Why I Wouldn't Be A Good Farmer

I used to want to be a farmer when I was little. I liked the idea of living in tune with the seasons, completely supporting myself by growing everything I ate, and being surrounded by rolling pastoral landscapes.

Now I know enough about farming to understand how incredibly hard it is - and how it's not the kind of life you can buy into, from outside. Plus, for a small, independent farmer, having a second job to support the farming "hobby" is almost a necessity. So I just write about farming, instead of doing it.

Anyway, I realized today that there's an even more fundamental reason why I'd be bad at farming. I was working in my garden, which at the beginning of the week was entirely swamped in weeds. I've cleared half of it, and today I planted beans, tomatoes, and larkspur. Most of the weeds I ripped out were vetch - a nitrogen-fixer, good for the soil, and bearing tiny purple blossoms that feed lots of insects. As I cleared them, spiders and centipedes and beetles went scurrying out, looking for cover. I realized I was basically taking out a complete little ecosystem, which supported far more wildlife than my vegetable garden was going to, and replacing it with a monoculture. The land was more valuable to more species and certainly far more productive before I started "improving" it. Now I wonder if I shouldn't just leave the other half of the garden to be wild.

So there you have it - incurable idealism about the farming life has given way to incurable idealism about the value of undisturbed habitat.