The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.71: Farming with Kids

Episode Date: February 13, 2016

This episode: submissions from listeners about the joys and travails (mainly the latter) of farming with children. Four farmers share their tips for staying sane when you add kids to an already hectic lifestyle. Eric's Farm Heather's farm and book Jason's Farm Seth's Farm   Cover photo for this episode was sourced here. I cropped it a bit.

This is the Ruminant Podcast. I'm Jordan Marr. The Ruminant Podcast is for people who are passionate about farming, gardening, food politics, food security, and the intersections among these topics. At theruminant.ca, you'll find a summary of each episode, as well as book reviews, essays, and photo-based blog posts to stimulate your thinking about food production. I tweet, at ruminantblog and email from editor at the ruminant.ca. All right, time for the show. Hey folks, so some time ago I sent out a request to all of those among my listeners who are farming or gardening with children and I asked you to submit any ideas you have for making that challenge a little bit easier. I have four guests today. The first you're going to hear from is Eric Barnhorst who farms at

Evamay Farm out in Ontario. The second voice you'll hear is from Heather Stretch. Heather farms at Northbrook Farm and also is part of a marketing cooperative called Saanich Organics near Victoria, BC. Heather is also co-author of All the Dirt, Reflections on Organic Farming. Then you're going to hear from Jason Ruggiero, who farms at Plot Twist Farm in Pennsylvania. And finally, Seth Stallings of Amistad Farm in Oklahoma. Eric's going to be talking to us about something he runs with his daughter in the summer that he calls Farm School. Heather's got all kinds of advice for us. She has three kids and she raised them all while managing a busy farm. Jason emphasizes the need to plan out your work days ahead of time when you're trying to juggle a child, a farm, and a

spouse who has other work. And Seth thinks it's really important to establish a routine with your kid really early. If you expect them to behave and for yourself to stay sane while you're trying to farm with little kids. You'll also hear about a couple of brands of child carrier that are highly recommended. Okay, that's it. You might hear from me once or twice during the episode, but from here on in, the thing pretty much runs itself. I hope you enjoy it. Eric, thanks for getting a hold of me for the show here. Do you have a farm out there in Ontario? Yep, my farm is Eva Mae Farm. It's a small CSA farm in Ontario.

Right on. Okay, well, Eric, I'm really curious to know what garden school is. Yeah, so garden school is something that I've been working on kind of with my older daughter for the past couple of seasons since she started school. And the downside of starting school is we get used to a routine where there's some time during the day to do stuff. And then summer vacation hits right when I'm busiest. So when my daughter is home with me on a day when I would normally be doing a million things, having her home for a summer vacation has been a challenge. So garden school was our way of figuring out a way to get her out in the garden with me. And the way that ended up working the best was almost treating it like a day of school.

So she'd pack up her backpack with games and activities, and we'd pack a little folding chair for her in an umbrella and bring all her stuff out to the garden and set her up with her games and activities. And there was something about having all the stuff out there with her that meant she felt more self-sufficient, I guess, and in the end ends up hanging out with me, helping me with chores, um, doing some weeding, um, and that kind of stuff. So it's been a big success. Right. Okay. So, so, uh, your, your school age daughter, when she's home, like for summer

vacation, uh, I guess an approach other farmers might have tried is simply to encourage their kids to just come and hang out in the garden and either use their imagination or just help. Whereas your insight is just that you take the time to pack out a whole bunch of stuff that she can choose to keep occupied with if she feels like it. Yeah, and so we have tried to just bring her out with me, but inevitably there's some kind of interruption or problem, and giving her the self-sufficiency of having her own things and establishing a routine, I think, has made it a lot easier. I mean, we definitely tried. Oh yeah, let's just go. You do whatever you want, bring a toy, sit on the grass, do whatever you want. And I'll just work on my stuff. And it never worked until we set her up with, you know, this is your little station. So she's on her little folding chair.

She's got everything she needs. And when she gets tired of pulling weeds or when she gets tired of talking to me, she just goes and reads a book. Cool. So do you ever – okay, so I should establish. How old is your daughter? She's six. Okay, so clearly not old enough yet to be however many yards or feet or meters away she would be if she stayed in the house and did the same thing. Right.

