Sweat Equity

You can’t live in America without noticing a change in industry.  It’s not secret that manufacturing has largely moved overseas.  Manufacturing, some time ago, replaced agriculture as the primary way to make a living.  Now that both of these powerhouses are disappearing, we are moving to a service society.  Again, no surprises there.  But one thing I’ve noticed is that the manual labor, or traditional blue collar jobs that are available are being taken by older adults. 

I watched the other day as a road crew was working on the side of the road.  I noted that many of them were older men.  In fact, I would guess 90% of them.  I started noticing that trend in most places where manual labor is done.  I’ve recently visited some manufacturing plants and airports where most of the manual labor is being done by older men. 

I want to be clear here.  There is nothing wrong with these men doing the labor.  They are strong, young enough to work, and experienced enough to work hard.  What concerns me are the young men.  I was recently in a restaurant where a young man waited on me.  While he wasn’t serving my table, he was at another table and talking with some other young men and young women.  Those who were seated were studying to become anesthesiologists.  They all agreed that they were looking for position where they don’t have to work outside, sweat, or in general get “icky”. 

That’s my word…and I am making fun of them.

I think we can learn something from this.  First, don’t have a casual conversation when I’m in earshot because I do eavesdrop.  Second, I think we can learn that the generation of today, my generation, in general has no intention of getting their hands dirty.

I am saddened by this.

I’m saddened by this because we have lost a valuable commodity that once was so rick in America.  America became a leading exporter of goods pre-19th century precisely because it was made up of farmers and land owners.  They fed the American people and kept them in work.  We could then, as a nation, focus on exports of our commodities because we were rich both in those commodities and in the sweat equity necessary to harvest those commodities.  When the Industrial Revolution hit, we became a world leader again because we were rich in commodities and in sweat equity.  Today, we are rich in commodities….and we don’t seem to know how to harvest them.

I’m not suggesting that there is anything inherently wrong with a white collar office job.  I have one myself and I’m thankful for that.  I am suggesting, however, that when we as a nation turn up our collective noses at good jobs because they are not clean and require sweat then we have failed.  We have failed because if we will not use our own hands to provide for ourselves and our families then we are at the mercy of those who will do the hard work.  We will choose slavery over freedom.

Bringing Home the Bacon...or Whatever

What do you thinking of hunting?

A noble endeavor that hearkens back to our ancient ancestry?

Maybe the time of year you are a "widow" for days or weeks?

Just a way for folks to go into the woods and relive their childhood fancies once again...but with real guns this time!

No matter what you think of, hunting really is a time honored tradition most often handed down from parent to child generation after generation.  We tend to consider a man's sport, but that is not the case.  Globally, there is much to suggest that in many cultures, the women were the hunters and gatherers.  True, men do tend to gravitate to the sport, but it's not exclusive to them.

I happen think it is part of the simple life. 

Let's boil it down to its simplest form, the essence of hunting if you will.  You go out and bring home meat.  That's it.  You did nothing to raise it.  You did nothing to help the breeding process.  You go out to bring home something you did little work for.  And you eat.

Pretty simple.

Okay, I realize that's over simplified, but it does really capture the essence of hunting.

Anyway, I think you get the point.  In years gone by, it was a way of life.  Perhaps more literally, it was a matter of survival. It's true that if you had no other means to get food, hunting would become the most vital activity you would engage in.  Early on, many cultures learned to live off the land, plant their own crops, and store up meat and animal fat in reserve for a time when game might not be so plentiful.

And still, despite the stress and mess of killing your own game and preserving it, I'd still have to call it the simple life.  Notice the name of this blog is not The Easy Life.  It has been my observation over the years that simple and easy are not synonyms.  Hiking with a 30 pound pack on your back is simple....but not easy.  So killing your own game, dressing it, roasting it, and preserving it calls to us from a simpler time.

I confess, I am a poor hunter.  I typically hunt only on public lands...along with 50 million other people.  I have not gotten a clean shot off to take down a dear.  Some years I see nothing at all.  Yet I persist.  I persist because there is so much to be said for sitting down on an old stump on the edge of a tree line, listening for the crunching of leaves or snow and the familiar hollow sound of antlers brushing against the tree branches.  I feel the peace that washes over me as the sounds of the forest are all that I hear.  I long for the openness that a day in the woods affords me.  I long for the..well...simplicity of it all.  Some day I hope to take the game I have hunted for all these years.  But until then, I will continue to hunt the peace and simplicity I long to find in the quiet stillness of the woods.

