Recently, I went on a cross country (more like cross county, I suppose) tractor drive to pick up a new-to-us drill. I think I crossed three counties. It only took about an hour and half to get there. Then pulled the drill back home. I traveled a lot of roads I had never been on before. It’s surprising to me how similar everywhere is. Not the land or the operations, but the evidence of time gone by.
People and companies sell us on the idea that we need more to be successful or happy. Build the bigger house, buy the bigger equipment, get the fancier car. It was evidenced on my drive today that all things come to an end.
Our farm has kept getting bigger and bigger, but with the same number of workers. My husband is the energizer bunny. He loves what he’s doing and is so excited to wake up to do it. He would work 18 hours a day if he could. If he could figure out how to streamline sleep and IV food, we could increase that to 23.75 hours. All rough numbers, of course.
My dream isn’t the farm. My dream is a happy life. I married my husband right out of college and started working on the farm with him and his parents. I do what I do for him. If he decided one day that he all of a sudden he no longer wanted to be a farmer and rancher, I would be sad. I have invested over a decade farming and ranching beside him on the farm. I have made sacrifices and done things I never wanted to do. But I fully believe that we would be fine. We would figure it out together, and I could be happy.