Originally published April 2024 in the Napa Valley Register.
By: Carine Hines
“Should we give it a gap of 26 or 24 inches?”
“It extends by 6 inches so you should have an extra 4 inches if you cut to 26 inches.”
“To be safe let’s cut to 24 inches”
This is just a glance at the back and forth between my husband and I when we finally finished extending over 900 feet of PVC irrigation pipe to our current system. Because we are parents and have other daily responsibilities on the farm, this project was finished at 11pm on a Monday after the kids were in bed. If we did not finish gluing the pipes that night, it meant no water for the crops the following day.
You would think that after annually doing some sort of project involving PVC pipe, we would know exactly what we are doing, how to do it, and how to keep a cool head. After 9 years of farming, we are MUCH better than our first PVC project in 2015, but the truth is we are always learning… and as it turns out we should have cut the PVC pipe to 22 inches.
So how long does it take to become an “expert” farmer? If you follow the 10,000 hours rule, then we should be there. So why do we still feel like we are not experts?
My theory is it’s due to the fact that farming requires the widest scope of skill sets compared to any other career. I know this sounds like a self-aggrandising statement, but do you really know any other job that requires you to be a biologist, mechanic, handy(wo)man, employee manager, sales person, accountant, project manager, welder, irrigation specialist, veterinarian, entomologist, long distance athlete, and marketing specialist all in one go (and I’m missing a few other skills)? All the while farmers are growing and tending living things to provide for our most basic human need.
Most careers require you to become an expert within a narrow scope of skills that you can practice and specialize in with time. While a doctor must learn so much information to diagnose and heal a body, the skills fall within the same landscape. Meanwhile, my husband might find himself driving a backhoe and analyzing sales data all in one day.
Being a farmer is so much more than being one thing, and put together it is more than you can learn from school or a book. To be a farmer you just have to be a farmer. You put in the 10,000+ hours and you still feel unprepared for each day, each season, and each new project. Quite frankly, it can be grueling, and sometimes you have no choice but to finish the miserable project you are working on even if you are not quite sure you are doing it right. Because if you give up for even a day while farming, the consequences to your farm are literally life and death..
Despite all my lamenting, I truly think farming is the best job out there. Even when it is hard.
You look for the little joys in whatever miserable situation you are in. Maybe it is 11pm and you are hunched in a wet man-sized hole breathing in noxious solvent fumes while hack-sawing a PVC pipe at an awkward angle. But then you see all the night creatures joining you in that hole, is that a potato bug? Was that a mouse dashing through the grass? Who is that owl hooting to? Is that bright moon waxing or waning? Do you see Orion’s belt on the horizon? Do you feel the shifts in temperature along the breeze?
Or maybe you resign yourself to the fact that you GET to spend this time outside in the beautiful land, working alongside your life partner, trying to crack jokes and make the most of the situation. You can CHOOSE to enjoy this moment, even if it is forced upon you, rather than resent it.
By choosing to enjoy farming and all that it expects of you, you discard the expectation that you should know how to do it all, let alone do it well. That is when you come close to being “an expert” farmer. When you kind of know exactly what to do, even if the path is muddy, but you have faith that it will get done, that all the things will grow and live, and hopefully you will see beautiful stars along the way.