A day in the life of Hardscrabble Farmer – poetic, inspiring, loving:
I had a great day today. I woke up early, had my coffee- my wife always leaves the french press and a bag of nice coffee beans on the counter next to the grinder, the one my great-great grandmother allegedly bought for herself while her husband, my great-great grandfather, was laying siege to Fredricksburg. So every morning I think about my wife while she sleeps, knowing that she was thinking about me while I slept. And I get to use a tool someone in my family has used continuously for 150 years.
Sweet.
I did chores with my daughter this morning. She was going to a friends house on the lake to swim for the day and she knew she would probably camp out in the yard later so she spent some time following me around for an hour. She says “I love you daddy” apropos of nothing and I reply “I love you more”. She is getting to the age where such outbursts of paternal affection will likely become less frequent so I savor them when they occur. I watch her ride down the hill on her bicycle and just like that, she is gone.
After breakfast- fresh sweet corn pancakes with our maple syrup- we headed back out, this time our youngest son and I, to rebuild a back stoop to the milk house. We took the boards and the tools in a two-wheeled wood barrow and I let him push it so he could get the feel for it loaded up. We measured and cut using a folding rule, a cross cut saw and a framing square. We screwed the boards in rather than nail them- at seven nailing more than a dozen nails leads to fatigue- and he set every one by himself. It took longer than if I had done it myself, but we both had such a great time doing it I wouldn’t have cared if it had taken all day.
The neighbor kid came up and started put up sap wood for the sugaring season. After a while he got tired of that so he cut some hay in the orchard with a scythe, stopping every so often to sharpen it with a whetstone like I showed him. He comes and goes without asking, always works hard when he’s here and on occasion will ask me if he can ride the dirt bike, pick blackberries, have a chicken for the family dinner, etc and I always make sure he is thanked for his efforts. I never give him advice, but I did today when I showed him how to do something more efficiently.
“Time is the only thing you’ve got. You should spend it like gold.”
He nodded at me and went back to cutting grass the way I showed him. He didn’t say anything when he left, but he finished the orchard completely.
We completed the stoop, put things away and had lunch- there was some leftover chicken and sweet corn, sun tea and blackberries with quartered cukes and sea salt. We talked about things, I couldn’t say what exactly, just light happy stuff and we enjoyed a few minutes in the cool of the house doing nothing.
After lunch we headed out to a friends place to finish staining his deck and replacing some railing. It was myself and my sons, every one pitching in and doing their share. That lasted about 4 hours and then we came back home and did firewood for another hour. I took the 7 year old on the tractor and had him steer the whole time as we brought a couple half ton sugar maple butts to the landing where we cut and split as the Sun edged west through the tops of the big trees.
After that we did evening chores, topped off the chickens towers, checked on the goat with the bum leg ( a dog got after him, but he’s healing up fine) and mowed some grass until my wife called us in for supper about a half hour ago. Grilled London broil, fresh made sweet pickles, sweet corn (it never gets old), five kinds of tomatoes and basil mixed with olive oil and a nice glass of a Chianti I made about six years ago. It may have been the last bottle, but we opened it on date night (Saturday, no kids, full moon) and I wasn’t going to let the last glass go bad.
I read stories about how bad things are and I get it in an intellectual way. They are. In the big world, macro cosmic, multicultural ether that permeates the densely populated cities of late Western Civilization, things are falling apart. Economies, families, human bodies, and the beliefs of a thousand years. It must be painful to live so close to the core, rotten as it is, fed on a diet of heavily processed slop, isolated, alone. The eternal absence of love and the never ending sound of anger and snark are fatal in lesser organisms, they are soul crushing in ours.
Get out of the city. Do not eat another bite unless you know where it came from and how it was raised. Stop worrying about the rest of the world when you’re not even living in your own. Help a kid learn a new skill. Love somebody more than they love you and chances are they’ll love you more than you love them. Then double down.
I’m all alone right now finishing my glass of wine at the table in the dark. I got a few things done today, touched base with an old friend, did something for someone, let someone do something for me. Kissed my wife, told each kid I loved them at least a few times. Didn’t do anything that required a band-aid or a visit to the ER. Ate like it was my last meal three times. Upstairs you can here the sound of people winding down, water running, laughter. My heart is full to the point of breaking, but not in a bad way.
Outside the sky is the clearest shade of pearl with a smattering of cumulus clouds just far away enough to still be visible. There are so many things that were on my list to do today that I didn’t get around to, but soon its going to get really dark and I will lay my body down on a very comfortable mattress and with my head on a pillow and I will fall into sleep like I’ve earned it.
