Enough
~ This article first appeared in The Leader-Vindicator newspaper. ~
Clarion, Pennsylvania: A longstanding record of agricultural production has been broken on a family farm located just north of Interstate 80.
“It’s the craziest thing,” says Port. “One day I woke up and there it was: Enough.”
Farmers nationwide have been trying to grow Enough for decades. While yields have exploded since the Green Revolution began in earnest during the 1960s the increase has consistently failed to provide Enough for most people involved in the vocation of growing food. During the decades of increase most families allowed the home place to fall into disrepair and abandonment because Enough remained just out of reach.
The Founding Fathers of our country recognized the importance of a prosperous and diversified agriculture to support the people. Their words of wisdom are often repeated today in books and government petitions as concerned citizens watch farming consolidate into a system vulnerable to widespread disruption due to its size. Yet the quotations from yesteryear are ineffective; it seems the need for Enough has been replaced in every mind with a need for More.
Top universities and no shortage of politicians are determined to right the wrongs. Despite the trillions they spend, Enough still isn’t there and the “agricultural” folks protecting their office jobs are getting desperate. The farm bureaucracies are abandoning farming and have begun a campaign to attract young people interested in technology. Government money pours in to think tanks designed to improve access to futuristic technology for small farmers. In most cases a discussion about growing food ignores in entirety the soil from which the food grows; we need technology to get us over the hump that hides Enough, or so the saying goes.
“I fell victim to the mindset. My whole life has been focused on achieving a point of production that feels almost attainable. In reality it doesn’t exist. We’re all chasing a mirage and the whole of society encourages us to do it,” says Port.
“We look at the push for More as a successful endeavor, and we pursue it to our own demise. I talk to my peers and they’re all stressed behind the façade just like me. I look on Instagram and see my own accomplishments as inadequate. I go to the farmers market and everyone is competing for the top spot. That is not healthy, and we experience erosion of life as a result. The problem is we think we can fix it with just a little more work.”
Port, a too-thin father of two and proud husband of a knockout, talks rapidly and in circles. The young man is disgusted with busyness and cannot fathom how other people accomplish in a day what he cannot do in a month. He’s stopped reading because the promise of More leaps out from every page, whether the material is from the humblest earthy hippie or the largest agricultural corporation. According to Port, he needs to figure out what he has instead of learning what everyone else has. Such self-investigation mandates boundaries.
“I’m training myself to realize that I don’t need every customer. I think, perhaps, that a small business can achieve more success by limiting customers instead of trying to grow. In other words, if you like what you see and you decide you want in, too bad, we’re at capacity. Go somewhere that will sacrifice quality in favor of quantity.”
Small farms are particularly vulnerable to destruction by growth because the owners are also the laborers who will carry the extra responsibility.
“If I’m perfectly honest, what I really want is to have nothing to do. And I don’t mean that like I’m lazy; I simply don’t want this mad rush to dictate my existence. With nothing to do I can putter and think, I can hang out with my family, and I can stop and enjoy what I have. It finally occurred to me that I don’t reach this goal by doing more, but by doing less. That really scrambles up the brain when you think about it.”
By producing Enough it is largely agreed that this family has exceeded the previous farm production records by a wide margin. In fact, producing Enough is hard to beat:
“I feel pretty secure having reached this milestone. Other businesses can try as hard as they want but I’m not sure they’ll ever catch us as long as we produce Enough. That really takes the pressure off me, like I no longer have someone nipping at my heels. Maybe I’ll start sleeping again.”
There are challenges to Enough. The government does not recognize Enough and will, by way of burdensome regulations, demand ever-increasing payments for existing, thus fueling the desire to increase commerce. Nobody knows for sure if a family can survive with Enough or if they will be wiped out and jailed for failing to act as proper, faceless units of economy that feed the elected criminals overseeing them. Time will tell, but for now on this small farm there is a sense of peace.
That’s Enough.