Yeah. We have a baby monitor, but, you know, those things never reach their advertised distance, as we've discovered trying time and time again. And we also have a little radio system that she's just figuring out how to use, but I'm not comfortable really having her in the house when I'm out. That's more like if I have to run somewhere for two minutes, I might leave her with the radio. So she's probably what, another one, two, three years away from you being comfortable with that? Probably what, another one, two, three years away from you being comfortable with that? Yeah, for a long period.

Yeah, right. Okay, so I'm just curious. Have you ever attempted this little setup and she has a friend with her? She's invited a friend over. Has that come up yet? No, but it has worked really well with her sister, actually. So we have two kids. One one six and one is three um and the three-year-old uh is very well entertained by her big sister so that's the other way of once we got the six-year-old comfortable out there you know for a long

period of time then they can play together and they sort of entertain each other. Oh, cool. Right on. Well, okay. And sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say, again, the less organized attempts seem to always crash and burn. Right. Okay. So putting a little more effort into keeping the kid happy sounds like it goes a long way on your farm. Yeah, I think it's more actually than just staying happy. It's having a routine that is comfortable and familiar because we would do this on a regular basis. And I think it also reminded her of school because she would pack her same backpack with, you know, not the same things she would take to school,

but pack a snack pack activities and she would be involved with packing it the way she would be with packing her bag for school as well yeah i guess it totally makes sense establishing that routine so it's just it's just the norm because i would say that every single individual element that went into quote-unquote garden school was something that we tried in a less organized way. We would take that toy out, that didn't work. We would take that book out, that didn't work. But it's when you put it all together and package it up as a, this is what we're doing today. Now, are you actually with her calling it garden school?

And is that kind of important part of it? Or is that just what you've called it in describing it to me? No, we call it that with her. Actually, no, she doesn't like that name. She came up with her own name. I always call it garden school by accident, and she gets mad at me. She likes calling it garden day with daddy. Well, yeah, that's obviously better.

She likes calling it garden day with daddy. Well, yeah, that's obviously better. And the great, I just want to say that the best part about it has been this year, after finishing this season, this is the second year we've done it. And she definitely looks forward to it. And I don't think she opened her backpack once, even though she insisted on taking it every time this year. She helped me harvest stuff. She did some hoeing for the first time this year, which was amazing.

I had always tried to get her to pull weeds by hand because I thought that would be just, I don't know, more helpful, a better learning experience, you know, identify this weed and pull it, or this is a good one, pull everything else. But getting her to sort of do some blind cultivation with a super light hoe, I think because she was using one of daddy's big tools, it made it that much more interesting for her, and she became a very, very diligent worker. They are my favorite days without question, without question. There's no, like, bad behavior.

We always have a good conversation. It's a great day. So the fact that I can get enough done that, that I'm not pulling my hair out just means that I can enjoy the day with her. All right on. Okay. Well, let's, let's talk about your second child then. What were you most, I mean, I, of course you already had had a child, so you had, you were probably able to, to have an idea of what it would be like, what what were you most unprepared for what you what surprised you the most about trying to farm with uh an infant or a young child with with having a young child when i was um doing a significant significant amount of the parenting uh like on a particular day um i really thought I could get a lot more done with, say, like a baby in

a carrier kind of approach, which never, ever worked. I thought I was never comfortable really leaving the house, even with the baby monitor, just because it felt, I don't know, it never felt right to me to be that far away, given how the baby monitors don't seem to have the range. I guess with the younger one, the thing that was the biggest surprise, because I was more, having been through it once before, I was not that surprised by the other things I said.

But the biggest surprise is probably how her personality is different from my older daughter. So a lot of the things that I thought could work did not work with her. For example, I didn't even have to teach my older daughter, when she was about three or two maybe, not to walk on the beds. She just kind of watched what I did and did that. But that is exactly her personality. not to walk on the beds. She just kind of watched what I did and did that. But that is exactly her personality. And the younger one just will run everywhere.