What could be more simple?

To Greener Pastures

Two days after our first batch of chickens was processed, we moved the second batch out to pasture.  They were three weeks old.  You can see that they love the new terrain.  Although there is some grain in the trough, they prefer to take advantage of the greens and bugs laying around.  It's such a beautiful site to see the chickens acting like birds instead of like zombies in the confinement operations. 

We had a major thunderstorm that night.  But when I went to check on them in the morning, they were doing well.  There was one little guy, however, that somehow got stuck in the rain.  He didn't go into the sheltered area with his brothers.  When I got the pen, he was lying by the door as though he may have been trying to get out.  He shivered and tried to stand only to fall over.  I put him in the corner of the pen with some grain while I tended to all the others. When I came back, some of the bigger birds were eating his grain and stepping on him.

While it's an assault on our sensibilities to see the weak taken advantage of, we remember that this is the animal kingdom.  Though we attribute complex emotions such as kindness and empathy to animals, they cannot be characterized as having those emotions.  What they do have, I'm not entirely sure.  But as I watch the chickens, I understand where the term "pecking order" comes from.  There is no mistake that in a flock of chickens there is a pecking order.  When one chicken is down, the others feel compelled only to torment the  hurting, or smaller, bird.  If that bird can no longer move, he will be trampled by the others.  It's that simple. 

So, being human, and understanding my role as a steward of God's earth, I took the chicken back to the barn and gave him some grain.  This is what we call "The Hospital".

I paid a visit to the hospital the next day.  He looked just fine to me. 

Update - Of course I post this on a nigh when the storms are much worse than the one this little guy suffered through.  And the results were much worse too.  But right now I'm tired.  I think you'll have to wait for the next post. 

Struggling from Birth

Birth has been on my mind lately.  If you've followed the blog  at all, you know that the birth of chicks and poults is the thing on my mind the most.  What you may not know is that as we were driving by a nearby farm on Memorial Day, my wife commented on a cow that was near a barn.  "What's wrong with that cow?" she said.  We all looked.  It was leaning up against a door, breathing heavily.  It did look like something was wrong.  I don't know if it was empathy or womanly intuition, but again, it was my wife who figured it out.  "Look, she's about to have a baby!"

Sure enough, the hooves of a calf were poking out under the tail.  It was in "launch position" as they say.  If you've seen the birth of a cow or a sheep, you'll know where they get that term.  The front hooves come out first as though it's flying through the air.

We waited about twenty minutes, parked at a distance in the field.  We wanted to be closer, but I didn't want the mother to stress.  That could only end badly.  So we waited and watched the glorious birth of a calf.

But it just lay there.

You may not know that a calf, when born, often lays motionless.  You can see it's ribs moving very slowly, very gently, up and down.  If you're not careful, you may not even seen that.  This is normal.  What the calf needs at this point is the gentle *snickers* love of the mother.

The mother's job, though undoubtedly tired from birth, is to tend immediately to the calf.  Without this attention, the calf may be in jepordy (unless the farmer helps).  The mother comes to vigorously lick the calf.  This cleans up the afterbirth and stimulates the blood flow.  However, from our vantage point, the nudging, licking, and overall loving of the mother looks pretty rough!  For a moment the kids, watching intently from the van, were worried.  My wife even let out a squeal.  It looks like the listless calf is going to be plowed over.   But in the end, it's that aggressive attitude of the mother that keeps the calf alive.  Were it not for the rough methods of the cow the calf could not survive.

It is the same with chicks and poults.  It is no accident that they come wrapped in a shell.  Though the mother does not treat them aggressively, as with a cow and calf, the hen does not help them at all.  She is "rough" in her apparent neglect.  But it is the breaking out of the shell that strengthens and stimulates the chick.  It is the necessity of fighting that gets the blood flowing.  The surest way to kill a hatching bird is to "help" it along.

And so it is with us.  Though we do not fight to emerge from a shell, and though our mothers don't treat us roughly, it is the wise parent that realizes that without a few bumps and bruises along the way, a child cannot progress to adulthood.  It's not an easy transition, as I'm finding out, but I'm convinced that children need tasks that are difficult for them.  Not out of reach, mind you, but difficult.