Like the man said, tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…
Curious…does Hardscrabble Farmer ever put up any Pics from the Hardscrabble Farm?
RE
Get up earlier. Emulate Anthony Trollope and create something, for yourself and yours, for a couple of hours in the morning. That’s when you’re sharpest. Then trundle along to the days activities, work for you, golf for me. As Sallust wrote, don’t live like an animal. Use your mind, that’s where your legacy will come from. Remember too that Aristotle said that for men developing the intellect leads to to happiness.
On the other hand, if thinking’s too hard, MSM media, porn sites, sports at the amateur and professional level, and miscellaneous stimuation will probably be just as satisfying for you. Let the internet medium be the massage. Enjoy it and forget the paragraph above. – Jackson
I read through this twice now.
It is just a tad too “idyllic” for me to buy.
One of the Diners, Randy is currently trying to sell his Vermont Dairy Farm, due to numerous issues we discuss all the time here and on the Diner.
I’ve had numerous chats with Albert Bates, who is one of the principals at The Farm in TN, and although philosphically this fits fine, it doesn’t match up with any of the real problems Albert identifies.
It is such a “perfect” set piece of “A Day of Life on the Farm” that it seems like fiction to me. It could be compilation though of typical days, idealizing them.
I need to see some Pics and Vids to buy Hardscrabble Farmer’s prose as non-fiction.
It is lovely fiction though if it is that.
RE
HSF tilling the land [img
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His herd [img
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Relaxing with his lady
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Fuck it. It’s supposed to be a pic of an old guy with a hot young babe.
I can’t fault anyone who makes his own chianti and chokes his own chicken. Maybe I misread that part, though.
It is lovely fiction though if it is that.
It isn’t fiction, it is a life in review. His writing is a sort of sweet treat at grandma’s that no one else knows about. There are folks like HSF who are very observant but few can put their observations into words that paint the picture so well. I offered Bode’s tidbit on burying a cat; who can make that seem so poignant and memorable but Elroy Bode? And who can make farm life so idyllic but HSF?
RE…I agree, HSF doesn’t look to have to turn a profit. And not everyone is gifted with a few million in property and anther few mil in the bank.
In the west we call them cowboy poets.
So Hopewell Farms is the home of Hardscrabble Farmer?
That is one nice Doomstead overall, I see Solar Panels on the roof of one of the barns!
It is in South Newbury, NH. That is just a few miles off the I-89, not far outside Concord. I went to summer camp in that neighborhood.
I would estimate the cost of that farm to be well over $1M in that location, just the land cost, forget all those solar cells and wind turbines, not to mention the HUGE farmhouse.
I will run this by Randy, get further input on the economics.
RE
OK, further research, Hardscrabble Farmer appears to be a fellow Marc Moran who bought the place in 2008. It’s on 50 acres. Raw acreage in the nabe seems to go around $20k/acre, so my initial guess at $1M for the land is probably not too far off. Looks like he made quite a few improvements too, which cost quite a few FRNs.
I’d like to hear from HF how he funded this purchase, whether it is on a mortgage, and what the cash flow is from their sales of organic meats and veggies.
Meanwhile, unless you too have at least $1M to become a Gentleman Farmer, HS Idyllic Lifestyle is probably out of reach for you.
RE
Mr Chen ask me if I was envious of Admin. It’s hard to be envious of someone fat and bald headed like myself but Damn HF I’m starting to covet your lifestyle . Not sure if that’s a good thing since I know nothing about farming.
“Not sure if that’s a good thing since I know nothing about farming.” — bb
That sentence has too many words, we will correct it for you.
“Not sure if that’s a good thing since I know nothing.”
RE
I wonder if his Wall Street daddy left him any Van Gogh paintings to support him in his old age.
It’s good to see your research skills haven’t improved one bit over the years, but your arrogance remains.
What is it you do for a living?
RE said:
“I’d like to hear from HF how he funded this purchase, whether it is on a mortgage, and what the cash flow is from their sales of organic meats and veggies.”
I’m going to go out on a limb here and bet $100 cash money that HSF did not pay for his college tuition on a credit card and then intentionally default on it like you did. Have you ever had any integrity? Anyone living near you in a SHTF scenario ought to be very careful with you around.
Go back to masturbating to your page hits.
When I joined the Army in the last years of the Carter administration I didn’t even have my own pair of shoes. True story. i don’t remember the exact dollar figure, but the monthly take home pay was about $400. I became a paratrooper because that meant an extra $80 per month.
