Farming Is All About Shoveling Shit

April 29, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The NYT has a story about a new goofy TV 'reality' show. In it, a bunch of actresses, fashion models and assorted others compete to see who some fool of a farmer wants to date. Of course, this is all empty publicity. No actress or fashion model will want to shovel shit for the rest of her life, that is certain. Indeed, it is hard to find women willing to break fingernails, much less legs, shoving cattle around or dealing with blizzards and buzzards. Since I live in the country, it is time yet again to discuss the American industrial farm and why it is having problems in the reproductive sector.

Farmer, Lonely, Holds Auditions

When Matt Neustadt, the Missouri farmer at the center of the CW network’s new reality show, “Farmer Wants a Wife,” drives his tractor and trailer down Hollywood Boulevard here on Tuesday morning, he will be aiming to do more than simply promote the American version of what is a worldwide television hit.
*snip*
As a group, the Neustadt family also received more than $693,000 in federal farm subsidies from 1995 through 2006, according to Agriculture Department records compiled by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington nonprofit research organization. That includes more than $78,000 paid to Mr. Neustadt himself since 1998, in the form of disaster subsidies and commodity payments.

Next to the military/industrial complex and the spy network, no one is more socialist than the US farmer. These same people nearly uniformly vote for the GOP and yell about welfare cheats and leeches off the government. But hark! In today's news is this story:

Bush Presses Congress on Economy

Seeking to ease growing concerns about the weakening economy, President Bush on Tuesday called on Congress, with whom he has battled all year, to introduce broad new measures that would lower food and energy prices, stem the mortgage crisis and reduce what he called lavish subsidies to farmers.

Looks like the GOP is ditching the ditch digging farmers and kissing up to the offshore pirates and corporate raiders of Wall Street. Perhaps the farmers will figure out they have been double crossed. Even better, if they figure out that they are, in many cases, Welfare Queens, most of their present difficulties might be easier to handle. For they must cease their bizarre double standards and utter hypocrisy and embrace socialism with both arms and give Karl Marx a big kiss. Smooch.

Farmers, like suburban home buyers and our government, loves cheap debt, too. If money floods into the land or housing markets, farmers make a killing. How many farms were sold so they could be converted into suburban housing this last 5 years? 10,000? 25,000? I know of many a farmer out here who paid for the farm not by dying but by selling multi-generational farms to real estate developers!

Years ago, I warned about paving over our best farmland near the big cities and turning it into an asphalt/toxic lawn wasteland. I called good river soil, 'Black Gold' just like oil it 'Black Gold.' As the world's population grows, the best farmlands on earth are being devoured not just in the US but in Europe, in Asia, all over the planet. For always, big cities grow fastest where the best farmlands are. Even in deserts, this is true. When I lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, in the 1950's, it was a farming community fed by irrigation. Tucson was a farming community, too.

Today, there is no more farming. There are golf courses and lots and lots of houses. But no farms. All over the West, farms are going fallow or dying from lack of water as all of it is diverted to leisure, swimming pools, lawns, and flush toilets. To my unending rage. I figured out, back when we had an outhouse in Arizona, flush toilets were ridiculous. True, black widows and scorpions moved into out houses but it builds character to learn how to deal with them. I got really good at pinning them down with a knife and then watching them try to get free before cutting them in two. But then, I played with rattlers and Gila Monsters, too. As well as my dear bobcat, Bob [hey, I was only 7 years old when I adopted him!] or my pet skunk, Spotty [I was 5 when I got her]. The messiness of living in the country can't be described easily.

Back to the farmer's wife: an unenviable job. Most farms limp along due to high land taxes, etc. Rather than have government welfare payments, I would far, far rather have the government pay our land taxes. I pay over $6,000 a year for just 23 acres! OUCH. This is for school and fire, as well as county taxes to pay for medical care and policing of the nearby cities! OUCH. Meanwhile, my sheriff is myself and my gun. If I need help, it takes over an hour for it to show up, that is, if it is not WINTER. Then, it doesn't show. Period.

I grew up using a gun and being the sheriff. My first citizen's arrest was done at the age of 15 years when I held three guys at gun point and made them shake a tad. Heh. 'Moving target practice can be fun! I love doing it. Like playing kick the can...' Yes. Shooting at a can repeatedly as it jumps and rolls is good practice. When I lived in New York City, these old skills were very useful.

