Farming can be described with a vast variety of words, and Matt and I often reflect on how different farming is from “real life,” because not too long ago, we exited the corporate/university world to enter into a life of working with the land for a living. It is a life of uncertainty, excitement, disappointment, worry, hope, and sacrifice, full of interesting people, hard work, long days, and unbelievable experiences. If I had to choose one word to describe the farming life, it would be “diverse.” So I thought I would share an up-close-and-personal view of one aspect of the diversity of activity involved in livestock farming. It is a story of how two farmers use their hands.

Matt’s Hands

Despite the fact that he had no livestock experience, Matt was considered a jack of all trades well before he started farming. He was a mechanical engineer with a keen interest in design for manufacturing. In fact, his passion for manufacturing was so great,  that before he was even a “senior member” of his would-be senior design project (Formula SAE) in college, he functioned as lead welder and co-lead machinist. Now, pulling from a variety of sources, he has learned even more skills that allow him to care for all his animals on a daily basis.

Probably the most rewarding of the activities he does using his hands is when Matt brings life into the world during the occasional assisted delivery of calves and piglets. But it is a mix of anticipation and anxiousness while we are waiting for the birth, wondering if everything will go smoothly, and occasionally having to step in and help. Sometimes it doesn’t end well. We’ve lost calves, piglets, and mother cows and sows. There are times when death is inflicted intentionally, such as when we have an injured animal that is beyond help. Sometimes it is out of defense, when dangerous wildlife are threatening our livestock. Yet many times the choice to kill is not black and white—we only have to hope we made the right decision at the time.

Every day, twice a day, even on Christmas, Matt uses his hands to milk three Jersey cows. To do this well, he has to be scrupulous, timely, and consistent—milk cows like everything to be the same all the time! But Matt also has to be gentle and reassuring to the cows so they give plenty of creamy milk. When that’s over, he moves on to more brutish tasks like digging holes and irrigation trenches, hammering nails, driving in fence posts, manhandling various equipment into submission, and occasionally even “testing” the electric fence when he accidentally comes too close.

With his hands he skillfully welds together steel. Sometimes he cuts it apart. Sometimes he touches the ground to gauge its dryness or the grass to judge its lushness in order to better manage his livestock.

At the end of the day, he comes home, and most of the time his hands are covered in calluses, dirt, nicks and scratches, sweat, sawdust, oil and grease, metal shavings, and sometimes even blood, manure, or afterbirth. Matt cleans up and we sit down for dinner, and every night he holds the hands of his two young sons, Shevi and Axl, and his wife, and thanks God for the good food we will eat and the safety and blessing that God has given us.

Matt’s hands with a few typical end-of-day scratches and nicks.

Someone recently asked me to share more of my personal life as a farming wife and mother. So perhaps this is a good time to share what my hands do as well.

Jerica’s Hands

I’m sure many reading have children of their own and are familiar with the never-ending tasks of a mother. The changing of diapers, folding of laundry, sweeping of floors, cleaning of dishes and furniture and faces and floors, preparation and storage and clean-up of food, kneading of bread, measuring of ingredients, the whisking, the scrubbing, the stirring, and on and on.

Then there’s the mothering side of my “job,” when my kids bump their heads, I rub them, and when we cross the street, I hold their hands, and when they can’t quite master the spoon at lunch, I sit and feed them. I teach them to clap and to play and to put their toys away. I let them help pack eggs and sometimes there are casualties, so we clean those up. My hands have to move quickly as I try to thwart accidental crashes or drops or to correct the erroneous really-dirty-egg in the carton—it goes into the “personal” basket. But I do a lot more than that.

I consider myself the sales manager of our company, Shady Grove Ranch, and I spend much of my time talking with customers, jotting down orders, programming cash registers, and counting change in preparation for farmers market. I also am in charge of developing materials like price lists and sampler packages and website information and informational articles. For this I need pictures, so I frequently walk around the ranch with a camera, shooting photos of our animals and people in action. I am not an organized person by nature, so I spend a lot of time trying to figure the best way to organize my office and my desk. Sometimes it takes a lot of re-work!

Sometimes I am able to get out and work alongside Matt, moving cattle, building fences, working on projects, repairing structures… I hammer, drill, saw, staple, pry, dig, and even occasionally weld (I am a welding engineer, after all!).

Before I had my two children, I would milk cows daily, morning and evening, so Matt could spend his time doing tasks that only he could do. I grew attached to the cows and enjoyed the work, monotonous as it became over the years. I enjoy getting out and being part of the “fun” part of farming, as do most people that get to spend a little time helping us with projects at the ranch.

But most of my part in the “real” farming is the paperwork side of things. I never knew how much there really would be when running our own business. Farming is a full time job and then some, and I am thankful that there are two of us (plus Matt’s parents and our farm hand!) to take it all on.

A lesser part of my job happens sporadically when Matt calls me on the radio and says breathlessly, “Can you help me?” These times are usually emergencies, when Matt needs help to cut a cow out of the herd for medical intervention, or to rescue chickens from a sudden weather threat, or to recapture escaped cows, or to aid in delivering a baby animal, whether that happens out in the pasture or in the squeeze chute or at the vet’s office when things get really desperate. It is fortunate that these are the times that work best with two sets of hands, because two sets of hearts are there also to catch each other if things don’t go well.

I’ve always been a bit of a tomboy so my hands were never particularly delicate. I grew up riding horses and exchanging the mucking of stalls for lessons, so I’m used to hard work and lots of dirt. I find myself laughing silently at farmers market when I notice, as I’m pointing out something to a customer, a little bit of dirt still under my fingernails. Being a woman, I get a little embarrassed and try to remember not to point with that finger anymore. But it comes with the territory, I guess. It’s like I always say about our unwashed eggs: The dirt is there to prove that they’re real!