Holiday Intermission: 5 rules for visiting farms

I know I said the next post would be more on epistemology, but in the meantime we've had a whole bunch of visitors who have made my life unnecessarily difficult. So, a quick primer on farm life.

We live in an antique farmhouse on 2 acres. A good portion of that 2 acres has been made into a vegetable garden and orchard. We also keep poultry, unfriendly cats and two giant livestock guardian dogs. We heat the house by means of a wood stove. Lots of people think it would be lovely to visit a real antique New England farmhouse, complete with ghosts, from leaf peeper season right through the holidays.

1. The combination of "antique," "fireplaces" and "giant dogs" means the house is not child-friendly. We have uneven floors, creative wiring, weird handmade door latches, an extremely hot wood stove and an open fireplace large enough to walk into. The dogs perceive children as a kind of sheep to be herded. We have a barn full of sharp yet rusty hay-making and gardening equipment. The chickens will peck, hard, at things they don't understand, such as inquisitive five-year-old fingers. The swimming pool is not typically supervised, is eight feet deep, and no, there is no magic chemical that makes pee disappear or that successfully kills ALL diarrheal bacteria. Those pretty plants in the garden that your child is so joyfully wrecking? Those are my groceries for the next three months, thanks. Replacing them at the Stop & Shop will run to about $900. If you bring a young child to this house, be prepared for a lot of crying, a lot of scraped knees and boo-boos while Junior learns that the whole world is a dangerous place. Better yet, leave Junior at home with a sitter.

2. About Chores:
2a. The chores do not stop because you're visiting. The chickens and weeds do not bow to your presence. For that matter, neither do my experiments. If early morning noise bothers you, bring earplugs. Bring a book to read or make your own entertainment plans. Be aware that chores last from early in the morning to late at night. Depending on what needs to be done that day, I may not get any time off to relax between 5am and 9pm. And no, I can't just do it some other day--an animal or a food-producing plant can die in 24 hours of neglect, depending on the time of year. If I don't run the wood stove for a few days, I rack up one hell of a fuel oil bill. Chores are part of farm life. "Real" farmers don't get days off or sick days either.

2b. The most helpful thing you can do is make a second pot of coffee when you roll out of bed. Most farms have their own set-up, and unless someone specifically shows you how you can help, generally assume that you cannot do anything without making more work. The second most aggravating thing is when people say, "Oh, let me help you!" and proceed to tear out perfectly good garden veggies ("I thought they were weeds! I've never seen ones like that at the supermarket!"), attempt to maintain the wood stove ("What do you mean, the wood has to cure? Wood is wood!"), or attempt to clean something inappropriately ("I bleached the perches in the chicken coop, they were all dirty!"). Either wait to be shown what to do, or stay out of the way.

3. You'd think this would be elementary, but apparently it isn't: Eat the food that is put in front of you. If it bothers you that the food on your plate was recently growing in a garden, or that the napkin you're given was dried by means of sunlight, or that the meat was recently munching hay, don't ask too many questions about it. Or announce before dinner time that you will be eating at a restaurant. You don't need to say why. But for the record, the air in your electric/gas dryer is in fact dirtier than the sunlight (the UV in sunlight kills germs), and the food at the grocery store is many weeks old by the time it hits the shelves, in addition to having been picked and processed by someone who for sure did not have sufficient sick days and probably did not wash their hands. Most agribusiness-type farms don't even have port-a-potties in the fields for their workers, so guess where the farmhands at the mega-corporations go to the toilet? Now wouldn't you rather have veggies picked by someone who you personally KNOW washes their hands, whose septic system is always in good working order and who prepared the food in a clean kitchen right in front of you?

4. The house is antique. A-N-T-I-Q-U-E. That means that it will be drafty and there's no cable TV. Why are you visiting me if all you want to do is watch TV? I thought you wanted to hang out with us, talk, do things you can only do here. You can watch TV at home. Put a sweater on and quit complaining or go home to your nice overheated hermetically sealed McMansion and watch TV. No, I'm not cold, probably because I just did 12 hours of heavy labor. Yes, I did eat a lot at dinner, and no, I don't think I'll get fat. That 12 hours of heavy-duty farm work probably has something to do with it...

5. Farms have poop. We've got kitchen waste, chicken poop, leaf mold, dog poop and compostable cat litter. Generally, it stays contained in two mega compost heaps by the outhouse and a manure barn, but the chickens have been known to drop crap-bombs directly on people. The dogs are reasonably well trained, but they are first and foremost guard dogs--they jump on people. Garden clogs, Wellingtons, sneakers, hiking boots and paddock shoes are good footwear choices. Metallic strappy Manolo heels, not so much. Dress in layers to accommodate the weather and the relative dirt: It's really easy to throw a cheap windbreaker in the wash if it gets dirty, especially if you have a sweater and long sleeved t-shirt on underneath. More difficult to clean a satin halter top with matching see-through shrug if that's all you're wearing when the dogs decide that you'd look great with a big muddy paw-print on your boob.