Story #1: Recently this farmer attended a meeting that had nothing to do with farming. But it was harvest day, and in order to make the meeting, I had to rush out of the field, which meant I was in my working clothes.
My working clothes tend to be grubby and ragged, which generally doesn’t bother me, except when I have to go to a meeting of non-farmers. Then I might throw a decent layer over the grubby and ragged, which is exactly what I did.
Unfortunately, the meeting was held in a heated building, rather than a chilly field of vegetables, and I got way too hot very quickly. It was an interesting meeting, so I wasn’t really thinking as I shed my top layer, revealing the grubby and ragged.
At the break, however, a very nice person, whom I had just met, said very nicely to me, in tones of both awe and delicacy, “I’ve just been noticing your coat.”
I laughed a little, suddenly realizing I had revealed the ragged and grubby. I said, “I’m a vegetable farmer, and this is my farm coat.”
“It’s a great coat,” answered the person. “I’m just thinking about the play I’m going to be in soon, and I need a certain kind of coat, because I’m playing a Scottish tramp from last century, and I wondered . . .”
Well. That made me laugh some more. “Do you want to try it on?” I asked, and he did. He even took the coat to his rehearsal, but alas, my grubby and ragged farm coat did not make its stage appearance, as the time period of the play required a knee-length coat.
Story #2: Recently a CSA member and I had a gripe session about wastefulness. She was mentioning a sustainability program that would assist farmers in purchasing electric tractors.
Sounds like a great idea, I said.
But, she went on, one of the requirements of the program is that the farmer disable any conventional tractors.
We were both flummoxed. There is something amiss in that logic. To wreck a functional tractor? How is that sustainable?
Story #3: I was picking up my daughter from the train station in Brattleboro. It was another cold day, and as I waited outside on the platform, I was glad I was wearing the multiply-patched lined jeans that came from my dad. He wore them for many years of his farming life, and my mother patched and patched them. When I wear them I am warm, and when I wear them I can think of my mom and dad, both of whom I’ve lost in the last year and a half.
So there I was, warm, and thinking of my parents, when the train rushed in, and my 24 year old daughter arrived. “Wow,” she said, “You look cool in those pants!”
I was flattered. I looked cool at the same time I felt warm. Not only that, I was firmly in sustainability mode, which is also thrifty mode, which is also farming mode.
Story #4: I grew up on a small family dairy farm, with “Waste not, want not” as a byword. I took it seriously. When I gave the rabbits fresh water, I emptied the eighth inch of water left in the bowl into the cow’s bucket. (Apparently, I thought that amount of stale water wouldn’t hurt a cow.) “Waste not, want not,” my mother chuckled.
There is another saying, from the Depression era: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” There is a lot of wisdom in that saying, whether it is in fashion or not.
Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Dec 11-17, 2024