The Slowcook at Spydog Farm The Slowcook at Spydog Farm

These Old Bones

February 10th, 2015 · 2 Comments · Posted in farming

1980-01-01 00.00.08-6

Went to the doctors for a checkup–first time in three years–and came away with a clean bill of health. Not bad for a 62-year-old, I figure. But gosh, seems like only yesterday I was 61.

Still, if you’re middle-aged and considering farming, you should think hard about that. It took a year for my tennis elbows to completely heal from all the scything I did after we first arrived on the property. Now I go to bed every night with a sore back from hauling chicken tractors around all summer. The legs get weary, the bones creaky, after trudging through snow up to my knees to feed the animals.

Apparently, I’m hardly alone. The age of the average farmer is approaching 60, and farmers are getting older all the time, while young farmers are becoming a rare species. Farmers younger than 45 numbered three million at the turn of the 20th century. Today, that figure’s down to 334,000. In the old days, those “younger” farmers outnumbered the geezers by a ratio of nearly 5-to-1. Today, older farmers–older than 65, mind you–outnumber the youngsters by better than 2-to-1.

Mechanization and fossil fuels make it possible for old guys like me to produce food on a large scale. For us small-scale producers, however, machinery helps only a little. Most of the work is done by hand. That’s where the ibuprofin comes in.

Healthy, yes. But definitely feeling my age.

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