We bought a farm. Well, a farmette really, which is apparently what we modern Anglophones have decided to call a small farm (I’ll just save the feminist rant for another post, but here’s a preview: why would slapping a feminine ending on a word make it connote something 10 percent as big as what the word usually names? This is more like the difference between a car and a matchbox car, really. Yeah, I like that).
We bought a matchbox farm. So, how did we get here?
A little about myself. I spent the last decade of my life earning a handful of master’s degrees (they were practically handing them out at a discount), while my wife studied medicine and went to residency, and I finally attained my Ph.D. in philosophy...I don’t remember exactly when. Sometime late in Obama’s presidency. During that time, I can’t omit to mention that four offspring graced our household with their delightful, needy, unrelenting, untameable existences.
Yeah, that puts the current count at six people. Mom, M.D., Dad, Ph.D., and four more aged 12 down to 4 years old. I probably can leave it to your imagination to set the scene (cra-zay): It will take a lot more work to fill in the details about this cast of characters. But I’ll continue giving more of the story of yours truly.
I have often been asked why I was pursuing philosophy. The question usually posed is, “What are you going to do with that?” Taken literally, it is a very silly question. A person studies philosophy in order to philosophize. To read the most challenging and insightful and influential (white, male...) thinkers, and to have arguments with the smartest dead guys ever. If you can’t find the inherent appeal of such a pursuit, then I really don’t plan on convincing you why I found, and still find, philosophy so utterly irresistible. It would be like telling me, “Why yes, I just attended a live performance of Beethoven’s Third Symphony. What a dull piece. Put me right to sleep.” What can I say? "Were you even paying attention?" No, no. That would be rude.
But of course, getting back to the question of my education, nobody actually wants to know what to do with philosophy. They want to know how such a degree will segue into future income. I’ve always had a ready response to that: “I’m going to marry a doctor.” And that’s exactly what I did.*
*Full disclosure: I married a medical student. But she eventually started paying her side of the bargain.
I realize I’m being rather flippant about the whole line of questioning, but if I get serious about discussing the relationship between education and future income, then I risk becoming somewhat alienating. For starters, I think people are educated in order to cultivate in themselves the disciplines and intellectual skills they will need to be better friends, partners, citizens, and all-round human beings, just anywhere that life might take them. Education is for liberating a sole individual from the accidents of their birth: their isolation within a single moment in history, their ignorance of the cosmos, their learned cultural limitations, maybe even their bigotry or belief in self-sufficiency. Such a view of education puts me in a tradition that places the pinnacle of a person’s schooling in an institution of liberal arts, arts for liberating a young mind from slavery to the limited experience of one life in order to open a world of learning and proven wisdom.
It is impossible to put a price tag on such an education. Paradoxically, though, if we decide to put a price tag on it that is too excessive, so that such learning will come at the cost of huge student debt, then we aren’t accomplishing the goal of liberating. We are effectively setting up a system of indentured servitude. So it is no wonder that students demand, for their future service, training that will give them a competitive advantage in the workforce, and hopefully make their labors easier, fewer, or more prestigious in the public eye. And, as long as students are the ones generating the income for the business of higher education, their demands will be met.
Ironically, during the same period that I was blissfully ignoring the need to secure a future income for myself and chasing my philosophical quarry to its academic apex, the business of higher education accelerated its trend toward job training and away from, well, educating youth, which would have entailed leading them away from (read the etymology of ‘educate’) immaturity and toward the ongoing work of disciplined and curious and capable adulthood. I defended my thesis. I emerged as Dr. Upham. It was now time for me to ‘go on the market’ (like a fattened sow, by the sound of it). But, just when I had finished preparing myself to enter the ranks of the institutions who had nurtured me and made me so much of what I am today, these same places were busying themselves with making my species of scholar extinct. That’s a bit simplistic. But that’s the gist.
Spoiler alert: I didn’t get a job as an academic philosopher. But, I didn’t need a job. Because 1) it turns out that I couldn’t care less about money, as long as our family has enough for food, shelter, clothes and that extra bit of wiggle room so that you don’t need to check your accounts every day to make sure you’re solvent; 2) I wasn’t bored and looking for things to do with my free time. Remember, by this point in the story, I have a Ph.D. on my wall and four bonny babes in my kitchen asking for a snack. More likely, they’d be asking for their second snack in the last 30 minutes.
By default, I had grown into the role of lead parent. For the older ones in the audience, that’s what we millenials call the partner who can rattle off every little tyke’s favorite color, food preferences, best friend names, and always knows exactly where to locate that snuggly piece of stitch-ing at bedtime.
Not many of my college buddies would have been surprised that I hadn’t landed a lucrative position at the end of my training. I never cared much for money. We never had much when I was growing up, and I never learned what the allure is supposed to be. Let me clarify: I’ve been poor, as in, sitting for hours to get medicaid for my baby kind of poor. Sharing my apartment with cockroaches and mice kind of poor. Planning finances months in advance to avoid hitting zero. That kind of poor. It is exhausting work being poor like that. One rarely finds a rich person who is empathetic or imaginative enough to grasp this aspect of poverty. Rich people have so much more leisure time to squander, not worrying about every potentially ruinous contingency that might arise. Because with the right amount of money comes a host of easy remedies for such nuisances: namely, other people who will take care of things for you (put a pin in that topic, because it will come up again and again).
