Farming

Farm Life

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A few years back on the beach I overheard a conversation between a couple about farming. The wife had a romantic notion of owning a farm, which the husband quickly responded back noting that people who farm for a living their whole life resolves around the farm, making sure animals get fed, crops get maintained and harvested, necessary jobs get done. Farmers even when they do take vacations rarely get far from home often traveling back to take care of their livestock.

Being watched as the sun set

On the other hand, farmers own a lot of land and are control and management of their land. Maybe they don’t get to go on vacation or travel as much, but they live a life where escape doesn’t have to be such a big part of their life. They have land they can hunt, they serve as their own boss, they can ride four wheelers, burn trash and have bonfires. They can see the progress they’ve made each day, see directly the impacts of their quality of work. It’s a hard life, but one of such fortune for the two percent.

Goats and Soda : NPR

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Dramatic Goat Rescue Operation For A Pair Stuck On A Beam Under A Bridge : Goats and Soda : NPR

"So when NPR listener Jason E. Farabaugh sent us a Facebook posting about two goats stuck on a beam under a Pennsylvania Turnpike bridge in rural western Pennsylvania, we jumped to it."

"No one knows why the goats climbed up on the pedestal of a Mahoning River bridge and set out along a narrow beam."

"They're not talking. But goats do love to climb and explore, notes goat specialist Susan Schoenian of the University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. So these two goats, who are probably pals (because goats are social animals), escaped from the nearby yard where they lived and went on an adventure."

In Deep Freeze, How One Farmer Keeps Cows Warm And The Milk Flowing

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In Deep Freeze, How One Farmer Keeps Cows Warm And The Milk Flowing

"Sweet says they don't worry about cold weather until it stays below zero during the day. "If it drops to 15 below and then warms up during the day above zero, you're ok. If it stays below zero it gets harder. The water tanks and everything get more ice build up and it's a little harder keeping the water running in the colder parts of the barns."

"I read somewhere that each cow generates 2,350 BTUs. We have 255 of them in here keeping this barn warm," Sweet said. "It's hard to believe a barn this size there's no heat in this beside the cows." Sure enough, some sources say cows give off 4,500 BTUs per hour. The barn does have insulation in the ceiling and end walls, and the side curtains have an R-value of 2. They leave the equipment they use daily in the barn so it doesn't freeze up."

Thousands of pigs roamed the streets of New York City in the 1800s, until gentrification drove them away. — Quartz

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Thousands of pigs roamed the streets of New York City in the 1800s, until gentrification drove them away. — Quartz

"On his first visit to America in 1842, Charles Dickens found plenty to ridicule—America’s money obsession, their manners, their tobacco chewing habits. But the biggest target of Dickens’ humor was New Yorkers. Specifically, their pigs."

"Stepping onto Broadway, New York’s biggest commercial thoroughfare, Dickens encountered “two portly sows” and “a select party of half-a-dozen gentlemen hogs” among the brightly dressed ladies and a bustle of coaches. Even more than this strange sight of pigs roaming the city’s streets, Dickens was captivated by the free and easy swine lifestyle—a “roving, gentlemanly, vagabond kind of life.” Scavenging curbside trash in droves, New York’s wandering pigs were on “equal, if not superior footing” with humans—a model of self-sufficiency."