So it's been like a multi-year process to teach her where to walk. But she's got all these other personality traits that make her a joy to have in the garden. So, I mean, it's not anything right but that's i'm really glad that that i asked you that question it just it sounds like one one insight that you made is just that you can't take the first kid's behavior on the farm for granted you know that the second kid will be the same that you have to approach you know every child uh kind of with a with a open mind about how they're gonna how they're gonna react to to you know the farm and the farming and everything else yeah that's right yeah hi folks jordan just cutting in here for a second are you a fan of the podcast if so i have

a favor to ask of you that would help get the show out to more people. It really helps with podcast search engine rankings when a show has a lot of reviews. So it would be great if you could review this podcast in your favorite podcasting app. Or actually, the best place to review it, whether you listen through Apple or not, is in iTunes. So if you have an iTunes account, you can find the podcast in the iTunes store and rate it there. And the reason that's great is that it seems like other podcast app search engines

are using the iTunes search engine within their own apps. And if you want a quick link to iTunes, head to theruminant.ca slash review. You can get straight to the ruminant on iTunes from there. Thanks, I really appreciate it. Back to the ruminant on iTunes from there. Thanks. I really appreciate it. Back to the show. Right.

My name is Heather Stretch. My farm name is Northbrook Farm, but I sell with Saanich Organics. I have three kids, and they were born in my third, beginning of my third year, actually just before, before my third year of farming, during my fifth year of farming, and in my seventh year of farming. So my kids are now 8, 10, and 12 years old. But basically, they've been alive almost as long as I've been farming. Okay, perfect. Thanks, Heather. So I think I'll start by asking you to try and remember to before you were pregnant with your first kid, you must have thought about what it would mean to have kids while farming. And I'm just wondering what you were thinking at the time or whether, to be more specific,

whether you thought it was whether you were scared of the idea or whether you thought it was something that you just figure out or what you were thinking. What were you thinking is a really good question um i i don't know what the hell i was thinking honestly i i you know frankly it was my husband who said okay so we want a family right so uh why are we using birth control so i didn't i didn't plan the timing for example i didn't sit down and say okay let's see wouldn't it be good to have a January baby therefore we should be trying like not at all I just you know we were just uh we were just two people who loved each other and then we got pregnant you know intentionally but we got pregnant and um uh the most bizarre thing in retrospect is looking back and I realized that it didn't actually occur to me to plan maternity leave. I don't know what the hell I was thinking.

I just thought I'll have a farm and I'll have kids. And I just kind of improvised from there. from there. And so ultimately, would you suggest to farmers who are just getting their family started that they need to think about how they will either have more labor or scale down to reflect just how busy they'll be when their baby's born? I think you have a few options. You can get child care child care although financially of course that's difficult because farming doesn't make much money uh so you can scale back on the farming or your other option is to do what i did and and and frankly what one of my business partners rachel did which is just kind of try to juggle, except that you're going to be on the one hand that you are going to be really

tired and it's going to be very, very difficult, but also have some rewards for sure. And also then you're, I just had to let go of some sort of social expectations or maybe my idealized picture in my head of, of sort of, you know, perfect parenting. I saw other mothers who were, you know, were teaching their babies sign language and were very attentive to their baby's needs and putting their philosophies of parenthood into action very, very intentionally. And sometimes I thought, oh, my God, I just suck as a parent because, like, yeah, sure, my kid's on my back all the time because I'm weeding and harvesting.

I'm not looking in his face. I'm not teaching him sign language. I don't have time to do a lot of the – I'm not going to baby groups. I'm not going to swim classes. I'm not providing a rich, stimulating environment'm not going to swim classes, I'm not providing a rich stimulating environment for his growing brain, blah, blah. But if I, if I, so I had to kind of let go of some of those pictures of what ideal parenthood would be and just kind of go with it. Have my kid with me all the time. Fortunately, you you know breastfeeding is great because it's very

very portable um baby would just be in the field with me and and you know frankly my kid is dirtier than than a lot of people would be comfortable with their baby being um my kid probably cried more than than some people would be comfortable letting their child cry uh there were definitely trade-offs but well, it didn't really occur to me to do anything differently. And ultimately now, you know, I have three, you know, relatively healthy, well-adjusted kids and we all get along great and it's gotten a lot easier. And my farm, you know, continued to succeed through those years. And those years were difficult for sure.

