The Farmer Needs No Ice Breaker
Earlier this summer, probably late spring, I was driving up Post Street on the way to our greenhouse. It was a sunny, calm day and one of the large fields on the way up had just been hayed. The first cut of the year.
The large, sprawling field was as tidy as a soccer field with a spotted grid of square bales waiting to be loaded. These were the large, dining room table-sized bales, too. The kind you would need a machine to pick up. And sitting on one near the road were two girls, maybe middle school age, facing each other, having a conversation. No phones. Just talking.
It was a nice image, an image that contrasted the AI-powered, Twitterbot-populated, endless scroll world that we call home now.
Farming jobs sure seem to bring out the conversationalists in all of us. Haying a field on a small farm, where the task of cutting, baling and moving the harvest requires a lot of hands, is often a large family affair with everyone chipping in. A couple of people on the wagon stacking incoming bales. Another group finishing meal prep for lunch break. Maybe some younger kids climbing and playing nearby. Think of the gossip and stories shared between bale tosses and hamburger bites.
I see it on our farm, too. People get chatty when it comes to farm work. Last week, when our family members came together to harvest our garlic, there was very little downtime. Neither with the work nor the conversations. And that's a good thing.
The job seems to go by easier when you have someone with you to help and to talk to. With your hands busy your mind is free to ponder and discuss the recent current events (yikes, there's been a lot), the weather, family news, conspiracy theories, local politics, business strategies, recipes, and the new Nicolas Cage horror movie that everyone's talking about.
It's a refreshing kind of talk and it seems to come easy. Maybe it's because your guard is down with your focus on the whatever task is at hand that the words just pour out. Maybe we feel compelled to fill the silence with an announcement of our existence. Maybe, with our eyes pulled off away from our screens for once, we can finally reach out and pluck the thing that we have been trying to grasp all along.
Real human connection. It's important thing. And growing food locally, along with all of its environmental, nutritional and sustainable attributes, seems to provide that for us, too.
Don't believe me? At your next business, family or friend gathering where people are meeting for the first time, or conversation can be awkward, consider providing a hay bale. Go to your local farmer and purchase a bale from them.
Stick your bale in the living room or prop it up next to the charcuterie board. People will wonder, "Why is there a hay bale in the middle of your house?" They may sit on it, or set drinks on it, or smell it, but they will surely talk about it. And laugh about it. And tell stories later on about that party they went to with the hay bale. "That was weird," they'll say. "That was the greatest party ever."
Farming connects people with people and hay bales are great conversation starters.
—John