We bought bags of feed for our little poultry operation.  They come in 100 pound sacks.  Although I know the boys cannot lift the bags, I let them try.  I didn't need to ask them to try.  It's something built in the heart of a boy to lift heavy things.  They tried.  They had three of them on one bag trying to lift it.  There was some frustration, some exchange of blame on who was or was not doing their part.  My impatience tried to get the best of me.  I wanted so badly to say "Get outta the way.  You can't get that."  It's a true statement, of course, but they needed that moment.  They needed to try, to be encouraged to try, to fail, and then to ask for help.  I assured them that it won't be long and they'll lift the sacks themselves.  They were satisfied.  They'd tried.

It's the same with us.  We need tasks that challenge us.  Tasks that challenge us physically.  Tasks that challenge the way we think and feel.  Tasks that challenge our very beliefs.  We don't have to ask for them.  They will come.  But we must be ready.  When the tasks come we must try, and often fail.  And when we fail we can go back to God and ask for help.  He will help.  He always does.  But we must try.

Struggle and pain are with us all.  We cannot change that.  No matter what technology, medicane, innovation, and progress bring, we will not be without struggle and pain.  So we deal with it as it comes, taking it to our Father, trying, failing, and trying again.  Yet the effort is not fruitless.  Like the calf, the chicks, and the poults, we need that struggling.  It's the only way we'll survive.

Responsibility

I'm getting excited about raising chickens again this coming year.  We raised 100 last year and butchered them all by hand (yes, including the feathers).  What an unbelievable experience that was!  It spawned a lot of good conversations with friends and family.  I think most people, at least at the outset, were very unsure of what I was talking about.  Though my wife and family were totally on board with this, we talked about it for an entire year before we actually did anything.  Now, to us that entire time was spent learning.  We visited family farms and assisted them in their poultry endeavors.  I devoured blogs, books, magazines, and websites related to poultry just to understand what I would encounter.  When it was time for chicks to arrive, we were ready.

Or so we thought.

Despite our best efforts there was still a learning curve.  You can read more about it in three articles here.  I think, though, that the learning itself was most of the fun.  Certainly the chicks were cute and all and we had great fun in watching them grow, but the greatest benefits is that we now have a knowledge of what to do.  Certainly we are by no means experts.  There is so much more to learn and experience.  Yet there is a knowledge and I can do something for myself.  My children now know exactly where our chickens come from and the joys and pains associated with it.  It is in this feeling that I think life becomes more simple.

Imagine this all too realistic scenarios:  it's the dead of winter and there are three inches of snow on the ground.  The local weather person has just announced that another 10 inches are coming our way.  People begin the mad rush to the local store.  What are they searching for?  Additional food, bottled water, generators (to produce heat mostly), and various and sundry necessities.  They stand in line for hours waiting for these things in hopes of getting the goods before someone else does.  The stress and emotions of it all become overwhelming and verbal attacks begin.  Sometimes it even comes to fisticuffs (when was the last time you read that word in a blog?).  The sum total of it all is a wearying, disappointing mess.

Yet there are those who avoid it all.  They are able to remain un-phased because they know how to handle things themselves.  They might have a stocked pantry or proper equipment.  They may have canned their foods as opposed to freezing them.  Perhaps they have a water filtration system that works without electricity.  The possibilities are endless.  Compared to the scenario at the store, it sounds pretty simple.

The fact of the matter is that we have lost the art of doing for ourselves.  Now, let me be clear; I do not advocate the life of a "lone wolf" who needs nuthin' and no one.  I think this is contrary to the way we were designed.  We were designed to need God and to need each other.  Nor am I a survivalist.  As I sit here in my argyle sweater sipping a cup of Bigby coffee (take that Starbucks lovers!) I would not be looked upon by the great woodsman of yesteryear as  the pinnacle of rugged manliness. 

What I'm advocating is a chance to go out and learn to do for yourself and your family.   We've come a long way from what our Founders intended.  They had no idea that we would be demanding government involvement in pay structures of CEO's and national health care options.  They assumed you and I would help our neighbor's out in times of disaster, not verbally assault the government for not moving fast enough.  We are responsible for ourselves both individually and corporately.  When will we start acting like it?  I think that when we start to take on that responsibility we will understand simplicity in a whole separate level.  When we finally learn to live in the community that Christ called us to, we will take on the simplicity of life that He intended.