Well, let's talk about that. So let's start with being physically pregnant while farming. First trimester, I was exhausted. It's really tiring to grow a placenta, it turns out. So I was exhausted, but, you know, just kind of went ahead. Second trimester was great. I felt totally fine. Yeah. And everybody's different, you know, some women, fortunately, myself included, can carry on with pretty much normal physical activity and everything pretty much right up until the end uh some women

i know have you know debilitating uh uh nausea all kinds of things that would prevent that from happening i was super lucky and i'll tell you a january baby was was fantastic for the farming season um my i mean i was i was harvesting when i went into labor. I really did just carry on with my normal amount of activity. My next two babies were each born in September, which is really terrible timing. So I was big and heavy and hot through the exhausting hot part of the season. exhausting hot part of the season um and then you know that was when i realized in in in both of those cases you know i realized after the baby was born that that was really the first time i realized the farm could exist without me in september for a couple of days you know i think we all get a bit wrapped up on our farms and thinking that the sun will stop rising and setting

if we're not working all the time. And, you know, you go into labor and you realize, oh, what do you know? I guess I won't be finishing this order I'm supposed to be harvesting today. So I just want to ask one more very quick question about the pregnancy itself. And given the observations you made, would you advise advise a family a farm family that knows they want to have kids to attempt to time the birth of their baby no i i wouldn't only because i know um because i know too many people who who who wait to to try to get pregnant until the timing is is right in quotation marks,

and then they have trouble conceiving. Conception is tricky, man. When you don't want to get pregnant, you do. When you do want to get pregnant, you sometimes don't. And I think going through a farming season of significant challenges, if having a family is important to you, I do not think you should be using birth control. I think if you know for sure that you want a family, and of course it's not for everybody,

but if you know for sure that you want a family, I don't think you should mess with that. I don't think you should like be like, oh, well, yeah, but maybe it'd be better to have the baby in January because you don't know if you're going to be able to conceive when you want to so just I say just go for it one thing I would say um I very strongly advise is to you don't have to plan out the minutiae of how your farming is going to work how your farm is going to work how your parenting is going to work But you do need to sit down and think a bit about how the finances are going to work. And one thing I'm just incredibly lucky about is that my spouse has off-farm work that he loves. Because babies don't cost much, but kids do. And there are trips to the dentist.

There are sports that the kids are going to want to sign up for. I just feel like if both my husband and I were working full-time on the farm, self-employed, no dental insurance, that would be really stressful. insurance, that would be really stressful. So I think that if one partner or the other has something they can do, especially if it's something they might even like doing that provides benefits, I hate to say it, but I'd say at least for a few years in there, suck it up, have one partner do a job either that either is lucrative or has benefits um because man that would suck to think oh no my child has an abscess in their tooth and that means we're not going to be able to buy them shoes you know and it might come down to that if

you don't have some kind of financial security and heather to what extent did your any forms of labor you've had end up being babysitters and is it was that something that was planned unplanned and would you advocate for for leaning on your labor that way uh in my case i was i've been i was very clear with my farm hands with any apprentices farm hands people are on the farm that the job did not include babysitting, child care. That's the way I did it. I think you could do it either way, but I think the communication has to be absolutely crystal clear so apprentices understand if they're going to be involved with the children at all,

and if they're not, they have to understand that the parent will be often called away from the farm. they have to understand that the parent will be often called away from the farm. And so in my case, I started, even when I had apprentices who lived on the farm and felt, you know, kind of more like family and who said to me, oh, you know, we're happy to watch the kids. Like, we're happy to help out with the kids. That'd be, you know, we're totally into that. I would say, great great i really appreciate that and if i ever take you up on it i'm going to pay you as i would the teenage babysitter down the road

um because i wanted to keep any child care um i didn't want it to be in the in the realm of a favor that would have that i felt uncomfortable asking i wanted it to be in the realm of like a business transaction where I could say, hey, I'd really like to go to this meeting tonight. Would you like to babysit? And they know I'm going to pay them, and they can say yes or they can say no. But I tried to keep communication around that really clear, and I never had child care as part of the of the of the you know acceptable work at all one thing that I did that was very helpful was from when the kids were quite

