Establishing a new farmstead is a lot of work. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. The complexity of creating a diversified web of food, soil, livestock, and human needs generates hundreds – no! – thousands of intersections. Some daily, others weekly and even others less frequent, but all requiring thought and care, and most importantly, your hands and brain power to make them all function smoothly.

This is both the allure and the harsh reality of the farmstead lifestyle. While the stylized picture of multi-colored eggs and bucolic pastures of baby cows flashing across your Instagram feed may make you conjure up a scene of lazy days full of cow snuggles, the camera is sure to edit out the manure pile that the doe-eyed baby heifer is hiding behind her. Instagram doesn’t show you the farmers favorite hen – whom despite weeks of tedious care, must be culled because of a freak leg injury.  Nor does it show you the farmer piling on layers and boots in an ice storm to go ensure all the animals have fresh, drinkable water.

The farmstead is the ultimate showcase of balance. Of light and dark. Good and bad. Joy and suffering. You cherish those moments of simple pleasure, because you know they are fleeting. The trick, folks, is to truly relish those moments and use them as precious fuel to feed your flame. Because now more than ever we have more work to do.

Live your dream

I overheard my husband on speakerphone. I don’t remember who he was talking to. But it was some vendor. My husband has a talent for connecting with people and the conversation had turned to our farmstead. He spent about a minute rattling off our animals (goats, geese chickens, bees, and a prized dairy heifer due to calve in April) and the goals we have for the place (permaculture-rooted forest farm that provides food, fuel, and medicine). The stranger responded “wow, that’s great you get to live your dream!” My husband let out a chuckle. “My dream?!” he responded, “my dream was to play guitar and travel the world. I never dreamed of farming. But our food is being poisoned, technology is enslaving us, and our health is being destroyed…I don’t farm because it was my dream. I farm because I MUST.”

You could hear the passion, and the conviction behind my husband’s words. But there was a terrible message hidden in his bantering with the vendor: farming or homesteading isn’t a lifestyle we choose, we must farm if we want to continue being healthy, happy, and content in this world. Wow.

Fuel for the Flames

Earlier this year, it was announced that the first ever consumer-available GMO tomato hit the market. It’s a watershed moment that I don’t think the public has fully grasped. For the first time ever your garden-club variety grandma can grab herself a packet of delightfully purple-fleshed tomatoes to grow in her small backyard plot. Innocent enough, sure, until you consider that on the other side of the fence is someone else’s grandma that has been nurturing and refining a prized family heirloom tomato for generations. But this year, she notices something is off – her tomato fruit are displaying a new purple tint thanks to unwanted cross-pollination.

Proponents will be quick to point out that tomatoes don’t usually cross-pollinate on their own. But the reality is that all it takes is a busy little bee to visit that new GMO tomato and hop over the fence to the heirloom variety a few times before voilà– accidental contamination. Now what? There’s no putting genie back in the bottle. The implications are broad and deep. Will neighbors sue neighbors over tomatoes? Will heirlooms disappear in 20 years? Will these new DNA snippets trigger allergies or other reactions? Will more GMO varieties be released to the public? Who’s monitoring this risk? Who’s profiting? Who will pay when the undoable is done?

Where Does It End?

This stuff, folks, is what keeps me up at night. And before you think, well, it’s just a purple tomato – what harm is in that? This isn’t the end of the GMO road. Did you know, you can buy GMO pet fish? Worse yet, there are GMO pigs. Pigs! “Galsafe” they are called, that have been modified to not have the alpha-gal sugar that apparently some people are allergic to.

Or did your read that scientists are working on developing a cow with a lighter coat that can thrive in warmer climates? That last one has me scratching my head. We are in Texas. It gets blazing hot, and our cow manages just fine with shade and fresh water. Simple. If we raised all cattle using intentional rotational grazing with trees or mobile shade structures, you’ll heal the land, reduce feed cost, produce healthier beef, and eliminate the problems with things like manure lagoons. The solution is Simple. But simple, it seems, doesn’t pay enough.

The Beauty Of Simple

All this technology fails to recognize that the solution to most of the “problems” they are trying to solve could easily be remedied by a simple solution. GMO Tomatoes to boost anthocyanin? Solution: eat more blueberries. GMO beef to lighten it’s coat?  Solution: shade. Allergic to pork? Solution: eat beef instead.

Technology has become obsessed and mired in creating solutions for things that don’t need to be solved.  And many of these problems already have a simple solution available that don’t require millions in investment research and potentially irrevocably contaminate our food supply.

A simple solution is straightforward, elegant, and effective. If we must farm, then we want to make it easy. On our farmstead it’s the simple solutions that allow us to orchestrate and control all the interactions that take place day to day. Electric fencing to control animals. Daylight-activated coop doors. Hay mulching to prevent erosion and plant seed in new silvopasture simultaneously. A simple sliding gate made from cattle panel. We need more simple solutions in the world. And more people thinking of them.