Jake’s Dilemma: Finding Life’s Balance on a Farm

I was asked what I’d do if I won the lottery. The answer came readily – I would find life’s balance by continuing to live and work at Topsy Farms.

I can’t imagine living anywhere else.  The land, animals, and very air are as much a part of me as my skin and fingernails.

Driving our ATV every morning through the woods doing chores is the best part of my day.

There is utter peace and stillness inside and out.  You can’t put a price on that. This small Ontario sheep farm life doesn’t fit into any neat box that any career counselor could understand.  I get bored too easily by static routine; I wasn’t designed to sit in an office. Here, every day there is something different:

We are surrounded by the things we fixed the day before.  That’s a potent thing, a reason farmers keep getting up and digging out of snowstorms or rebuilding machines that others have discarded.

As my farm apprenticeship continues, I get more independent, picking my own tasks and timing, which increases my ability to lose myself in a job.

There have been no hassles with the generation relations, probably a tribute to them.  I feel I am respected as a man now; and for skills learned elsewhere.   The older farmers are surprised and amused when I know how to do something they didn’t expect.

However, ultimately I struggle with idea of struggling – a small independent sheep farm will never make a decent return on labour. It makes me wonder, can a small farm be profitable?

Can I find life’s balance on a farm?

Some folks may continue a mindless struggle all the time, working 10 -12 hrs/day and never getting ahead financially. I need to seek a way to balance living and work; to find a better business model that isn’t just dependent on numbers of sheep or blankets sold. I want the mental freedom, life’s balance, of occasionally playing golf or going to a concert.  I need not to feel that a dollar spent on myself is a dollar less for the animals.

It’s such a huge commitment.  I won’t consider taking on the farm without my brother’s involvement and at the moment the farm can’t afford to pay us both.  The decision to become a farmer feels sort of like joining a monastery: giving up most of my worldly possessions for the betterment of mankind.   Lots of days I don’t feel that generous.

And yet, I want to raise my boys the way I was raised.  There is zen in this as we improve the land and the buildings and the animals and machinery – they improve us.