young I found a girl in the neighborhood she was she was quite young as well she was kind of on on the young end to be able to babysit so she she was kind of a very part-time, occasional nanny slash playmate kind of babysitter while I was on the property. So she'd be in the house playing with the kids while I was out in the field working. And since she, well, frankly, she was only 11 when she started. Since she was only 11 years old, you you know i didn't have to pay her 12 bucks an hour like you know or anything like that but i get it that makes sense you're still around so she doesn't have the full responsibility but it does allow you to get some stuff done where you don't have to be right on top of what the kids are doing or whatever yeah and and the kids you

know and the kids were very happy to have someone to play with, right? The toddler is saying, Mom, can we play with Lego? Mom, can we play with Lego? And I'd be like, no, son, I'm busy. And that's the problem, right? When you're farming and parenting at the same time, I feel like I have, to this day, I feel like I'm a half-assed farmer and a half-assed parent, because I just can't give either the attention it deserves. So whatever, I just, I just accept that that is the case. And then when Jillian was around, then that was when the kids could have an older person sit and play Lego with them for two hours.

Right. That was so nice of you. Thank you, Heather. Have a great day. No problem at all. You too. Okay. Bye-bye. Bye. Hey, folks. It's me again. Bye-bye. Bye. Hey, folks. It's me again.

So do you like these episodes that feature listener submissions? Are you enjoying the current episode on tricks for farming with kids? Or did you like that episode from a number of weeks back about winter work for farmers? Well, they only work if people submit. So it's been a while, but I'm going to try again now. So you are producing food and you're ready to turn it from the thing that's alive into the thing you're going to sell. And I want to know something cool or insightful you're doing to get it from the former to the latter. So if you grow vegetables, what's something you're doing in the wash tent or the processing

room to make your life easier? Do you raise livestock? How about something you do to catch the animals to make your life easier or something that's going on during the slaughter process or the packaging process, an insight that you made that improved your efficiency or profitability or something like that. Do you produce honey or mushrooms or lavender or soy? I want to hear from you too. If you want to make a submission, you can email me, editor at theruminant.ca, and let me know that you want me to call you. Or if you're feeling particularly sassy, you can just record your insight on the recording app on your phone.

And then just send that to editor at theruminant.ca. Okay, back to the episode. Jason, thanks a lot for getting in touch with me. I believe you're out in Pennsylvania. Do you have a farm out there? Yeah, my wife and I have a small farm out here in Pennsylvania. We do CSA-style farming. This was our first year. We had only eight shares but uh we already are into the 20s

here reserved for the next year oh right on that's awesome that was uh yeah uh so well first of all what's the name of your farm jason uh the name of the farm is plot twist farm yeah it's kind of a play on words my wife is a newspaper reporter and there's kind of a plot twist in our lives here to kind of switch gears and look more toward farming. That's a cool farm name. I haven't seen or heard that one anywhere else, so that's awesome. That's my wife's creation. Cool. So you started a CSA. It's growing. That's good to hear. And you wrote me when I put a call out for insights about parenting as a farmer,

and I'm just wondering what you wanted to tell me. Yeah, well, you know, when you said about farming with children, we not only started the farm this year, our first year, but we started it with a child that when the year started, the season started, was under one. Wow. So it was kind of a dual, you know, change for us. Not only were we farming, but it was our first child.

So I kind of thought like, well, you know, I have a small, pretty small farm, but I do have some experience farming with a child, so I'd give you a call. Well, so what happened? How did it go? Well, it went surprisingly well, I would say. You know, one of the things that kind of jumped out that we did halfway through the year was, I don't know if you're familiar with a company called Kelty. They make, like, backpacks, like, for backpacking and hiking. Okay. They also make what are called, like, basically a baby backpack.

