Coming Home From A Trip

I just returned home from an epic, 8 day trip to Florida, which you have all heard all about.  I came home to a broken electric fence, female goats working their way under another fence and getting in with the bucks (early kids this year) and five chickens that had been killed by an unknown assailant - probably a weasel.  Plus I started irrigating the morning after I got back.

The trip was necessary, and I don't find fault with any of our farm sitters on this stuff.  These were just the culmination of normal, small things that happen on a farm all coming together at once.  So, while I get a lot of peace from living on our farm, being out of the city and watching our livestock; for the first few days back it is just constant work and chaos.

Today's Topic

So, here it is, Monday morning.  I got my chores done early, fixed a blow out in my irrigation line and got all of the rest of the irrigation finished.  I also took Hattie to school (she starts in one week) for her cross country practice and picked her up when it was over.  Hattie and I headed to our favorite coffee shop in Kuna, and I sat down to figure out what I was going to talk about in our Tuesday episode this week.

I started scanning the internet for something to get my creative juices flowing, and I came across an article released by the BBC titled "The Mental Health Benefits Of Farms".  Of course that caught my eye, and I had to check it out.

My knee jerk reaction to this headline is to laugh.  After a weekend like I just had, I kind of forget about the mental health "benefits" and seem to only see the mental health "challenges" of having my own farm.  Not to mention that the tag line for this news report is "Scientists say working with nature can make people less depressed, less anxious and less stressed".  After this weekend I definitely feel more anxious and more stressed.  Thank goodness that I am not feeling depressed.

And I started thinking back to the fair season.  It has only been a couple of weeks since we finished up Hattie's fair.  And right now the Western Idaho State Fair is going on, and several kids we know are showing animals there as well.

Reflecting back on the fair I did not see any farm animals making kids (or parents) less stressed or less anxious.  And when it came time to say goodbye to their animals, I definitely saw acute versions of depression set in when the tears started to flow.

So, the irony of this title made me chuckle.  I knew immediately from the title that this headline was not written by someone who keeps livestock, repairs fences, tries to keep males and females from commiserating, breaks ice in the winter, refills spilled water in the summer, tries to move livestock from one field to another or deals with weaning in the fall.

This article was obviously written by somebody who probably lives in the city, and has had a very peaceful experience visiting a farm with livestock on it.  And this author probably interviewed other people who have visited farms that welcome visitors who have had a similar experience.  And thus, they drew their conclusion.

And, the author's conclusion is 100% correct - for all the stressed out city people who make their way out to a farm to pet a goat or watch a cow laying down and chewing its cud.  That is very peaceful.  However, if they could only see the chaos that seems to be necessary on any livestock operation (some of the time) they might really feel for the farmer.  If they could have seen me this morning, trying to catch a young buck that has found his way in with our does they might not think it so peaceful.  And, if they could hear the expletives that sometimes get yelled at livestock, then they might choose a different environment to de-stress.

For every ten city dwellers that have come out to a farm to find peace an...