Sunday, October 30, 2011

You can take the girl out of the country...


Ughghgh it's been over two months since my last post...obviously this shows how busy I've been. Not sure where the time has gone, but it's mostly been filled with work, studying for my online geography course and the occasional outing. I've been so stressed my hair has begun falling out again! But only 40 more days till the class is over! So because of this, I wrote the following blog on the train back from the Shimonoseki JET Halloween party yesterday as I forgot to bring my textbook in my rush to the train.

Over the past few months or so, the farmers have been busy with rice harvest. As I've sat on the train, watching them work in their tiny fields, I realized this is the first time in my 28 years I've not been involved in harvest. Harvest time I think is definetely my favourite time of year on the farm, and probably the time I miss home the most. Maybe even more than at Christmas time, especially over the last few years. As a child, I remember sitting on the combine with my mother or father or in the pickup truck reading and listening to the radio. Everytime the combine would make another round past me, I'd excitedly jump out and wave to whoever was driving it. As I got older, this is where I first learned to drive, weaving in and out of the bales, and practicing parallel parking. In high school, I would bring the meals to the men in the field after I got home from school. Fall was also when we would get to go to Lloyd to sell my calves and I could see my bank account suddenly increase and I'd go spend the majority of it at Lammles.

Working on farms in Australia I got to wrap silage bales and haul them home and castrate the lamb's and dock their tails. Even while in the city in university, I still got to take a small part in harvest through the ag college and fields located in the city that I walked past everyday on the way home. Most of these have unfortunately been bought by the city now and turned into huge shopping complexes of evil box stores such as Wal-Mart, Rona's, and Michaels. In Scotland, I could escape to my bosses farm in Cannich and feed the pigs. Every autumn I was in Europe I also spent about a month in Switzerland working under the table helping a friend and his family with potatoe harvest.

I'm not sure what it is that I like so much about this time of the year but I think it's the sense of community and how everyone seems to pull together to help out. Sometimes in Canada/North America because of the loss of family farms and how mechanized farming has become, it seems this sense of helping out has been lost. However, in September 2004 when my father had his chainsaw accident and was laid up for a few months, neighbours and relatives all helped out with finishing my father's harvest in addition to their own. The same happened the fall my mother was in the hospital. As nice as it is, it's a shame it usually only happens now when there's a tragedy in the family. At tattie harvest in Switzerland, there were at least 20 friends, neighbours, and family helping out every day.


Another thing that has surprised me about agriculture outside of North America is the amount of work that is still done by hand, even in other 'westernized, developed' countries. But by this, I don't by any means insinuate that farming in North America is easy. Travelling through Turkey and Greece in the autumn of 2008, I remember seeing people working out in the hot fields, digging the potatoes by hand, putting them in bags, and loading the bags onto horse drawn carts. This, in direct contrast to the tattie harvest I had just participated in in Switzerland a mere few weeks earlier, thinking that was hard, hands-on work. 'All' we did was stand in front of a conveyor belt picking out rocks and bad tatties while the machine did all the work, bagging them included. Here in Japan, there were often up to 10 people in a field, probably no more than 2 acres big, often cutting the rice stalks by hand and laying them out to dry on large wooden horses. How they ever get it to dry in this climate, I don't know.

Last Christmas while I was visiting my second home in Scotland, I saw an old friend I hadn't seen since my first summer I spent in Drum. He was surprised that I had come back repeatedly every year since, stating "I thought you'd get out of here as soon as you could, you seem like such a city girl." And he was surprised to learn I had grown up on a farm/ranch and studied agriculture. (Looking back maybe he wasn't such a good friend after all!) Yet I keep coming back to Drum/the countryside in general. There's something about the fresh air, getting your hands dirty, and the feeling of satisfaction going to bed at night knowing you've done a hard day's work. I love going home and cruising down the gravel road with the window rolled down, the wind in my hair, listening to Harry Decker drone on as all my worries slip away (as cliche as it sounds). Nothing makes me happier. And it reminds me that my true passion still lies in agriculture, just not the route I first took. Everytime I've moved to another country I've always said I wanted to live in Sydney/London/Tokyo yet I've always ended up in Timboon/Drumnadrochit/Hikari. And you know what? I couldn't be happier.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)