And that was a huge help um you had to kind of be smart about you know what you could do with him in it like obviously like bending over and harvesting was a bad idea um but you know things like using a hoe or um you know even like spreading compost or raking out beds or different things. It was just so nice to be able to not have to wait until he was asleep or something to get something done. Like I said, you kind of had to plan it out, but that was a huge help just to be able to do things with him on my back. And I did actually get to the point where I could kind of move down the row

in kind of a squatted position and harvest with him on my back. And then you've just developed quads like Hulk Hogan, I guess. Yeah, sometimes it felt like that but i mean obviously that's a little more extreme that was like when we were kind of you know maybe daylight was dwindling or time was running out but like um like you said especially using like some of the more long handled like um elliot coleman style style hose where you can stand really straight already. Um, that's something you can easily do with him or I could easily do with him on my back, um, which was great. Um, kind of to that point, I guess about planning it out,

that was just such a huge piece of working with him which it sounds obvious I mean you know you have to play it out with a child but um like just thinking ahead about you know okay I need to get this done and I'm going to be on my hands and knees so like I have to get up extra early before he gets up and do that. So you start to, like, order your day around the tasks that you just can't have a kid with you, you know, and then that has to happen at certain times. I see. So you're like, that, you know, someone's going to have to be here when I do that. Because maybe it's like I have to have the rototiller out, you know, or whatever it has to be.

It's like that can't be done today, you know, or maybe it can be done, It's like, that can't be done today, you know. Or maybe it can be done, but I've got to get that up extra early. So you kind of have to think about that, I think, more than you normally would, you know. I mean, we all are like kind of get up every day, I think, and think what has to be done today because we're all, you know, working with this huge to-do list. I think it's like you need to kind of winnow it out a little bit more.

It sounds like in a way your young child kind of becomes your farm manager. I think that's a very good way to put it, Jordan. He really does. And one of the big things is like looking out ahead and like we uh distribute our shares on saturday we harvest almost everything on friday and um friday was like rainy stormy thunderstorms whatever, that was like, we had to, I had to learn, you know, like, this is not going to work. I'm going to be up till midnight with a headlamp on after he goes to sleep. Because he can't be outside. Yeah. You know, so it's kind of like,

like you said, he becomes your farm manager, because he dictates how things are done, what time they're done, whether you need to call for reinforcements, whatever the case might be. So Jason, just getting back to the carrier, someone like me who doesn't have kids yet, I have kind of anticipated that I would likely, I will likely need to integrate a carrier into it. I'm just wondering, and you've helped simply by pointing out Kelty is a good brand, but like, are there any, is there any learning you had to do in terms of using the carrier? Like, just anything. I here's something I guess I would say you know like I probably unfortunately um too often use rocks or old bricks to weigh down my row covers yeah and then those are of course just left in the past for the next time that I need them yeah and that can be not not a good system obviously obviously, in general, and even worse with a child on your back.

Well, Jason, that's awesome. Thanks a lot for getting a hold of me. Is there anything else on the subject that you want to add? I guess the one thing I would just add before I go is just like, you know, working, I think whether it would be with a spouse or, you know, a farm partner or whoever, and one of you or whatever have a child, the communication is so important about what you, you know, especially with a spouse, like just saying like to your spouse, you know, well, we need to do this today. just saying, like, to your spouse, you know, well, we need to do this today.

But also, you know, like, my wife was great about working with me about, like, you know, and I'm saying, like, I need to transplant the tomatoes today, and that's going to take two hours or whatever it's going to take, you know. But I guess it's just, like, thinking that that other person that's with your child um just because they're not out there in the field with you doesn't mean they're like sitting inside with their feet up yeah right you know what i mean yeah totally um and maybe um you need to kind of like work things out with them you know um like okay so i'm gonna go do this for two hours and then I'm going to come back in and make lunch and you can do X or, you know what I mean? Yeah.

I think that goes a lot smoother than when you're kind of like, well, I need to do this and I need to do this and I need to do this. You know, you still have to kind of communicate because that just makes the whole experience go a lot easier so and i can only imagine you know even if it was you know a farm where you had a business partner um you know communicating about what you're going to be able to do and your time availability and everything would be just as important. Right on. Well, that's great. Those are, those are great insights, Jason.

