Selling Dad's Farm — Melvin Lehman Ep. 021

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Hanna-Baptist Perspectives. I'm here with Melvin Lehman, and you've been a teacher here at Faith Builders Educational Program for, oh, it's more than 20 years now, isn't it? 23 years. 23 years. Okay. So, and something that's been really big for Mennonite culture, I guess more historically, but even now is our love of farming and working, you know, with our hands in very practical things. And this episode is going to kind of dive into a little bit of that's kind of changing now. And I understand you have a farm, so, or you've done a lot of farming in your history. So let's just, yeah, let's just jump into that.

I mean, we're transitioning more into conventional, I guess you could call them conventional forms of income. What's the history of Mennonites tending to lean towards farms in the past?

Well, first, let me thank you for inviting me here to talk a little bit. You do push my buttons with this, this question, that's for sure. So, yes, I've watched this transition, been a part of it, really. Okay.

Grew up on a dairy farm myself.

And the transitions that have happened, I think, in the last couple of years, last couple of years, last two, three decades, four maybe, first has been the movement from the farm, from agricultural related things to non-agricultural things. Normally either businesses or semi-professional work, skills related a lot of times, or even professional work. And those proportions have been changing all along. But not only that transition, but transition within farming itself, it's done differently now than what it was done when I was a youngster.

And I think that is more significant than some have thought of. So this would be some things that I would just observe right up front about this. Maybe a few statistics on it, for example, the church I grew up in, when I was 10 years old, if you would have asked for a raise of hands of the families that were either directly involved in agriculture or at least right next to it, maybe in a feed mill or something like that, would it easily have been 60, 70%. Really? Yeah. And where would have this been? This is in Chambersburg. Chambersburg. Okay. And mostly dairy farming.

If you were to ask the same question today in that congregation, have them raise their hands, it couldn't be more than 10%. And likely more of 5, 6, 7, 8%, I would guess, are either directly in agriculture or right next door to it.

So that's just one congregation. I know a relatively narrow perspective, but I gather it's pretty typical, at least here in the East, across the board, that there's been that kind of shift just in 40, 50 years. May I say something? Yeah, no, go. Yeah. I want to make it clear that I don't feel just all negative about all of this change.

I think there's significant changes. And I think intelligent people pay attention to what's happening, and they make the appropriate changes, their core values and core understandings and so on. My fear is that this just happens and things change and problems arise we don't quite understand them. If we would work on looking at the aspects of what's involved with this kind of change, I think it's helpful.

Well, and that's kind of the next question, really. How is this going to affect, you know, our culture, our, you know, the way, really how we just do life? Because, yeah, this is a, I mean, I know my dad is the same thing. Like growing up, he was on the farm. And then, you know, when he got married and whatever, he started his own business, you know, doing construction or masonry. And now we build roof trusses.

A subtle shift, but it is a shift and it will have effects. What's this doing to the next generation? Well, first of all, this shift has contributed to some of the fragmentation in our circles.

Don't hear me blaming it and saying that's the problem. But hear me saying it's contributed to it. Why? Well, even the generation before me farmed together more than what my parents did. For example, if you were going to thresh your grain, well, that's four, five, six families that get together for a day, two days, a week, two weeks, whatever, as they thresh each other's wheat and so on.

And this was largely the agricultural community governed, the church community in the sense of time and place and what we're doing today and what we're doing tomorrow. And it was much more that they had to do together as a group. Okay. Well, again, with my earlier comments that we can't just box all this into a bad box and say it's all a bad thing. But without some thought, as the movement away from the farm happened, well, that natural integration of society began to become a part of the seams without people really thinking about it. Okay, now wait a minute, how do we actually keep this together?

So that's the first point I'd make, just a certain fragmentation. It's contributed some to the acculturation. And again, depending on your perspective, well, maybe the acculturation was good. So German language to English language, rubbing shoulders with their neighbors and in the workplace and all that.

There of course is a good side to that, something that should happen. There is a side to it that we've struggled with as a people, as most of us know. So the movement has contributed there a bit. Maybe one that is, I think, maybe more pertinent is less dad presence. Ooh.

