number of sick and dying animals laying around blown up like balloons...yes it's all happened to me............
Why do we do what we do.................have I ever met a REAL famer or rancher that was financially solvent without any other means of income? I can't remember so.
I was hospitalized for like the 5th or 6th time in as many years this past spring, and although my wife is a physician (elsewhere now) I had the a social worker come into the room asking for income and insurance information as it is an international health policy and very confusing.........anyway she comes back a while later and offers me (based upon MY income) emergency medicaid coverage to take care of any shortages in the coverage that would occure.......of course through my pride, my answer was a resounding NO!, but the thing I could not forsee was the absolute rediculous cost for a short stay along with a couple of ambulance trips from a smaller facility to a larger city hospital, along with all of the medical personal that hitch their wagons to your insurance...............I used to enjoy somewhat of a curtesy medical discount, one that I no longer get......and I am still in shock that so few days,even with no surgery (I refused and signed out AMA) could cost so many TENS of thousands of dollars! The only bright spot was my orthopedic doctor, (a family friend) treated me nearly free, and paid me the highest compliment when he said " You do know that I can get you on full disabilty, and could have done so a long time ago, but I have to give you credit, I know you will refuse it to your grave, and you just keep on goin as if you have never ever been hurt or sick, I only wish I could say that for some of the people that walk into my office begging for disabilty when the only problem is a case of the lazy ass"......Yes that made me proud.
But, now here I am watching it rain, making mud out of what was dust all summer long, over 20 acres of what was late yet decent hay laying on the ground for the past wet week, knowing that I was talked into giving and inexpensively selling hay to my friends ( I try to never take advantage of bad situations, as it will most def. come back to you!) and now, I wonder how I to am going to make it throug without buying back hay at huge prices.
I am rambling I know.......but this has culminated a week or more of worry, about the future, my mistakes, and failures......these are the times we tend to forget our successes and the like.
I know know why they have a hotline to advise downhearted farmers and the like goin on these days.........
I find myself more and more seeking the solice and councel of friends that have the same life as we do, but it seems we also share the same problems, many and most at the same time.........
So do I quit, throw up my hands? sell the stock, equipment, and parcel off the land for houses? And then what? Go to work for some 25 year old kid fresh out of college that has no idea that you quit growing his food, and providing his steaks for the grill, but doesn't really care because he knows they will make more of the same in some factory in China, along with the salads, and milk that seems to appear on his gracery market shelves and thusly on his plate?
Bottom line, I am more and more wondering if it as all worth it?
I love the livestock, I love to see things grow and thrive, I especially love to see something come of nothing, or an animal that you thought was lost make a recovery (even if the time effort and cost was so much more then you will ever get back)
But, no matter how they struggled, no matter how hard they no doubt wanted different, the 'dinosours' did die out, so I wonder, being an independant singly family farm, am I destined to go by way of the dinosour? :?: :cboy:
Submitted to you, for perusall or amusement as it may be, on a cold, rainy, damp, forlorn day....and yes..... I have to go....check on the livestock.......
:cboy: :cboy:
Why is it that I have had to learn the same things over and over again, but more often in a different way just to make things continue to work? And I am not saying 'working smoothly'.
This summer's drought was more then harsh in so many ways, I realized finally that most of what I do depends on rain...not too much, but certainly not as dry as we have been. I will actually make less then half of my income from previous years due to that fact. Do I ask my wife to continue to suppliment the farm accounts or do I take one of those low interest emergency loans being offered?
I, like almost everyone else here wakes up everyday very glad to be alive, really I do, but also we daily are faced to make so many decisions alone, as to where we need to take our farms, our ranches, our businesses, and ultimately our family and our lives from this moment onward, sometimes we make these decisions blindly, or on faith.
We take so many chances based upon the information we have on hand that effects us, information that changes literally with the weather, politics, foreign ploicy,economy, human emotion, or something as simply and isolated as case of livestock disease ten thousand miles away. I have learned some time ago, that even with expert advice, most farming decisions have to be made with crossed fingers, hard work, and a bit of luck.
I grew up on a huge dairy farm, but I must not have been paying attention all around, so much has changed, feeding healthcare, input COSTS Vs. net, as my father (whom even at that time, also HAD to work another full time job) always begged us do do something far different then that, yet he stuck with it, with all of it's ups and at the end......down's. We were never rich in the pocket, although we sure had lots of neat stuff that the other school kids didn't have, such as tractors, bailers, all kinds of other equipment etc, etc. Not to mention several hundred dairy cows. I never knew that we weren't wealthy like the other kid's, as were the very last farm in a suburban area until finally the squeeze proved to be to much. And now, I am faced with the same thing. Beef instead of dairy is the only difference.........suburbia is lapping at the very fence lines, I am no longer surrounded by fields, or forests, but my large multimillion dollar homes, with lawns that were professionally landscaped, and dare my cattle get out tread on them, and yes it happens at great cost to me.