Thank you again for, for getting ahold of me. Oh, thank you, Jordan. My wife and I both love the podcast. So it's an honor to be on. Cool. Hey, can you hear me okay seth i can't let me turn you up a little bit a little better there we go okay um well thanks again seth we can jump right into it so i don't waste too much of your time um okay what did you what did you what were you gonna i'll just i'll just ask you what were you gonna call and and and talk about uh but

basically my two one small one and the other big one i think is uh get a good baby carrier uh we like the ergo and uh start using it right away and just start involving your kids as early as you can and just get them excited about doing chores with you. Like our daughter, you know, one of the ways we can get her to get her shoes on and put a new diaper on and say, hey, we want to go look at the chickens. We've got to go feed them. And she gets excited and will help us out and actually put on clothes to go do something like that. So that's kind of the basic overview is, you know, do as much as you can together and involve the kids as early as you can and get them excited about doing it and then they don't get out there and dread it and look forward to being wet and cold

on the days you've got to go out there and do it in the rain and cold. Okay, so Seth, can you expand on that um what like what what do you see is that why is it so important to get them involved early uh i think just getting them used to the idea that you know no matter what morning it is and how we feel and what's going on is we've got to go out and take care of the chicken um you know no matter whether we're hungry or whatever if it's raining or cold or whatever we got to go do it and i think just getting them into that habit of that the lifestyle i think is um getting them into that rhythm you know i think in farming so much of things are just habitual and routine and certain things have to be taken care of at certain times and so maybe part of it's

getting them used to an early bedtime or doing certain things at certain times and just getting them used to the rhythm of life on a farm if that makes sense yeah yeah i guess what i'm getting getting at so so how early how early did you get your your kid involved in terms of getting them used to it before things really picked up you know in the spring uh so she was about three months old i guess when when our our spring broiler season really kicked off um but, but you know, by that time, you know, they kind of have a little bit of head control and fit in a baby carrier pretty well. So we just, uh, you know, kind of hit the ground running with her and doing chores and processing and

all that stuff. And that was, it sounds like, um, that from when you went, got going that earlier, it was primarily by using a baby carrier, which I assume was on your body? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we don't have the fortunateness of being close to family and having lots of babysitters around, and we don't want to pay for babysitters. So it's just, you know, we do what we have to do and keep the kid around

or my daughter around and do what we have to do kind of thing. So, I mean, that's a decision every, you know, parent has to make. But for us, that was the big thing is the reason we wanted to farm is because we wanted to farm together. And so we might as well figure out how to do it from an early age as opposed to passing her off all the time. So that's not to say that we never have a baby there for for big events when we have to do stuff but for the most most of the time she tags along so and that's okay i think you mentioned a specific brand of carrier that you like because i didn't i didn't hear you yeah it's the ergo e-r-g-o i think that's spelled. And why do you like it so much?

It's just well-made. It's one of the more expensive brands, I think, but it's got some just good features. It's got a good hip band that's really adjustable. It fits my wife as well as me really well. I'm probably eight inches taller than my wife, and it fits both of us well. It's pretty easy to use, and it's comfortable for the baby, I think. It's good for our nearly two-year-old, and I think would be suitable for a younger baby as well.

Well, that sounds like good advice. Seth, what's the name of your farm? It's Amistad Farm. We're in central Oklahoma. I don't know if that came through. I'll say that again, the name of the farm, Seth. Amistad. Amistad.

A-M-I-S-T-A-D. Cool. Today I learned I don't need anything to live on. So that's it, folks. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And if you like the show, as I talked about in the middle, I hope you will go and rate it at the iTunes Store or in another podcasting app. Another way you can support the show?

Send a small baggie of Swedish fish to Jordan Marr, Send a small baggie of Swedish fish to Jordan Marr, 4855 McKinnon Road, Peachland, British Columbia, V0H1X2. Take care and talk to you next week. To make our final escape All we'll need is each other a hundred dollars And maybe a roll of duct tape And we'll run right outside of the city's reaches We'll live off chestnuts, spring water and peaches We'll owe nothing to this world of thieves And live life like it was meant to be Because why would we live in a place that don't want us

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and graces we'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees and live life like it was meant to be it was meant to be