The life of a farmer varies day to day, and from farm to farm, as well as person to person. If you stop and think, there are so many different kinds of farmers!! Without them our world would cease to exist. From fruits and vegetables, large livestock, small livestock, insect farmers, fish, crop farmers, hay, corn, oats, wheat, tree farmers. Literally everything! Everything at some point in time comes from some sort of farm.
The definition of a Farmer, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary "the science or occupation of cultivating the soil, producing crops, and raising livestock" *
Farms can be small or large. Farms can have animals or plants. Literally anyone can be a farmer! What inspired me (Elizabeth) to be a farmer? Ever since I was a young child, I loved nature. I loved spending hours out in the woods just wandering around. I also had horses growing up. My solo trips around the woods then became trips around our entire area on my horse. I would go visit neighbors, I would discover streams and deer paths with my horse. It was honestly the best time of my life. When I was in high school, my neighbor who was a beef farmer, needed to have surgery and asked if I would be interested in helping do chores while he was laid up. Absolutely I was! My friend and I would go down twice a day, to shovel out gutters, bed up the Herefords**, feed out corn silage as well as hay. We spent time with the calves, feeding the chickens and taking care of various other tasks that needed to be done. It felt so rewarding to care for these animals, to see how they grew, to earn their trust, to have fresh eggs. At the same time, I was showing my Quarter horses at local shows. I was immersed in my local world of agriculture, and I LOVED it. My love grew as I grew, I lived and worked on various horse farms, Quarter horse farms, Standardbred farms, I also worked for a sales company traveling from Standardbred auction, to auction helping to show the horses and bring them to the sales ring. Eventually I ended back up in my hometown area and started working at a local Agway. While at Agway, I began to learn even more! I got to meet local farmers. Some of these farmers raised livestock and some raised crops, some were for large scale, and some were for personal use. None the less, each as important as the other. While I was working at Agway, I also started milking cows for a local family run farm. The really cool thing is the family I was milking for was related to the family that I worked for in high school. I really enjoyed milking, getting to know each cow, taking care of their needs, and really learning about the milking industry. Then one day while at Agway a woman I had seen through Facebook, Dawn***, came in, to shop. I was so excited to meet her because she was a local horse trainer, and she was, and still is amazing. Long story short, I eventually began to work for Dawn and left Agway. It was the most amazing feeling ever to be back into a horse barn full of show horses. Then life shifted again, A few months into working in the horse barn, I became pregnant. I kept working with the horses but stopped milking because I could no longer bend over to hook the milkers up, without having to pee every three minutes. I continued to clean horse stalls and ride horses up until I had our beautiful daughter Emma. After I had Emma, I was extremely ill. I took the time off to recover, and then went back to work in the horse barn. Unfortunately having a small baby in a carrier and trying to continue to do everything I was doing did not work out. And after trying to make it work for a summer, it was decided I would become a stay-at-home mom. To be honest, it absolutely killed me. I honestly was probably depressed looking back. I was not used to not doing something. I did have animals to take care of at our house, I still had my horse, I also had a flock of around 200 chickens, as well as our dogs. We also would have cows to grow and a pig. I busied myself with that work. Creating our then farm "Tinker Tavern Farm" While we were there, I would raise chickens to laying age and then sell them. I also raised meat birds for our own personal use. Right before Emma turned 1, we decided we needed to move. Our then location was a very dangerous intersection. There were always accidents at the intersection and strange cars in our yard, people thinking they could park there just because we had the open barnyard driveway. Moving was the best decision we could possibly have ever made. Our amazing Realtor Angela**** got us set up at our current location and we have now been here 5 years! Credit also to Dawn for finding this place! Thanks to the move to Parish, we have now Re-branded ourselves from Tinker Tavern Farm to, The Goad Life Farm. Using the play off of our last name instead of Good, Goad. because it really is the good life here. We are in a much quieter area, in the 5 years here we have built new fences, coops, gardens, added another child, Emmett. It really is an amazing life here. We have great neighbors. But most of all the area is very inspiring. When we moved, I downsized our flock from 200+ chickens to 30, and then continued to downsize it some more. Right now, we have had a complete turnover of birds with the exception of 1 that gets to stay for life, and she will have her own photo shoot and blog someday so you can learn all about her. (she's pretty cool) We still have my horse, and have added a donkey, and more recently another horse. We have had pigs here, cows, and now goats too! I also have four garden beds. While I am extremely far from being a grand gardener, I am enjoying the process of learning! I have also taken up a huge love for canning. Which will be another blog. I really hope you enjoyed this read, and if there's anything else you would like me to touch on, please send me a message and I would love to make a blog about it!
*https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/farming
**Breeds of Livestock - Hereford Cattle — Breeds of Livestock, Department of Animal Science (okstate.edu) ***Dawn Bolson (Gilbert) Horse trainer - Dawn Gilbert Show Horses, LLC | Facebook
****Our realtor * Angela Luce * Angela Luce - Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices (bhhscnyrealty.com)
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