farming is hard

i could never be a farmer.

i learned this last week, when i spent a few days in beautiful north dakota, with my lovely friend BJ and her very wonderful husband, NK.

farming is hard. you don't get to sleep a lot or watch law and order marathons (much to my alarm) or futz around online for hours at a stretch, because there are animals to feed and water to tote and fields to clear and crops to harvest and barns to sweep and books to balance and food to make from scratch ("oh, it's 10 p.m.? sure, i think i'll just bake some bread and knit a scarf before turning in.")

this is not in the cards for me, because i am lazy.

on one hand, it makes me feel guilty and a little bad about myself, because i think, "well, hey! i should be willing to make bread at 10 p.m. and know how to saddle a horse and be able to work a solid 15-hour day!"

and on the other hand, following BJ and NK around on their land (which isn't even a real farm, but a pasture and several horses and a gigantic garden and a few acres of land), i felt very, deeply alarmed for the future of our country. because most of us have no idea what it takes to produce any of the things we eat, use, watch, touch, or otherwise consume in the daily course of living.

and this is a problem.

because it means we're all lazy.

so, at least i'm in some kind of company, if not entirely good, educated company.

they say there are more buffalo in north dakota than people. cows have the right of way there. ("if you hit one," BJ warned me during my drive up, "it's automatically your fault. so be careful.") the biggest cities would be small towns in a lot of states. and it's also eyeball-freezing cold for half of the year, and the people are rather reserved and suspicious of outsiders.

i drove around with BJ for a work function, and everywhere we turned, she seemed to meet another person who knew her parents, who lived on the other side of the state. "the state of north dakota is like a really spread-out town," she told me. and it's true. it's not seven degrees of separation -- it's two.

so now, back in my urban flat, surrounded by cars and concrete, i'm wondering how i can maybe try to replicate a teensy bit of north dakota in my landscape here. because knowing every third person in the state is kind of cool. it means you'll always be able to borrow a cup of flour.

but more importantly, i would like to be a little more connected to the process of growing things. with the news trickling in of poisonous toothpaste and irradiated spinach and puss in cow's milk, i think being a tad more connected to the people who actually process the stuff i choose to put in my mouth could only be a good thing.

so last weekend, j and i and our upstairs neighbor LS started a flower garden in our backyard. it's a small step, but i have brown thumbs. we will master the daisies, then move on to something more wholesome and life-giving, like maybe the tomato.

and then maybe i'll think about that 10 p.m. loaf of bread.