FARMER RAGE

Hello all,

This post is going to address a bunch of special enraging situations that farmers, homesteaders, gardeners, and rural folks probably all experience at some time or another.

Life on the farm for me is super great- and I love my life. My family farms in the beautiful Nicola Valley, BC, Canada where we grow fruits and vegetables and raise chickens, turkeys, goats, and cows. We sell our fresh produce and eggs and seeds and plants at our on farm market stand. We eat a super deluxe diet of all our own produce, meats and cheeses, and our home baked sourdough breads and desserts and homebrewed mead. We are our own bosses and work on our own schedules and enjoy the changing seasons (especially summer- with all the juicy ripe fruits and swimming in the river right out our back door!)

I know that we are super fortunate and blessed to be living this life. I understand that it is very tricky for many folks in the world who desire this lifestyle to make their way there. I can only hope that all the would be farmers out there find their farms.....

Aside from all of the wonderful idyllic pastoral happenings on a family farm- this life style definitely comes with its own mountains of shit- and not just the wonderful types that transform into compost and feeds our orchards and gardens.

Prior to 2020 I was suffering from piles of terrible horrible life controlling symptoms- migraines, knee pain, elbow pain, neck pain and stiffness, tailbone pain, food intolerances, digestive disturbances- all sorts of nasty stuff that left me a total wreck wondering how the heck I could continue farming for the rest of my life.

I finally of course discovered Sarno's books, read them front to back 20 times total, and have overcome all of my symptoms and more. I still have to do plenty of talking to my brain- life keeps throwing shit at you and doesn't stop- hopefully with plenty of good easy times in between.....

Beyond the major common forms of buried rage that we unfortunate humans have to endure throughout our lives: abuse from parents, siblings, teachers, peers, authorities; also rage generators like dirty dishes in the sink, bills to pay, mean bosses, racism, rising prices and so and and so forth, there are plenty of extra things to talk to your brain about on the farm. So here is a list of a bunch off the top of my head.

'Trouble, you can't fool me, I see you behind that tree'- this song about sums up much of life on a farm.

THINGS THAT GENERATE BURIED RAGE IN OUR SUBCONSCIOUS THAT WE NEED TO TALK TO OUR BRAINS ABOUT- As in : tell your brain that you get it, these terrible things are going on in your life, and you're big and strong and you don't need terrible symptoms to distract you from them. You can handle this shit, and you don't need (current symptom) as a distraction. STOP THE PAIN BRAIN!

Winter:
Snow covering everything and needing shoveling or sweeping
Frozen water buckets for your chickens, cows, goats, horses
Frozen standpipe
Having to dip into frozen rivers for livestock water
Having to haul water great distances for your animals
Slipping with buckets full of water and pouring it all over yourself in sub zero temperatures
Broken plastic water buckets from your animals wrecking them
Frozen water in your wellhouse
Pump failure
Frozen water in your taps
Power out and no water anywhere
Animals wrecking your barns
Coop and barn doors not closing due to accumulated frozen bedding
Predators getting into your barns and coops and killing your animals
Sick animals
Wounded animals
Pain in the ass animals
BILLY GOATS especially
Violent Roosters
roosters beating up hens
pending chicken slaughter dates
chickens eating eggs and dirtying up clean eggs
wild birds eating your eggs
dead batteries (for your truck or solar system)
animals busting out of fences
animals wrecking fences
animals needing untangling from fences
cleaning incubators
cleaning chicken coops
cleaning barns
composting toilet systems
hauling firewood, hay, grain
dwindling piles of firewood, hay and grain
price increases with firewood, hay and grain
doing any and all chores when you have pain symptoms and there's nobody there to relieve you
frozen eggs in winter
frozen hands milking, gardening
frozen soil mix for spring planting
keeping a fire going in a greenhouse
mediocre equipment, buildings and tools
leaky barns and coops
lack of carpentry, gardening, mechanic, cheese making, food preserving skills etcetera (as in, nobody passed them on to you and you have to learn through trial and error and books and internet sites)
water restrictions
droughts
floods
fires
rodents
dead seeds
planting large plantings
harvesting in less than ideal conditions
having to put a price on your produce
complaining customers
bigger farms or stores that sell their produce way lower than yours and having to defend your prices and practices
animals eating your crops
mouse shit
packrats
fruit tree deaths
late frosts
early frosts
bad fruit harvests
dumping spoiled produce
animals that kick or butt
delivering food
setting up at farmer's markets (especially in bad weather and poor turnouts and when you would rather be at home on your beautiful farm)
rejected and returned produce for big stores
crop failures
multi-generational living
cramped homes
lack of plumbing knowledge
splinters
dusty hay
mouldy hay
flat tires
cracked fingers
cracked heels
no holidays
no tropical trips
isolation
longing for friends (or in the busy season, longing for a break from all the friends who might not stop coming)
hired help
crooked contractors
inferior produce
too much produce
produce so abundant that you're tripping over it everywhere and there's no clear counter space or time to deal with all so you work all day and night like a maniac preserving and picking and selling and sharing

natural disasters that destroy your farm (like our farm 'Monkey in the Garden' that got trashed in the 2021 floods where we lost 175 fruit trees, huge gardens, animals, 5.2 acres land, well, wellhouse, shop, tools 7 coops and barns, greenhouses, food and more)

laws that restrict you from selling everything you want to sell
fear of future restrictive laws
food buying trends
On and on and on

I'll stop here now because it is getting dark and I have trudge out 1/2 a kilometer through snow to feed our chickens, goats and cows, and smash the ice out of their water and lock them in so that cougars and bobcats don't tear them to shreds and keep the water dripping out of our taps to stop the water from freezing (as it did 5 days ago) and keep the fire burning so our house doesn't freeze up.

And then I'll get to relax with my lovely wife and daughter, eat some dessert, play a board game, have a hot bath, drink some mead, enjoy a woodstove cooked meal, watch a flick, and cozy into our warm beds.

So although I have plenty of things to talk to my brain about, life is super great and I wouldn't trade mine for anyone else's.

Happy Healing!

 

i don’t know whether to laugh or cry! Greatest farmer-rage list there ever was!

 

Don't stop moaning (or at least talking to your brain) about defrosting these hummingbird feeders. It is totally enraging and in a perfect world we would be surrounded with costant blooming nectar loaded flowers for all of the hummingbirds and bees to enjoy while we just languish around in their company with our cup of tea always full and hot

 

I mean, constantly blooming flowers. Like Garden of Eden/ tropical botanical garden type niceness- don't all creatures deserve that? Oh well, we just have to struggle along....