A HOSE JOB

You know, who ever said  " BE GOOD AND WORK HARD AND YOU'LL GET AHEAD IN LIFE", they LIED.  I've worked hard, really hard for thirty five years now at this "JOB" we call farming and I can see quite plainly now what rewards I am going to get, a minimum wage job at Home Depot and my retirement years in a trailer park. Not that there is anything the matter with some trailer parks but when you have pushed your body beyond it's limits doing work it wasn't meant to do, try to be everything to everybody, have given up close friendships and visits with family to give the farm 100 % effort thinking it will provide you with a great retirement, huh.... not so, lies, lies, lies...... but you just expect more than a trailer park for all the sacrifices. You deserve more that's for sure.

If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would be spouting off about how there just seems to be no way to make a living at farming anymore, at least not the small family farm.. Before BSE hit 9 years ago...we were getting 60-70 cents per pound for good cows. For one year after the BSE scare we couldn't sell an animal. Auction marts shut down there was no market, period...so that meant no income, ZIPPO, nothing for one whole year. I had to cash in my investments that I had acquired with the proceeds of the sale of my farm after I met Robt. to make the farm payments and keep the bank from repo-ing the farm because we were forced to mortgage the land to build this house after the first one was moving downhill with foundation undermining due to an underground spring....Insurance found a way to wheedle out of a payout, as per usual, and we got no compensation for the loss of our first house...a $200,000.oo  hit to the pocket book.

Last year, eight years after BSE, cattle prices finally got back to where they had been before the scare. Cows were worth about $ 900. and our calves were worth about $ 1,000.  We breathed a sigh of relief when we left the auction mart with our cheque in our hands. A whole years worth of work and sacrifice scribbled on one little piece of paper.  We deposited it in the bank the next day and by the time we walked out the door our account was back in the red. It barely covered the overdraft we had on the farm account and put the money back into our savings that we had had to use to tide us over from the used up overdraft until the calves sold.  But the first time we bought something we were back to using the overdraft.  

This year it's worse...we worked all year hoping the calf prices would stay up or even better than last year...we had rain ( hurray) but the states didn't and so the USA drought brought the price of feed sky high, so the cattle buyers were going to have to pay more to feed the calves they bought so they wanted to pay less for the calves, to keep their profit margin high....so we would be getting less for the calves...but we weaned them anyway and were getting them ready to sell when the whole Ecoli meat debacle happened....the price per calf has dropped a lot more now...and if we sold them right now, we wouldn't make enough money to pay the bank...never mind replace any of the money we sucked out of our savings....(my down payment on our retirement place money). 

So times are tough.....and it used to be things got this tough every ten years or so...but this past decade it seems like every other year there is some reason why we can't make a living... The farm is no longer sustainable as it is. Time to walk away, I say. Man, is that a scary thought.  I have never done anything else but farm, oh I had a few half ass jobs, waiting tables, picking fruit and working at a drive in theatre.

Robt has come in for lunch, god I hate cooking.... so I have to close this for today but be assured I will be touching on this subject again very soon, the calves will be going to market before the end of the month...so wish us luck.