12/24/2025
Merry Christmas everyone! We spent the day cleaning animals and preparing for tomorrow, Christ is born!
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I see the comments that say, “Farming is a choice.”
And on paper, sure. In the same way breathing through your nose is a choice until someone sits on your chest.
Because farming is not a job you clock into. It is not something you casually opt into and out of when conditions aren’t ideal. It is not a hobby you drop when the margins get tight or the hours get long.
Farming is an identity.
It is who you are when you wake up already thinking about the weather. It is who you are when your calendar is built around births, harvests, feedings, and seasons instead of weekends. It is who you are when you don’t leave for vacation because animals still need to eat and fields don’t care that it’s a holiday.
You don’t just walk away from that without losing something of yourself.
For a lot of farmers, this isn’t a career path chosen from a list. It is blood memory. It is generational muscle memory. It is knowing how to read an animal’s breathing, a field’s color, a sky that’s about to turn on you. It is purpose that doesn’t shut off at 5 p.m.
So when people say, “Well if it’s so hard, just do something else,” what they’re really saying is, “Detach from the thing that built you.” And many people don’t survive that kind of detachment very well. There is a reason so many farmers struggle deeply when they’re forced out. This life is not something you simply replace.
And here’s the part people forget.
If farmers all made the “choice” to stop…you wouldn’t just miss milk in your fridge.
You would miss food. Period.
And you would miss a whole lot more than food.
You’d miss insulin.
You’d miss lung surfactant that keeps premature babies alive.
You’d miss vaccines that rely on animal products.
You’d miss medical gelatin.
You’d miss leather, wool, lanolin, collagen, enzymes, and countless pharmaceuticals that quietly come from agriculture and animal science.
You'd miss everything from plywood to components used to make your cell phone.
Farming touches medicine. Survival. Health. Life itself.
Most people never see that connection because it’s invisible when it’s working. Grocery stores stay full. Hospitals stay stocked. Pharmacies stay supplied. And the assumption becomes that it all just happens.
It doesn’t.
It happens because somewhere, someone is feeding animals in the dark. Fixing equipment instead of sleeping. Taking financial hits most industries would never tolerate. Staying when leaving would be easier.
So yes. Farming is a choice.
The same way loving your family is a choice.
The same way protecting something fragile is a choice.
The same way purpose is a choice.
But it is not a casual one. And it is not one you make lightly. Because for those who live it, farming isn’t what we do.
It’s who we are.
And without it?
Well, things would get interesting real fast.
