Ag life a choice for long haul

Agriculture as a livelihood is a long-term life.

Trying it out thoroughly is not really an option. You can get a glimpse and a taste by finding a job as a hand for someone already invested. But the work that gets done during what the rest of the world seems to label as “working hours,” is not always so easy to see.

A day is only so much time, and everyone eventually realizes that only so much can be done between our evening sleeps. A day’s work is only so many things. It seems both clear and manageable and often isolated from the tasks that will be addressed the next day.

To be constantly aware of the totality of the tasks that future days must contain, for years to come … is more than enough to approach the border between in and sane. Thus, one does not turn attention to the wide view that agriculture ultimately requires more than is necessary, but it is there, and it is important. It is where all the daily tasks originate.

The ag life, at its furthest, is generations in length. For a single lifespan, it is not an interval, but a choice of method of travel from the cradle to the grave.

Thirty years is no time at all when that is the overarching time frame that is all a man or a woman can expect to experience.

A five-year drought is worth complaining about, I won’t take that away. But it’s only a minute in comparison if you manage to get through it without selling absolutely everything.

A year is the shortest amount of time in which any determination of success or failure can be made. Until you’ve made at least a full orbit from plowing to planting to harvesting, all you could have done was spend money and take care of the work that is given to the days.

I do not mean to say that the ag life, once engaged, cannot be quit, failed, or escaped. But, even if everything goes just as it must, it takes a lot of years for one to reach a point that, by any definition, can be measured as success.

I’m not the biggest fan of consensus, but if I was looking for one, we might could agree that while a complete investment in agriculture might not last for the rest of your life, it is rare that it occurs more than once, I think.

Audra Brown hasn’t had the heart to go all-in yet either, but has her hat off to those that have won that bet. Contact her at:

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