Back to the farm business: if you have large mammals, you have to know how to use a gun and kill things. Like coyotes or dogs. Not to mention foxes and woodchucks. Even rabbits. Farming is all about killing things. And then gutting them, turning their fur or hide into useable objects, etc. A rather bloody business. Then there is birthing: more blood. I have had to reach inside of large mammal mommies to rearrange the legs and heads of twins or triplets so I can pull them out, one by one. With cows and horses, if it is a rump delivery and the baby is stuck, we have to reach inside, and loop a strap around the baby and using chains, pull him or her out. Sometimes I would hold an ewe between my legs while my husband would deliver the babies.

Romantic ideas of the idyll of farming fades fast when confronted with the bloody side. Putting down a beloved ox who has broken a hip falling on an ice sheet brings tears but one must hold the gun steady next to the temple and pull that trigger. Over the years, one can grow fond of these fellow farm hands.

But most farmers today, outside of nuts like myself or religious believers who don't use machines, they all use modern machines like tractors and lifts and hoists, etc. So mechanical skills are required. I run a tractor and backhoe side business which is now slowing down due to old age, arthritis being the bane of all farmers. To do this, one has to know how to run engines, how to fix things that inevitably break, how to deal with tires blowing, etc. No easy matter! A saline-filled rear tire weighs literally half a ton or more! The dangers of industrial accidents to farmers is great, a very dangerous occupation. And since one has to be a builder as well [as I am] then falling off of tall barn roofs, etc is another danger. But the freedom of being one's own boss is great! I do my best thinking while doing farm chores, for example. Thanks to the net, I can come inside and cyber socialize.

“They have a desire to go back to a more authentic life,” she said. “These women are tired of the dating life in the city. But it’s hard to find someone who is willing to commit.”

The 10 women who are competing for Mr. Neustadt’s hand include several aspiring actors or entertainers, members of professions that might be hard to nurture in Portage Des Sioux. But most profess to be more interested in finding a soul mate than in being on television — which is why, of course, they signed up for a reality dating program.

Mr. Neustadt would not say if he was still courting the woman who won the competition, which was taped a year ago. Though some of the women from the show will participate in local publicity events in the next week, the women riding down Hollywood Boulevard on Mr. Neustadt’s tractor will be models, according to Paul McGuire, a CW spokesman.

This is so stupid. They are hiring a bunch of vapid fashion models who then pretend they will be looking to become shit shovelers? Gads. The entire premise of these shows is rather stupid. Farm women seldom come due to sexual attraction or seeking an easy life. It ain't easy. Ever run out into a blizzard in a night dress with a gun, yelling, 'You goddam bear! Git out of the hives!' Or run from the bees when harvesting the honey? Once, a bee found out that I took their honey to the kitchen and within minutes the entire hive was probing my screens trying to find an entry! I had to go out the front door in disguise or they would recognize my face and harry me for a few weeks. As it was, they were in a foul mood and would buzz me with an annoying BZZZZT.

Then there are storms: tornadoes, lightning, snow: you are the mailman who has to go out anyway. I greatly dislike lightning. When I have to run out and yell to the animals to 'Come to me NOW!' with lightning lighting up the horizon, believe me, my heart is in my throat. Once, the oxen refused to come in and a bolt nearly killed them. After that, they always responded when I called them. Once, a lightning bolt got into Sparky's stall! He gave quite a jump. I lay on the floor until it was safe and then ran in and had to put out the fire.

Lightning is ALL OVER ALL FARMS. More than one farmer has been felled by lightning. It is one of our collective fears. And don't even think about trying to be out on a tractor on a flat field when hearing lighting that is even 5 miles away! Ever see a tractor moving at more than a crawl? Look for lightning nearby.

Here is some pictures of farm life here: Click on images to enlarge.

Mucking stalls: first, you have to get the horse to go outside and not come in and poke around. They love to poke around. So do the dogs.

I have happy hens who have a social life, an indoor-indoor house, an indoor run and an outdoor run. They lay beautiful eggs that are very golden and very delicious. Most eggs people buy in stores are from factory farms, the ugly side of farming. These efficient farms brutalize living creatures and treat them like things. I find this unbearably cruel. Don't patronize them. And nearly all store eggs are from unhappy hens and this shows. The yolks are pale yellow and the whites are runny. Here is a recent story from England:

How do you like your eggs? Read our undercover investigation into Britain's battery farming

Undercover investigators have filmed the ugly reality of egg production at a battery chicken farm supplying the biggest egg producer in the UK.

Viewed from the air, Holsworthy Beacon Farm takes its place in an idyllic rural scene. But in its sheds, chickens are crammed five to a cage, stacked in rows from floor to ceiling.

