Wisdom From a Farmer - Tony Ricci

We’ve been doing this a long time – this farming thing – and still there isn’t a single part of it that gets old.  I keep thinking that I’ve accumulated enough experience to know what to expect from one year to the next, but I’m always hit with the reality of a new spring.  As exceptional as this early season is, every year there is a morning that I wake up thinking I know exactly what I’ll be doing to orchestrate the perfect growing conditions for the next nine months.  By the time the day is over I’ve reverted to an infantile state that makes me wonder if I’ve learned anything from the previous 30 years.  Of course, I must have figured some things out because I’m still here.  Normally when someone asks me advice about farming my mind goes blank, my eyes glaze over and I have the overwhelming urge to cluck like a chicken.  For most people this is enough; they throw me a little scratch and go on their merry way as if they’d just consulted the Oracle at Delphi.  The general population is better off not knowing what it takes to stay in this business.  It’s like knowing that quantum physics has some very practical applications but who really needs it on a clear night as we enjoy watching the universe expand before our very eyes.  If there is a secret to being successful as farmer, it’s probably in the planning process; and there are as many methods as there are farmers.  Ours is simple and informal.  Every Friday night we sit down to eat pizza and have a few beers and fantasize about what sort of Eden we can create for ourselves.  By the time we retire we have not only solved most of the world’s most dire problems, we have also come up with some really great projects that are totally out of our economic reach.  Incredibly we have made most of those fantasies come true – with the exception of world peace, of course.  Who’s going to take a clucking farmer seriously anyway.