We’ve had an unusually warm and non-snowy December; Sault Ste. Marie is not overly warm, but is something like 40” short of its normal accumulation of snow. A bit of a caveat; tough to say whether a late starting winter is unusual anymore. It’s been an odd 15 or so years, but my gut tells me (and memory serves me) that our tough, “Up North Winters” are waning.
Waxing or waning, I don’t much notice the season physically. At my size and metabolism, cold doesn’t get to me much. Take today … we were in the low 30s, high 20s working outside, and I was scarce affected outside of feeling really sleepy from all the fresh air. The hands were wet, but not too cold; the activity and flexing kept them relatively warm; plus, I don’t very much feel the things anymore. Set them to work and move them as necessary.
What were we doing outside in almost winter? My father has decided to slightly expand a small clearing at our hunting camp he opened up years back, but which had been encroached on by numerous poplars interspersed with sugar maples and the occasional ironwood. Though most of the small trees he can simply plough under, the larger ones need to have their roots yanked out for fear of denting the plough blade or bending the three-point hitch on his old Massey-Ferguson. It’s a laborious process; he stays on the tractor as he is no longer as agile on his pins, pulling the rig and bucket near to the trees, lowering the blade of the latter to the base of the tree. I wrap an old chain with a hooked end twice or three times around the base, hooking the chain to itself, and then secure the tag end in a larger hook welded to the top of the bucket. Once I step back, Dad raises the bucket; after some slightly whining from the hydraulics or perhaps some orchestrated advances and retreats, the tree bursts from the ground, a knot of clutching roots packed with sandy soil, rocks, and matted leaves. I swing the tree to the side, shake off whatever clings to the roots, loosen and remove the chain, and cast the tree to the side; then the process begins anew. When enough trees pile up, I bring up a trailer and we haul them to a pile for burning in the spring or fall.
The labour doesn’t bother us much; oh, it’s tiring and getting whipped in the face with a young branch never feels great, but we have a tractor and plenty to eat. What is simply awe-inspiring is the realization that most of the fields around this part of the U.P. and throughout much of Michigan were literally hacked out of the wilderness using little other than axes, saws, shovels, and fire … including gobs of physical labour from both beasts (bovine and equine) and man. No small wonder elder generations never lived very long; my grandfather and great-grandfather who both alternated farming in the summer with timbering in the winter, died at relatively young ages (65 and 50, respectively). To some extent, they were worn-down, broken physically from their efforts. My father, though enjoying remarkably better health care than his father and grandfather, also shows not a little wear-and-tear from the years of labor.
I am lucky; other than a number of dings, mainly to my hands, I have escaped most of the long-term damage that otherwise results from manual labour. Still, I don’t begrudge the considerable time I have logged doing physical labor, particularly in my current situation. It gives me an increasingly rarified empathy for Zambian farmers, who typically have only their own muscles with which to wrest a living from the soil. Making a garden, digging hectares of soil, hauling water, pounding grain; none of it is fun and I guarantee that if their was an inkling of a chance to eke a living some other way, many of those farmers would chuck their hoes as far as they could and never look back (until, as some are wont to do, they actually make a chunk of money and return to the village to save money … living in towns on a standard pension is tough). The burden of farming is evident particularly with young people; rather than continue laboring away, many head for towns, where penury can at least be temporarily relieved with alcohol, female companionship, the relative comforts of Western civilization, etc.
In a later post, I’ll try to elaborate the labour involved in farming a field. In a word, it’s impressive and a testament to the toughness of Zambians. In the meantime, have a look at chitemene, the catchall phrase for “slash-and-burn” (note the quotes) agriculture in Zambia.
The question of the day, for now: How do we make farming worthwhile, an objective for a young person? Or are we kidding ourselves? Most American farm children are or already have walked away from the farm; the average age of a farmer in the U. S. A. is 55 years! Guess we have to do what drives many youths off farms anywhere: make farming pay and make it easier.