I clicked on the movie and got instantly enraged. How dare anyone do this to any animal? Brutal farming methods make money just like any form of slavery or ruthless exploitation of nature. But it is bad for everyone. In the end, it fails as diseases and other stresses destroy everything including us.

Here is an Eastern Painted Box Turtle I picked up the other day down by the river.

I hope this guy in the TV show gets a decent wife. But I would suggest he go hunting where there is game, not Hollywood. It is obvious, he is really not all that serious about his chore. He just wants to have fun. And that is OK. But his farm will be sold when he dies and he won't have any children to pass it on to. Perhaps some peasant from across the seas or Mexico will take over. For the most important crop one can raise is the young'uns. The children who should inherit the earth.

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Comments

[Judy]

Hey, Elaine. You live almost the same life as I do.. My husband (wildlife biologist) and I live in the country...by choice. I was city born and bred and hated every minute of it. When I took an aptitude test in highschool, it said I should become a farmer. A lot of sense that made to me, a female from an upper middle-class home in the city. Here in rural New Mexico I have two horses, 6 cats, 2 dogs, and 7 chickens. Plus large garden. Last year my husband killed a rabid fox that was after our chickens with a stick. One year we had bears in the apple trees. A couple of months ago we butchered a buffalo and put it up in the freezer. I have in the past packed out elk on my back (which is probably why I have back problems now...plus arthritis in my hands) and packed out catfish from the Verde River in Arizona. Correct, living on a "farm" is hard work. But I love it. Am getting ready to plant the garden again this year. Right now things are in pots, since it has been cold this spring. Don't think I'd much like your New York environment though. Too cold...and I'm 65 now so am slowing down some.

Enjoy your blog a great deal. I think there must be something about living out in the country that allows one to contemplate the larger issues and come to a more realistic overview of what's happening out there.

[blues]

God fucking damn, Elaine! Different lives, parallel, yet different universes! I came into this "world" neither rich nor poor. It became very complicated very fast!

I learned the "You Bet Your Life" game very damn fast! My mom "broke up" with my dad; maybe because they both had some odd brain anomaly. Whatever. So I got farmed out to an actual farm for a while. The chicken bullshit was the very worst. The asshole farmer's kid would light a chicken with gas, and watch it fly, crash and burn. What a scum!

The chickens were nearly "free range," as they just lived in a big shed. Every night, some poor chicken would be "it," would get taken down and eaten by the rest. That didn't help my attitude about farming one fucking iota!

But, as they say, I had my own problems. I soon moved to Bridgeport, CT, with my mom again. Capitola Ave, behind Father Panic Village. Tough gangs! Seventeen toughs once chased me for an entire day. They were gonna kill me; I knew that. But I knew EVERY back alley, Every hallway maze; every tunnel under the street! They finally had me totally cornered. A stone wall, two stories high, at the very end of Capitola Avenue. Giant stone wall, 30 feet high. Where was I gonna go now? Same story I have told so often! I simply jumped from the two stories onto solid asphalt. Cracked a front tooth. But the gang certainly didn't follow. This seems to be the very story of my life. Go a little further than your enemies. Well, I did.

Nothing particularly heroic about all this. I was strangely autistic. Learned tensor calculus out of books. Ate the peyote to get free. Fifteen years ago I went back to the place where I jumped, and just looking at it came closer to killing me than the jump itself. It's all been, interesting... I tried to go to "high school," but I couldn't write, so I never got past fourth grade, basically. Like I care.

Elaine and I have some strange thing in common. Blowing up the rock-solid gingerbread house with firecrackers. That is just what me and my gang would do. Oh yeah. Push the old envelope just a bit further. We were a tad nerdy, but the thuggiest gangs with their collars up kept a clear distance. For good reason! We were bad, BAD! Willing to risk our lives at any moment. Never willing to let go of any damn thing that life had to deal out. I wish I had known Elaine when I was a kid. We would have had one hell of a gang. I guess we still do, in a way. Fuck the stupid assholes. We will do it all our way. Come and get us, weenies!

I gotta stop this blogging bullshit. Gotta get my linguistics stuff out before the jerks blow it all. Tried to go to "high school." Went to school with a now-sitting U.S. Senator. What a wimp he became! Our gang would never put up with the shit he eats every day. My dumb-ass brother was an unacknowledged hero in the Vietnam. While I was protesting what he was doing in D.C. But that is par for the course. Damn good work, Elaine! The hell with the wimpy-ass gangsters!