I know things are changing by simply watching my local Tractor Supply store, changing it's agricultural stock slowly over to almost exclusively, horses, pets, and items for the home,and garden etc. It took time, and the change was almost inperceptable, but I had to notice it when I went in a few weeks ago to order parts for equipment that I have annually either rebuilt or done major overhauls on year in and year out.........not only were these common parts no longer stocked, but I had to explain in great detail to the sales folks what I wanted. I wasn't even shocked when one young lady asked me if I was a real farmer, and when I answered yes, she point blank stated that she didn't know there were many around here anymore, and what's it like to be a dinasour? Now I am almost 75% sure she was trying to be amusing....but it is starting me to wonder............am I just not seeing something that everyone else is or has?
I awake to a cow or calf bawling at any hour of the night, and wonder if something is wrong? the dogs barking, and again, is something going on at the barn, the pastures with the cattle? Do my neighbors in those high dollar homes worry about the same things? Are these new neighbors keeping the secret from me and each other that they to were once farmers but ashamed to admit that they sold out?
I order more fuel for the equipment and find that I have to sell more then one or two cows and calves to pay for it,a s the agricultural 'discount' no longer exisits.
Everytime I get hurt, it's usually nothing serious, thank goodness, but it's many more times then my lawn mowing, home gardening neighbors. The several times I have been hurt seriously, I was lucky, blessed, and fortunate to have good family and neighbors that were there with genuine offers to help..but, in many cases how can you teach a person all that they need to know to do what comes natural and now simply to us...................but the friend helping you out while you lay in bed, by moving the herds from pasture to another creats a mess when he and his friends drive them through the fences, or they leave a gate open next to the highway, and the local law shows up on your door to let you know you now have cattle walking and running for miles around. Or just as bad.......some one comes to help you by feeding for you....and leaves the feed room doors open, and now you have a number of sick and dying animals laying around blown up like balloons...yes it's all happened to me............
Why do we do what we do.................have I ever met a REAL famer or rancher that was financially solvent without any other means of income? I can't remember so.
I was hospitalized for like the 5th or 6th time in as many years this past spring, and although my wife is a physician (elsewhere now) I had the a social worker come into the room asking for income and insurance information as it is an international health policy and very confusing.........anyway she comes back a while later and offers me (based upon MY income) emergency medicaid coverage to take care of any shortages in the coverage that would occure.......of course through my pride, my answer was a resounding NO!, but the thing I could not forsee was the absolute rediculous cost for a short stay along with a couple of ambulance trips from a smaller facility to a larger city hospital, along with all of the medical personal that hitch their wagons to your insurance...............I used to enjoy somewhat of a curtesy medical discount, one that I no longer get......and I am still in shock that so few days,even with no surgery (I refused and signed out AMA) could cost so many TENS of thousands of dollars! The only bright spot was my orthopedic doctor, (a family friend) treated me nearly free, and paid me the highest compliment when he said " You do know that I can get you on full disabilty, and could have done so a long time ago, but I have to give you credit, I know you will refuse it to your grave, and you just keep on goin as if you have never ever been hurt or sick, I only wish I could say that for some of the people that walk into my office begging for disabilty when the only problem is a case of the lazy ass"......Yes that made me proud.
But, now here I am watching it rain, making mud out of what was dust all summer long, over 20 acres of what was late yet decent hay laying on the ground for the past wet week, knowing that I was talked into giving and inexpensively selling hay to my friends ( I try to never take advantage of bad situations, as it will most def. come back to you!) and now, I wonder how I to am going to make it throug without buying back hay at huge prices.
I am rambling I know.......but this has culminated a week or more of worry, about the future, my mistakes, and failures......these are the times we tend to forget our successes and the like.
I know know why they have a hotline to advise downhearted farmers and the like goin on these days.........
I find myself more and more seeking the solice and councel of friends that have the same life as we do, but it seems we also share the same problems, many and most at the same time.........
So do I quit, throw up my hands? sell the stock, equipment, and parcel off the land for houses? And then what? Go to work for some 25 year old kid fresh out of college that has no idea that you quit growing his food, and providing his steaks for the grill, but doesn't really care because he knows they will make more of the same in some factory in China, along with the salads, and milk that seems to appear on his gracery market shelves and thusly on his plate?
Bottom line, I am more and more wondering if it as all worth it?
I love the livestock, I love to see things grow and thrive, I especially love to see something come of nothing, or an animal that you thought was lost make a recovery (even if the time effort and cost was so much more then you will ever get back)
But, no matter how they struggled, no matter how hard they no doubt wanted different, the 'dinosours' did die out, so I wonder, being an independant singly family farm, am I destined to go by way of the dinosour? :?: :cboy:
Submitted to you, for perusall or amusement as it may be, on a cold, rainy, damp, forlorn day....and yes..... I have to go....check on the livestock.......
:cboy: :cboy: