I became a farmer at forty below

I became a farmer at forty below zero.

Not the best temperature for growing plants but it was the perfect condition to grow the dream of becoming one. The 2008-2009 winter I spent dog mushing in Willow, Alaska with the Fiedler family. My dad, an Alaskan at heart, flew up to dog mush for the Christmas break. And what he carried in his suitcase would change my life forever. He brought with him a couple of Hobby Farm magazines to read on the long flight over.

Our first couple of days we spent dog mushing together but as the temperature dropped to minus forty and colder we could no longer take the dogs out for fear of frostbiting the dogs. So we stayed in the cabin watching movies and talking most of the day. We would read occasionally, so he showed me the couple of Hobby Farm magazines that he had brought. I took one and started reading. The articles fascinated me. I thought that farming was a dead end career: millions of dollars of debt with little return. But the articles talked about a different way of farming. They were farmers of innovation. Instead of selling wholesale they sold directly to the customer. Instead of using combines to harvest grains they just let their livestock loose on the fields and they did the harvesting for them. Some were even using horses as their main source of power and doing quite well. They weren’t just surviving, they were thriving. These farmers were showing up everywhere all over the country.

I couldn’t put the magazines down. My dad came to Alaska to dog mush but all I could talk about was farming. When he left I already had farm books ordered online. When they would come I would lose sleep at night because I would read them from cover-to-cover in one sitting. And through those books I became a farmer, a farmer at heart.