Building up community

As a child, my dad would often go for a drive on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes, he’d go alone, but oftentimes, he’d take my mom and sometimes us kids too. Whenever I went with him, my main goal was hoping he’d stop at a gas station at some point and buy me a treat. My favorite was always chocolate milk.

We’d take winding country roads, checking the crops, stopping at implement dealers and auction lots, and generally getting our full purview of the crop status and more.

The one thing I never liked about the drives was the peer pressure that sometimes transpired from what we saw. It does not matter how much you excel as a farmer; there is someone who can do something better, faster or earlier. Someone will have planted their corn at some crazy early juncture. Someone will have somehow gotten four cuttings of hay into what feels like 50 days. Someone will have their corn out and their cover crops planted before you finish chopping.

As a reporter, so many people are suffering from peer pressure when I show up. They are worried I’ll judge them for one of their perceived faults. It is so common for a farmer to talk apologetically to me about how one of their on-farm systems is not the current popular crème de crème system. My response is always that, if it works for them, there’s no reason to change.

When I walk on a farm, I’m not there to find fault. I’m not there to find the buildup of manure in the corner of the barn, the one cow that’s dirty or the imperfect protocol. I’m there to celebrate the great work being done. Notable farms aren’t flawless, and excellence is usually undramatic consistency over long periods of time.

Within the peer pressure, I encounter in the farming community is the pressure to downplay accomplishments. It is time to stop doing that. It is time to own our successes and celebrate the good we have accomplished.

Of course, no one likes a know-it-all braggart, but there’s a big difference between bragging and graciously, calmly explaining what success has looked like for you.

Sometimes, I encounter farmers where it’s a fight for me to get them to even open up about their story and their success. They’re afraid the local mean girls club that likes to tear others down to feel better about themselves is going to call them proud.

This has to stop. It is time for neighbors and communities to celebrate what’s laudable and practice the good old phrase my grandma used to say: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” We accomplish nothing by tearing our communities apart.

All farms do not need to look the same to be doing excellent work. I walk onto farms of every imaginable size and management style, from organic to conventional and from two cows to over 1,000 cows and every size in between. Each has strengths and each has the same goal of farming with excellence.

Every farmer should be convinced in their mind that they are doing the best they can for their farm. They should certainly try to persuade others to join them if they feel there is worth to what they are doing. However, what our community has to stop is drawing up battle lines around management and size. No more looking down on the other side’s faults. No more division.

Sometimes, farming can feel like high school when it comes to peer pressure. Thinking back to those Sunday drives, what I was really encountering when I felt peer pressure was the firmly-cemented idea in everyone’s mind that he who is earliest wins. There is of course a grain of truth to this. Weather waits for no one; the calendar doesn’t lie, cows like consistency and, if you don’t harvest within a certain window, your quality will tank.

Yet, there seems to be little celebration of farmers who are just plain, ordinarily consistent with a balance of quality. The coffee shop doesn’t buzz with average, good farming.

We are a small community. I know we can do better. I know we can learn from each other. I know we can encourage each other toward excellence and forget about whether or not we were the first in the field or the barn. Most of all, I know we can celebrate victories big and small, because a victory for a dairy farmer is a victory for all of us.