The first schedule of note is the one which my dad and husband currently follow. It starts at about seven in the morning, and it goes something like this:
7:00 -- wake up, shower, eat breakfast, drink coffee, check the markets.
8:00 -- touch base with everyone working on the farm. Start attending to phone calls (because on a farm, the minute the hand ticks to 8, it is assumed that it is safe to call anyone, and the phones start ringing off the hook...which directly affects schedule #2, as you'll soon read).
9:00 to 12:00 -- work, work, work. This may be desk work, like contacting buyers, haulers, or agronomists. Or it may be field work, behind the wheel of a tractor, sprayer, or combine. For a large part of the year, it may also be the good, old-fashioned physical work farmers of all ages still do: fixing machinery, shoveling bins, tearing down old fences, putting new ones up...the stuff that makes a person collapse into bed after a long day.
12:00 -- lunch
1:00 to 7:00 (or much, much later, as the season and crop demands) -- more work. See above.
7:30 -- supper
8:30 to 9:30 -- catching up with the family, and if you are a dad of young kids, like Matt is, then your schedule includes helping bathe and bed down these little ones for the night.
9:30 to 10:30 -- squeeze in coursework; Matt's still working on finishing his degree while we are here.
10:30 -- hit the hay, most nights
The second schedule is the one that I currently follow, and it goes something like this:
7:00 -- roll over when the alarm goes off. Try to ignore the looming sense of responsibility that I should be up, too.
8:00 -- put pillow over my head when phones start ringing incessantly, waking up the kiddos and removing any further chance of sleep I may have had. Determine to wake up with the alarm at 7 tomorrow. If there is time, get into clothes, put in contacts, brush teeth, and assemble myself in some sense of order, in case the UPS or Schwan's man stops by.
8:02 -- help kids out of bed, change diapers, etc, and get everyone downstairs for breakfast. Pour a huge mug of coffee.
8:30 -- clean up breakfast and start cleaning the house, while children make messes as fast as I can clean.
10:30 -- concede defeat. Stop cleaning. Play with kids.
11:30 -- realize guys will be in for lunch in a half-hour. Throw something edible together.
12:00 -- lunch
12:30 -- clean up lunch, and start on the laundry, while potty-training child does his best to keep me in a job.
1:00 -- get kids down for naps. Heat up the huge cup of coffee I poured in the morning, but haven't yet had time to touch. Settle in with the laptop for a few hours of grading and lesson planning.
1:30 -- get off Facebook. NOW settle in for a few hours of grading and lesson planning.
3:00 to 6:30 -- kids get up. Snack time, and then the play/clean routine continues.
6:30 -- start making supper. Children smell food and start circling like sharks.
7:30 -- supper. (Or, supper is ready but in a holding pattern until guys get home.)
8:30 -- clean up supper and catch up with family.
9:30 -- get kids bathed and to bed.
10:00 -- the 'other' workday begins. Grade, grade, grade.
12:00 -- hit the hay...or keep grading, as the time of year requires.
After paralleling these two schedules, it's pretty clear that they very seldom overlap. This means that the bulk of the day (sunrise to long after sundown), Matt and I only see each other (and he only sees his young kids) during meal times. Now, it's true that when the season and job allow, the kids would be able to work alongside their dad. This will be even more true when they are older. However, for now, this is a bit of a dilemma.
Also, consider that this schedule is a 6-day-a-week schedule. There is no such thing as a two-day weekend for a typical farmer. Crops don't just stop growing and ripening.
Now, contrast this with the two schedules we had prior to our time on the farm.
Matt's schedule (on the days he was scheduled to work):
Whenever the kids wake up to 2:45 -- Whatever the sam-hill we want to do.
2:45 to 11:30 -- work at the hospital.
11:30 to whenever -- coursework (the degree thing still applies).
My schedule:
Whenever the kids wake up to 2:45 -- Whatever the sam-hill we want to do.
2:45 -- put kids down for a nap and work on my courses until they wake up.
4-ish to 9:00 -- total schedule improvise. On any given day, we might hang out at the park, go biking, hang out in the back yard, clean and do home things, go to the library, go on a picnic with friends...it's all fair game.
9:00 -- put kids to bed, and then start my other job. Grade, grade, grade.
And it's also worth noting that on the days Matt's not scheduled to work, we can do whatever the sam-hill we want all day long. My job is very flexible in most seasons, so we can usually just pick up and go when the mood strikes.
So, over the course of the past week, we've really given thought to this change of schedules. They are eons apart, as you can see. Eons, friends. Lest we idealize the life of a farming family, it's fair to say that they work longer hours than most Americans. In addition, they don't have the evening and weekend flexibility that is part of the traditional 40-hour work week, especially during planting and harvesting (and don't even think of going somewhere if you have dairy cattle...or any cattle, for that matter!).
There is a bit of reprieve in the winter months, when fields lie dormant. When I was younger, all our vacations happened in January or February for this reason. However, much of the off-season is dedicated to planning, tax preparation, end-of-year figuring, and machinery repair. You don't hear about successful, lazy farmers, right?
It's tough to think of permanently moving from a schedule of extreme flexibility--one full of time with family, time with friends, and time to do whatever we wish--to one of six-day, dawn-to-dusk labor, interacting less with each other and less with friends than we have in the past.
And so, we are left to decide if this is something we are willing to embrace, along with the things we certainly do love about this agrarian lifestyle and career. Words of wisdom will be appreciated, folks.
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