Thursday, April 12, 2012

An Explanation

Well, here I am again, back to the blogosphere to share my experiences and reflections of my latest adventure.  I will be spending the next ten to twelve months working alongside my dad and learning the management of our family’s farm.  The decision to make this commitment has been a long-time coming and one I have desperately needed to decide on.  The question of whether or not I want to farm for the rest of my life has been present in my mind since high school.  It is understood that my sister and I will equally inherit my father’s portion of the farm and will be equally responsible for the management of that portion.  There is also an understanding between my sister and I that we will do whatever it takes to ensure our family’s farm STAYS in our family.  We both share that conviction and feel that connection with our land.  Yet it is fascinating to me to reflect on how I have reached this point in my life – the point in which I am determined to learn the management and live the life my father does for an entire year with such conviction for the future of agriculture. 

Most people who know anything about me know that I am a farm girl.  I embrace that as an essential and significant part of my identity.  But it may surprise many that this was not always the case.  There was never any question that I was involved in our farm from the time I was old enough to push a square bale off of the hayrack.  When I could pull a weed from the garden.  When I could hold a lamb still on my lap.  When I knew my numbers well enough to put check duplicates in numerical order.  I can’t even tell you when I became aware of the expectation to pitch in; when I became aware that in order for our FAMILY to survive, everyone had to work for the betterment of the farm.  It was an early realization, though.  I still distinctly remember thinking “At least I know what work is” when hearing complaints about household chores from my classmates in first or second grade.  To be sure, this and the idea of “working hard for a living” were phrases I had heard my parents say at various times of my childhood, thereby they entered into my own vocabulary, but I never realized then how profoundly those ideas would follow me in life.  Despite my continual participation in various farming tasks growing up, I never felt the same kind of joy or interest in farming as my sister did.  She was more active in   4-H and FFA than I ever was or ever had any inclination to be.  There was always a sense of OBLIGATION rather than MOTIVATION when I did these tasks.  I certainly became aware of the fact that if I didn’t pull my full weight someone else (either one of my parents) would pick up the slack because the task needed to be done and done accurately the first time.  In all honesty, there were times I resented the farm and how demanding it was.  And, while I was in my adolescence with a growing friend group, how limiting it was.  And yet, it was in high school, when I worked the farm during the summers just as every other summer before, when I began to appreciate and enjoy it.  During the tumultuous years of adolescence when you realize that you have no idea who you are or who you want to become, I found relief from the stress of peer pressure, the doubt of self-criticism, and the angst that always accompanies that phase of life, in the manual labor of haymaking.  I found peace in the solitude the farm provided.  I was ten miles from my closest friend and had the ability to become a social hermit during the summers.  I was able to build up enough peace and release enough tension that I could survive one more school year in a small public school system that I despised, with a friend group I began to realize I didn’t actually fit into.  I began to acknowledge a feeling that I undoubtedly had from a young age.  A feeling of connectedness with my family and my family’s heritage and its physical presence in our farmland.  It brought with it an appreciation and respect for all the generations of Spiegels who had put their blood, sweat, and tears into cultivating this land into a productive means to earn a living.  I realized that despite my school being in a rural area, my classmates had no comprehension of their family’s heritage.  They had no appreciation for the work their parents did to build a better life for them.  They had no idea how to dedicate themselves to an enterprise as demanding yet rewarding as agriculture.  They had no motivation to try such an enterprise.  And I had no desire to be among people who were so oblivious to how fortunate they were, who could scarcely show their parents respect let alone respect generations of their family they had never met. 

This feeling of connectedness flourished in college.  In my study of history, I learned to critically analyze the past and really question what “heritage” meant.  I met people who were willing to explore this idea, among others.  These same individuals asked about my personal experiences, thereby creating the need for me to articulate myself.  I suddenly had command of a vocabulary that enabled me to articulate my experiences.  And I had gained the analytical skills to find a deeper meaning in these experiences.  Undoubtedly, the insights I discovered led me to pursue my internship with Tillers International from April - November 2011.  It was a place where I saw my academic interest in history (public history, specifically) intersect with my fundamental connection with heritage via agriculture.  In many ways, this was true.  My experiences in Michigan taught me many things, some positive, some not, but my dedication to and awareness of the importance of agriculture never wavered.  If anything, that experience paved the path I have now decided to take.

This brings us to the present.  I hope to achieve many things over the next ten to twelve months and will hopefully utilize this blog to accomplish a few of them.  I, of course, want to learn to manage the farm – learn the system my dad had in place, everything from the infrastructure, business practices, animal husbandry, mechanical knowledge, the day-to-day activities.  In this, I want to become more than competent.  I want to educate myself and my friends (or whoever will listen) on these practices and on agriculture in general.  But most importantly, I want to be honest with myself.  I plan to use much this time to reflect on what I want from life.  Is this deep-rooted connection to my family’s land something that courses through my veins powerful enough to keep me on the farm?  To take over the operation permanently?  Am I enraptured by an idea of farming I have created for myself without truly understanding reality?  Is this the reality I want to stay in?  Will this reality provide me with everything I do know I want from life?  I understand that it is entirely possible for me to discover that I may actually not want to farm.  I may discover I want to pursue intellectual and professional ambitions in the realm of public history.  Or I might not.  Either way, I am giving myself the time for this introspection while I am in a phase of my life conducive for it.  I am unattached, young and healthy enough for the physical demands of farming, and will still have plenty of time to pursue other ambitions if that is indeed the outcome. 

I invite you to join me on this path of self-discovery…if you dare.


1 comment:

  1. This is really good, Margaret! I mean, I definitely approve of what you're doing, :o) but I also really like the way you've written about it. Can't wait to find out what you discover! ^_^

    ReplyDelete