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Blues, in the desert, we ranch kids waged long, hard territorial battles. Heh.

Judy, hey! Same here! I used to fish in the Verde River because I once had a boyfriend in New Mexico, long, long eons ago. It is odd in northern New Mexico. One minute, it can be very very warm. Then a blizzard roars in!

This is what makes farming fun; Mother Nature toying with us humans.

[Ed-M]

That article in the NYT just goes ga-ga over Mr. Neustadt, Elaine. And no wonder. He looks like a stereotypical buff, toned, fitness/fashion model! Which he'll probably become pretty damn quick.

[Roberto]

Not meaning to be the goofball who cuts the silent-but-deadly gas attack at the birthday party but..... given the increasingly super track record of calling thieves thieves and forecasting macroecon stuff is it wise to detail how long it takes law enforcement to reach your place? We need the real journalists manning the turrets as long as possible, Elaine. BTW.... you sure look happy in those farm pix!!!

[Daliwood]

During my childhood, I spent a lot of time near--and sometimes on--farms. I didn't get an allowance, for instance. I picked cotton to earn spending money. To this day, I think the rural farming life I was exposed to shapes a lot of my beliefs. It may be a little odd, but often when I'm in the grocery store, I think about how much of the food came from "family farms" versus how much of it is mass produced corporate farm output. Especially meat.

I also see the weather in terms of the natural cycles for farmers. I never hear people talking about the weather in terms of farming. They want endless sunny days for their kids' soccer games or their church picnics, but nobody seems to remember that crops need rain. The hardest working farmer can't grow much in a severe drought.

Here in the very agrarian portion of Tennessee, we have a number of small farms that have fallen to the developers axe, the only trace remaining of them being in the name of the cookie-cutter subdivision that suddenly appears: Apple Grove Manor, etc. But a few of them have held on, although they are often no more than a few acres. Every summer, I see these hold-out farmers parking their pick-ups by the road and selling beans, corn, tomatoes, melons, etc. I always buy from them. We also have the abomination of yuppie "farmers markets," garish, shopping-mall-style pavilions that sell the same South American produce as the chain grocery stores but put it in a wicker basket and call it fresh. Sadly, most of my friends can't tell the difference between real fresh vegetables from local farms and the stuff that's trucked in. It never occurs to them that much of the produce they're buying isn't even in season here. I guess ambiance has become a substitute for getting your butt in the fields and picking something.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Yes, Daliwood. Heh. Nearly every farmer in my region including myself has been driven out of business by cheaper food imports. We had huge, huge greenhouses here that now sit idle on the other side of my mountain. All but one dairy farmer has been driven out by the competition of injecting harmones into cows, etc.

[donh]

Elaine,

$6,000 in taxes for 23 acres, what a deal! that's what many of us pay for a house on a fraction of an acre.

The closest I have come to a farm? I married a farmer's daughter. She has lots of great stories, and a lot of common sense.

[Abelian]

Hi Elaine,

Found this link on a blog recently. Discusses the range of things humans find disgusting.

http://psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?
term=19980201-000032&page=1

One of the overarching themes of disgust is things that remind us that we are animals.

I would think that farming, seeing the blood and crap, birthing calves, having to shoot animals when injured would definitely fall into that category.

A farmer's son or daughter recognize that they are human animals, whereas capitalist and their progeny feel they have evolved past the human and thus feel they can exploit the humans as beasts of burden.

Also, an interesting article from 2001 in Harper's called Dr. Daedalus describing the ethical debate of altering human form and function.

http://www.people.umass.edu/jaklocks/Phil164/DrD.htm

What if a person could go to a plastic surgeon and easily obtain functional anatomical wings for a few million?

[JSmith]

My very first summer "job", at age 11, was mucking out a 30-stall horse barn. I'd shovel the stalls out into the aisle that ran down the middle, then shovel that into a loader that followed me from front to back. Pay: I got to ride the horses. And I thought I was overpaid - "I can ride all the horses? And all I have to do is shovel shit? This is GREAT!"

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

This is why you fall for the Republican lies, Smith. Heh.

[blues]

I learned that too, Smith. When you shovel shit, there will always be more. Trust me on this.

[JSmith]

It wasn't that bad - it didn't even smell all that nasty. I suppose the "Republican lie" I learned was that if you keep at it steady and do the job you said you'd do, you get something you want in return.

(Unlike the Democrats, who keep promising me stuff and then finding some lame-assed excuse why it can't happen, at least not now...)

Double "HEH".