So admittedly, I can appreciate the appeal of a certain amount of money. I wouldn’t put a fixed number on the amount, except to say that it is enough. Enough that one need not constantly fret whether one has enough. This idea of enough being enough will become a soapbox of mine, I suspect, so I’ll just leave that topic for now. But past the point of ‘enough’, the value of money has diminishing returns for me. It becomes its own cause for anxiety. At a certain point, too much gold in one person’s hands always proves to be fool’s gold.
As I was saying, no one who knows me is shocked I didn’t parlay my ambitions into a lucrative, high-paying career. But I have raised a few eyebrows by being the one to lead parent four little ones. I’ll grant that I’m not the stereotypical homemaker, and not just due to my y-chromosome. Here are just a few of my quirks:
I don’t like babies (as such);
I don’t gush over birthdays, or like to plan elaborate celebrations annually;
I loathe meal prep and grocery shopping and post-dinner clean-up;
I’m nobody’s first pick for a snuggle session;
My idea of a perfect family gathering would involve everyone in separate rooms reading quietly; etc.
Clearly, I don’t meet a certain set of traditional expectations about what it looks like to be a nurturing caregiver. But you know what I’ve found? Newly-minted infants don’t arrive with those expectations, even if some of them are rooted in biological and emotional needs. I’ve had to learn from my own tiny tots how best to care for them as unique persons, and not as the instantiation of a set of cultural and societal assumptions about what a developing human being is supposed to require. But at the same time, they have unconsciously developed a knack for receiving the kind of nurture that I am predisposed to offer. The not-so-secret key to this collaboration is caring.
I care for them, with my particular package of skills and limitations. And they don’t measure me against a list of criteria they have labeled ‘nurturing’. They grow and develop well enough, taking a shape to match my own rough edges perhaps, but the goal isn’t perfection; the goal is: enough.
Maybe this seems obvious. But I never cease to be fascinated by how well they are turning out, despite my own awareness of how ill-prepared I was (based on personality and formal training) for the gargantuan task of parenting. Constant caring and willingness to collaborate with their attempts to develop and learn, and not prior knowledge of what I should do or proven skills in nurturing, these have been my pillars for successful parenting. Care and collaboration go a long way when dealing with the nurture of a living thing, after all. Living things have a way of communicating when they aren’t thriving, and enough care--plus a dose of trial and error, with a touch of critical thinking--will usually point the way out of a problem. So, even lacking the usual set of qualifications, I’ve been able to grow into a lead parent as my own progeny have grown into their own budding selves. So now the list of negatives can be seen in a positive light:
I don’t like babies, but I can care for them and soon enough, they are toddlers! (We love toddlers around here, by the way. They finally start exploring their surroundings and asking questions. Bring. It. On.);
I don’t relish event-planning, but I can opt for spontaneous outings to the playground, or work alongside (collaborate!) a birthday boy or girl to bring their own dream of a celebration into fruition;
I may be a dud in the kitchen, but I can teach my hungry monsters how to perform age-appropriate tasks toward the goal of getting their own meals (which I’ve found they can do quite competently by age 6 for breakfast and lunch, and by age 10 for easy dinners);
I’m not prone to physical affection, but I can be physically present at intentional times (bedtime mostly), and make time for physical interaction in other ways, like wrestling/tickling matches;
I may be too introverted for regular interaction with the full house, but I can raise introverts who don’t crave such interaction, too!
This is all leading to the point where I explain why we bought the farm. I’m a philosopher, and a father, not a farmer. I have no illusions: Managing land and cultivating food is arduous work and comes from applying centuries of practical knowledge and skill, knowledge and skill which I currently lack. So am I daft to make this move? I don’t think so. Here’s why:
The younglings aren’t so young anymore. They require less of my attention, and contribute more and more to the daily household work. For years, we’ve been teaching them about sustainable living. So, recently they hatched the idea of putting chickens on our small city lot, and they researched its feasibility on their own. We decided it ultimately wasn’t a workable idea, as they would have entirely dominated our back yard. But the idea never stopped incubating, so to speak.
Not only do I have an eager bunch of field hands, I also have a partner passionate about transitioning to a carbon-neutral way of life. Robbyn recently began an MPH program in which, among many other things, she learned about the impact of conventional agriculture on the world’s carbon footprint. In the US alone, it is something like 9% of total carbon emissions, and that doesn't include the impact of herbicides/pesticides on the environment--such as nitrous oxide--or the production of methane from the digestive systems of ruminates. The status quo is abysmal. Farms can be ecosystems, thriving on life cycles that require no external energy inputs at all. Nothing is wasted because everything not used is returned for the next cycle. (Much, much more on this later.)
Caring and collaborating don’t apply only to people. The land is also responsive to someone willing to watch, listen, learn, and work constantly to preserve and improve its outputs. This puts farming into an analogy with parenting that isn’t far-fetched at all. Just think of the word ‘husbandry’.
Here we are, then. A whole family looking for a way to live sustainably, explore carbon-neutral agriculture, and grow goodness, both in ourselves and in the land we inhabit.
Follow this blog to share our journey. And I welcome discussion in the comments if anyone wants to pass along advice, resources, or follow up with questions about what we are doing.
