Facebook and Twitter have been very eye opening to me. I get followed by the oddest folk.
We’re practically old hippies living off the land. We are farming Yankees, trying to make a buck any way we can. We are talking about selling the 200 year old rock piles out in our woods to some flat-lander.
I get all sorts of Big-Ag people following me. Really? I am pro-raw milk and pro-grassfed and a Michael Pollan fan and I make the best damn granola around. I use raw sugar and maple syrup and the only things I buy in grocery stores are booze, coffee and spices.
Sometimes they’ll interest me and actually engage with me, but honestly, I have to spend most of my time actually farming rather than talking about farming. But sometimes it’s a rainy day, and I engage.
Big-Ag reminds me of the tobacco companies years ago, fighting for their very survival. It’s safe! It’s healthy! Stop seeing and listening to what you see and hear in the world around you and watch the dangling clock — tick, tock, tick, tock. La la la la. Ignore the obesity epidemic, the rates of autism, the early maturing of baby girls. There’s no way that could have anything to do with diet. La la la la.
I lived in Texas for 24 years. I know beef cattle. When my grandfather went to Cattleman’s Steakhouse and was offered a salad before the meal, he replied “Salad? That’s what food eats.”
Only they barely do, anymore. Now they eat corn and soy, laced with antibiotics.
But not on my farm.
No matter how much they yell and scream that their “conventional farming” is okay, I don’t buy it. I’m not going to poison the land or the animals. Yesterday, one of them very stridently said I had “drunk the Kool-Aid”. Actually, she sort of started foaming at the mouth and YELLING IN ALL CAPS, posting over and over again until I deleted her as a “fan”. She’s not a fan of our little tiny farm, but somehow how we live our life threatens her. Crazy.
It sort of makes me think we are doing something right! Again.
Lisa tells me that she’s gotten 18 or so PMs about this entry, but, as all can see, no public comments.
We’re busy, and unless you come up with a non-idiotic argument she hasn’t heard before, you only get answered in public.
And please don’t hide behind Honeybee over on Facebook. She should be really grateful we didn’t send her transcript to every granola grassfed organization we know. Then again, the time the staff spent laughing would hurt their effectiveness.
Hi Guys
As always I love your posts! As a Canadian who lives and works her own little farm, I adore reading about all the happenings on yours.
Got my own little chicks hatching, duckings growing, just added in my own little pasture raised calf, raise a few pigs each year and fencing.. o boy do I understand the work in regards to fencing.. never ending it seems..
As well as my and your clear love of gardening!! and wild mushroom hunting.. but I will admit to something.. I don’t think I could ever be quite as brave as you are in regards to being so out there in sharing with others..
I find that folks that don’t farm, truly often don’t understand life on the farm..and I find as I get older, I am willing to give less time to explain it and want to spend more time living it!
Hope you find a new cow for yourself soon.. and enjoy the harvest coming in and hope that if you get a nice long fall if you second planted different things.
Val
Lisa, YOU are the reason I love blogs. They provide a channel for passionate, authentic, mission-fueled people to speak their truth in the spaces between living their beautiful, robust lives. (In your case, a rainy day. Thank goodness for NH weather!)
Your voice, perspective, spirit, and really, your fearlessness — I love them. You inspire me, and I’m so happy to have the opportunity to meet you at the “A-Ha!” NH Social Media Business Summit on September 27th. Knowing people like you are out there fuels me… You’re doing so many things right – keep fighting the good fight.
See you next month!
Lani
P.S. LOVE that “Dirty F***ing Hippie” video, too. Wow. Sounds like George Carlin’s political-activist doppleganger. Thank you for being you. 🙂