By the time I got out in my early 20’s I already owned my first house and a small truck I paid for cash. I started doing HUD house remodels in the worst parts of town for the worst kinds of people working longer hours than I did as an infantryman, but I kept at it. By the time I was in my late 20’s I was building multi-million dollar bus washes for SEPTA, Wawa markets in under 90 days, Ford dealerships and that kind of thing. There was no nepotism, no bankrolling rich uncle, just hard work, long hours and determination. I was also alone- no wife, no kids, no dog, no fancy car, no wild parties. Then, by accident I drifted into stand up comedy as a hobby- open mic nights, that kind of thing. Before long I was doing road gigs and after a year I was full time at clubs and colleges all over the country as they say. I lived an even more spartan existence then, living out of the trunk of my car. Every night I wasn’t given a hotel room by the venue, I camped in State parks, in empty fields, wherever I found myself. Somewhere along the way I picked up a dog, then a girlfriend who I later married and at the peak of my career our first child came along and I quit and started all over again.
Not long after 9/11 I had become a typical pillar of the community type in my hometown. I was active in my church, spent my free time with my family, participated in local politics and had a seemingly perfect life except for one thing- I knew that something was wrong.
I saw what the military did first hand in places like Granada, El Salvador and Panama, but I kept my mouth shut.
I saw what the big government agencies like HUD did with taxpayers money and who they funneled it to, but I kept my mouth shut.
I watched my country transform itself from thousands of small towns and dozens of unique regions into one size fits all corporatized McBox stores from one end of this country to the other, but I kept my mouth shut unless I was on stage and then only for the laughs.
I watched my hometown church, the one my great-great grandfather built being turned into a nanny-nanny feel good social hall where nothing that was said ever really sounded like it meant anything. No one was to be judged, nothing was sacred, everything was forgiven.
I knew my way around the Internet since I had won a Compaq laptop and a lifetime subscription to Prodigy in the first Colorado Comedy Competition in ’94 and so I started to write a series of essays about what I had kept shut up about for so long. I was honest, I wrote what I had seen and what I saw and I used my own name. The articles got around, and soon the media got wind of them and the gates of hell opened beneath me.
If you’ve never been doxed, never had your face on the front page of the newspaper, never been called a nazi and a racist, a homophobe and a misogynist by the NYT let me tell you it’s an experience. People I had known my entire life, folks who sat next to me in the pews at church, other town councilmen, neighbors, but mostly people who didn’t have the first clue about me or my life, how I lived or what I experienced couldn’t STFU about me. There were threats- of course- but worse than those were the shunnings- just like something from the 17th century. I understand the term witch hunt more than you can imagine and believe me it changed my frame.
The shock wears off. New stories come along, we were a little too sympathetic to demonize for long- I was a deacon in the church who spent most of my free time working with a group home of mentally challenged men. I was a decorated combat vet with no criminal record. I had a beautiful wife and family, had made my way in the world on my own for my entire adult life, wrote pieces that for all their politically incorrect observations about the decline of America were at their core not much different from the pieces you call fiction on this website. My great faults were that didn’t walk in lockstep on issues of race and immigration. I thought our foreign entanglements, particularly in the middle east, were a mistake- just like Washington (the man) had warned us. That Iraq was based on a lie, that 9/11 probably was too. That families can’t be “redefined”, that degeneracy was a bad thing for the long term prospects of a stable society, that corruption at the highest levels was endemic to political elites, not certain parties and that our entire economic structure was a sham.
So I left politics on the local level and quit believing it on any level. The press left me alone- since I was a private citizen and since they couldn’t find a single human being I had ever wronged regardless of race or gender orientation- and I returned to obscurity.
But I wanted out.
So we kept working, kept saving, had more children, remained loyal to each other and to those friends and neighbors who had stood beside us and we planned to make our exit from the rat race. I never wanted to be put in the position of depending upon anything else but our own hard work, good relations and basic human decency. I sure as hell wasn’t angry any longer- a good lot that had done for me- and I owed it to my wife and my family to start looking at the world that was a little less Matrix and a lot more Waltons. I researched aquaculture, permaculture, soil studies and water quality tables. I read the entire section on farming and agriculture at our local library and started composting. Our garden expanded and so did our base of knowledge. I began to accumulate old hand tools and seeds, and just as it looked like our plan to exit the rat race was at hand my mother died of cancer. It took only 11 days from diagnosis to deathbed and I watched every single minute. I have always been close to my family and they raised me in a way I hope I have raised my own children, to be honest, to do what is right, to be true to yourself and to rely on your own skills and resources rather than to beg or to live in debt. My mother loved me, no question, but she loved my children even more and when she died she left us everything she had and after we mourned we took that plus everything we had saved through a lifetime of our own efforts and bought the farm, free and clear.
