This time of year always reminds me of how closely faith and farming are intertwined. If you look across our valley, you can just start to see the corn and soybeans emerging from the ground. The next four months will mean the difference between a decent profit or a devastating loss for our farm operation. And aside from a strategically timed application of nitrogen, there is not a lot more we can do at this point but wait.
What happens from here is in the hands of Mother Nature and Father Time. Last year was a challenging year for our farm and many of the farms around us. Rain started coming in late April and did not subside until late June. We even saw storms dropping 2 to 3 inches in late July. Our clay soil stayed wet so we could not get crops planted in between the storms, and we ended up with only about a third of our crops planted. It wouldn’t take too many years like last year to put a farming operation out of business.
Yet we started again this spring, having faith that this year will be better than the last. At the very least, we are off to a much better start. Even still, we have no way of knowing if those seeds we planted – now tiny little plants peeking out of the ground – will ever produce a harvest. In farming, faith is a necessity. We breed our cows for offspring that won’t become productive members of the herd for three years. We put up a year’s worth of forages, and we invest in multimillion building projects to expand our herds. But we have no way of knowing where prices will be in the next 12 months, let alone the 10 to 20 years it takes to repay a bank loan.
Faith, not certainty
That sense of faith is what keeps us moving forward. In her book, Plan B, author Anne Lamott says, “The absence of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and the discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.”
If you look the word “certainty” up in the dictionary, it means a firm conviction that something is the case. So consider how certainty would play out on a farm. Milk prices fall so that our profit margin becomes a negative $2 per hundredweight. We are certain the margin will stay there. We are also certain that our input costs cannot be any lower than they are now and there’s no way to increase production, so we start thinking about an exit strategy.
It is May and it hasn’t rained in six weeks. It is the worst state of drought we have had in two decades. We are certain it is not going to rain all season, so we don’t plant any crops. Since we don’t have any crops planted, we don’t have a forage harvest to feed our herd. Without feed, we start to think about an exit strategy.
The forage harvester breaks down with more than two-thirds of the haylage left to harvest. We are certain that there is no way to fix it and no way to get a new harvester there to finish before the hay dries. The rows are too big to bale, so we just give up and scatter it on the field. With no feed, we begin to consider an exit strategy.
The herd has been inflicted with a severe case of pneumonia, and we are seeing significant morbidity and mortality rates in our heifers and calves. We are certain the herd will never beat the disease, so we stop breeding for replacements because we know they’ll just die anyway. We start to think about an exit strategy.
Finding solutions
But that’s not how farming works at all. Prices fall, and you look for solutions to lower input costs or increase your milk production to counter the lower prices. You work to continue those efforts even when prices rebound to make your dairy more resilient. The weather doesn’t cooperate, so you look for ways to supplement your forage production and make sure you have crop insurance to cover your risk. You build inventory in better years to be more prepared next time. You work with your ingenuity and the community around you to find solutions quickly when things break down or even burn down. You see more cases of pneumonia in your herd, so you treat them and adjust your early calfhood protocols to counter the outbreak. You adjust your vaccination protocols to prevent future issues.
Having faith doesn’t mean sitting idly by and just expecting everything to fall into place. It is noticing the mess – the problem – and working to find a solution anyway. It is also about staying vigilant and being prepared. In other words, we plan and we solve. We look for health and longevity traits in our genetics, we monitor soil health and apply fertilizer to boost yields, and we evaluate our numbers and work to understand our breakeven, so we are better prepared to manage the downturns.
But, even with all that preparation – all the tireless hours – sometimes things don’t go according to our plan. You give the calf the best-quality colostrum, make sure she has the optimal care and timely vaccinations, and set her up for success, only to find that she hung herself on the gate as a yearling. You have a beautiful stand of corn and the perfect amount of rain right up until pollination, when it suddenly dries up. Those are the times when you just have to let go and let God.
There is a season for everything and a time for every purpose. No matter how hard we work or how much we learn, we can never fully understand why everything happens the way it does. I am reminded of that each planting season, as I watch those seeds emerge from the ground and the cycle starts all over again. Nothing is certain, and we do not need to have all the answers. That is where faith comes in.
