Hobby Farms

Most of us have a hobby –– knitting sweaters, playing a musical instrument, painting a pretty picture, tinkering with electronics, etc. Few, indeed, are the hobbyists who make any money from their efforts. Keep that fact in mind when you think about farming. It has long been a hard-work hobby.

My father, a life-long farmer, used to say that a person only farms because he or she LOVES working with the soil and plants. In that sense, then, it is a hobby. Most farmers farm because of love for the land, not because he can’t do anything else! My father also said that if a farmer netted 5% over his investment in any one year, he could be very happy. How many businesses could survive on that tiny margin?

As a farmer’s daughter, I used to walk the fields with my father, looking for stray weeds –– vetch, morning glory, Canadian thistle and the like. Woe be to any weeds that we occasionally found! Each one was diligently pulled or dug up and discarded. We also trapped destructive ground squirrels, not a pleasant occupation for a little girl.

The public, who seems to enjoy wheat flour products, needs to hear some statistics about wheat farming today. Take note of the following facts.

1. There are sixty pounds of wheat in each bushel.

2. Each average sized loaf of bread requires one pound of flour. A little bit of yeast and some oil are added, of course.

3. Sixty pounds (a bushel) of wheat makes sixty loaves.

4. Each loaf of bread costs around $5.00. Sixty loaves @ $5.00 each adds up to $300!!!

5. After all expenses, the final amount remaining to the farmer out of the $300 for the one bushel is around $4.00. It may occur to some consumers to wonder where and to whom the rest of the $296 goes.

Some city consumers do not realize that farmers have to pay for transport of their grain to the coast or elsewhere. Without the Snake River dams, the much increased cost of transport will be added to the farmers’ expenses.

Farmers are also wondering how they will keep the pads around the purposed windmills clean of the most noxious weeds. Who will want to farm around them, also avoiding the gravel roads needed for maintenance of the atrocities?

Going back to the “hobby” aspect, consider the love of the beauty of the Palouse farm area. If nothing else, a view from the top of either Steptoe Butte or Kamiak Butte will be painful if windmills are the inevitable focus of their sad eyes.

Actually, farmers enjoy the beauty of their properties and surrounding area as much or more than most city folks have any idea. It is because of the very unusual beauty of the Palouse area that we are mourning over present plans for the destruction of it.

In the course of things, the hobby of farming may become obsolete if some safeguards are not installed. At that point, consider! Along the bread, doughnut and cake aisles, any such delicacies may be beyond the consumers’ monetary reach, if existent at all. Think of these things when you pick up your next loaf of bread.

In time, the abandoned land may not yield much more than its original bunch-grass. Please thank a farmer the next time you meet one.

I, myself, trust in a miracle-working God to protect our beautiful Palouse farm area for the generations to come. Will a few of you begin to uphold the hobby with your prayers?

–– Beverly Mader Wilson is a generational farmer from Whitman County. She can be reached at bevma75@gmail.com.