The power of a good story

I don’t go to bars, pubs, taverns, breweries or distilleries often. It’s not that I don’t enjoy alcoholic beverages or the company of whoever happens to be there. I love both of those, possibly too much. I just happen to have chosen an occupation that doesn’t leave much time to go out and socialize.

I could say I don’t go out much because it’s more cost effective to just grab a beer out of the fridge in my shop if I desire one, but I rarely pay for drinks when I do go to the bar. That probably wouldn’t surprise anyone if I were an attractive young woman, but I am definitely not. No one buys a generally unkempt-looking 43-year-old guy a beer hoping to score a date. Maybe that’s a thing that happens, but I can’t say it has happened to me since I was in my 20s. I just know the power of a good story and equally enjoy hearing one. People are more than happy to buy a guy a beer to hear the rest of a story and even more so to finish theirs once started.

People have always enjoyed stories, passing down the best ones orally over and over and, with every telling, changing a detail here or there to suit the tastes of the narrator and their audience. The invention of written language made it possible for stories to live long past the original person who lived it or made it up. Most school kids are still reading about the epic journey of Odysseus, authored by a Greek guy named Homer in the 8th century B.C. That’s impressive considering that, throughout history, invading armies and sometimes even people’s own governments have had a love for setting fire to books and libraries.

Years ago, Emily and I were part of the community of people in agriculture, promoting the power of farmers sharing their stories on social media as a way to fight the negative narrative of agriculture being spread by animal rights groups and others.

It seems like today’s people have decided they don’t much care for vegans and their exaggerated stories of how all animal agriculture is terrible and abusive. People like steak and cheese and don’t like people lying to them. No big surprise there, but in the end, farmers sharing their stories didn’t convince everyone that there were no changes needed to farming practices.

The animal rights folks figured out how to make changes in animal husbandry without the general public’s involvement by coming up with third-party welfare auditing and convincing buyers of commodities to require that farms be audited to sell their products to them. I’d argue that many of the changes, like stopping tail docking and ensuring people are properly trained in euthanizing animals, are good, but the amount of paperwork is absurd and pointless.

The need for those of us in agriculture to share our stories isn’t gone. So few people work in agriculture nowadays that it’s more important than ever to tell a good story. Our days are full of epics almost as heroic as Odysseus’s journey home from the Trojan War. Maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but we do live pretty wild lives in agriculture. That seems normal to us because every day is like that, but to others, we live fascinating lives full of inclement weather, dangerous situations and lovable animals. Share some of those experiences with people, and you may just find yourself given food or drinks to keep telling the story about how you walked in from the pasture with a calf on your shoulders and only one boot.

Until next time, keep living the dream and sharing wild tales of farming life. Maybe someone will offer you an advance to write a book.

Tim Zweber farms with his wife, Emily, their three children and his parents, Jon and Lisa, near Elko, Minnesota.