So that’s the story.
It isn’t fiction and neither is anything I have written thus far. It’s my story, my hours, my days, my life in my words. I have no regrets about anything I wrote in the past, make no apologies for any friendships or associations, I owe no explanations for my choices, make no boasts of my accomplishments. I have made as many mistakes as I have wise choices, but I have learned from every single one. What we do now, every day of our lives is to make this world better for our passing through. The old gripes are gone because I know better than to rage against the dying of the light. I’ve read Spengler and I think he was optimistic. People live and die and so do civilizations and if I have learned anything as a farmer its how to spot terminal conditions in living organisms.
When we came here we left a lot behind- the town my family founded over three hundred years ago, the friendships we had built over a lifetime, the home we built ourselves. But other people give up more than that and start over with less. I have become a competent farmer because this is what I want to do with the time I have remaining even if it ends tomorrow, which it could. I have been loyal as a husband because I have a wife who has proven her loyalty to me and it has been a blessing. I am dedicated to the raising of honorable children because they will be here after I am gone and I want people to depend on them the way they depend on me. I am open to discuss anything anyone wants to talk about and to say nothing about anything they want to avoid because I know what it feels like to be made to feel unwelcome and unwanted and I wouldn’t want that for anyone. I can’t keep people who don’t know me from calling me names I don’t call myself, but that doesn’t mean I have to do the same in return. Turning the other cheek isn’t a form of self-punishment, it’s a cure.
So I will continue to comment about the few things I know when I think I can add a perspective about how I live my life. I don’t expect to inspire anyone to do anything they wouldn’t do on their own, but I do mean to encourage them to do what they want because they can. This world may be in collapse, but that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to build something while we’re here. Everyone can make a commitment to produce more than they consume, love more than they hate, live more than they work towards death.
My life is not a work of fiction.
@Hardscrabble…yes “inspirational” is the word….even to an old hard-ass such as myself. Thanks for the stirring words of wisdom you’ve imparted in the past and thanks in advance for any future fodder of sapience you can to share in the future.
Best regards..
Bravo HSF. I strive to be more like you but I I’ve been headed that way for a long time. It’s not easy but comes in baby steps. I could be wrong a still think a little healthy hate is a good thing. On many levels you remind of my dad……my one and only hero.
I’d like to read those original essays if you are ever inclined to share.
I’ve actually purchased maple syrup from HSF. He actually produces things of value. RE? eh, Not So Much.
RE chooses to make veiled accusations, not-so-veiled accusations. HSF writes from the heart. RE says things he thinks are true, without doing his due diligence. witness: admin’s comments, above, related to his research skills.
In this thread, RE proves himself to be a douchebag, HSF is the winner.
Delicious syrup, by the way. The switchel is delicious on a hot Texas summer night. Sometimes, we put a little rum in it, too! Woo-Hoo!!
Also, I think the “Lifetime Subscription” to Prodigy is hilarious!
Did they mean YOUR lifetime? Or Prodigy’s lifetime?
RE is a bitter prick who desires fame on the internet. He wishes he could write 10% as well as HF. No one other than me publishes his articles. I wonder why? He is jealous of someone who outshines himself in every aspect of life.
Rather than learn something from someone who has gone off the grid and become self sufficient, RE scorns, ridicules and berates the person.
For anyone who hasn’t experienced RE in his full glory, this thread reveals his true nature.
Those who can, do; those that can’t can only bitch about those that do.
@card, or they become a bureaucrat and stop anyone else from doing it too. Well, anyone without the appropriate kickback/connection.
If/when the doom descends, there is only one thing I know for sure, those that have experienced life on a level like HSF will surely be more at peace, and surrounded by love, and have a half a chance, compared to most others.
Thank you, again, for sharing, HSF.
Shoot, I first meant to comment on this line, “…“Time is the only thing you’ve got. You should spend it like gold.”
If you ever write/compile a book of your life on the farm, that would make a great title.
So much wisdom in that one line. So very much.
RE….
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TBP’s Jury
We already lost too many great comedic minds, after which we can only lament and cry foul. I would not go to any party that excluded my good buddy bb. He knows nothing? Are you saying you do? Please enlighten us, o wise one. Unless your one of those who can only criticize. As my neighbor said of someone else but it applies here, is he so insecure that he has to criticize?
HF, introspective –Good Stuff. Your stuff usually is.