Yeah. Okay. It doesn't matter how you cut it. Yeah. The family farm I grew up on, it was almost 24/7 that I had dad presence. Okay. So we worked together, you know, him and his bib overalls and all of this, and you know, we're out there doing our thing.

But the guy, my father-in-law was a trucker. And he says today that the worst thing that happened was I was away from home too much, too much of the time. And even though he was aware of it, still there was a cost here. There was a price that he paid for that lessening dad presence.

Again, my question really is not, okay, let's not just everybody go back to the farm to straighten this up. But okay, so what are we doing about that one truth that just is the one fact? You're not going to have dad there as much as we did, as I did at least, growing up on the farm that I grew up on. I mentioned that I keep saying the farm I grew up on. Why do I say that? Well, okay, just dad presence alone. Farming has transitioned enough now that even there it's faltering, I think.

Okay. So for example, out of my family, the Lehman family in the Chambersburg area, most of them don't farm anymore. The one who does that I'm thinking of, my nephew, fine man, good man. But he hires Mexicans to do his milking. Okay. Not all the time, but some of the time.

My dad would have never done that. Absolutely not. I mean, I got my education from my dad, my political orientation and all that stuff, theological orientation, milking in a stable, not a milking parlor, but stanchions and cows facing away from a walkway, you know, putting milkers on and off. And this is every morning and this is every evening, seven days a week.

We wouldn't think of having somebody else milk the cows. It was something your dad wanted you to do this. Like as in it was a family thing. I don't know if he even wanted it to. That's what we did. That's just what you did. You didn't hire someone else. You did it as a family. That is really interesting. So that meant an hour and a half to two hours every morning, every evening, milking cows and talking about life and the neighbors. Well, that's powerful. That is. Okay. My nephew will be missing that.

Don't hear me criticizing him. Just talking a little bit about some of the changes just in farming methods. Yeah. So it's not just the movement from farm to city or to urban life. It's the changes within farming itself that I think may affect us more than what we think they do. Yeah. But circling back now, my point was lessening dad presence. Yeah. Is a phenomena that is a part of this. And it's a reality that is here and is happening, whether we face it or not. Exactly. You know, and at least just being aware of these things. And this is really good for me understanding, okay, this is a little bit how it was, say, for my family.

You know, that's what dad would have grown up with. And now I don't have that. And that, you know, it doesn't change reality, but it does help me understand a little better. Yeah. Really then, what's the future? I mean, nobody knows the future, but this trend is definitely, it doesn't look like it's going to change. We're integrating into a lot more mainstream business, as it were, or even, like you mentioned, urban settings. Yeah.

What's it going to look like 20 years from now for the Mennonites? I have four things that I would suggest that we need to be thinking about as we move into the future. So you already mentioned community solidarity, strong work ethic, very much associated with the farm, strengthened family, dad presence, the earth is a lords and the fullness thereof. A point there that I just would want to touch on just briefly is there is something about the connection to earth that when you disconnect that, you disconnect a reality that I think has been helpful in the past.

What we're struggling against, though, or some of the downsides of being on the farm, I should say, was it did tend toward isolationism. We did become the quiet in the land and you can develop tunnel vision. I'm just saying a few things about that I would have experienced growing up that needed some correction.

Now, pushing ahead, though, to your question there of, so what should we be looking at here in the future? How does this all, okay, so that's the deal. Yeah. Now what? Yeah. Yeah. If I'm understanding your question. Absolutely. Yeah.

Well, number one, develop models and strategies for sustainable small scale farming.

I think we've given up on it too quickly. Okay. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. Now, you should not misunderstand me to say that I think, okay, let's all get back on the farm. That's not my point. Sure. My point is we have obviously experienced some real value added things from farming.

Well, why just give up because it's too expensive? It's too much this, it's too much that, or whatever. Why not explore small scale strategies and make farming more accessible to more people? I almost had suggested to you that we should film this up at my little farm because it's one of the reasons I have that little place.

Is just to explore a few things. Well, what could you do? What are some possibilities? For example, I have grass-fed beef, grass only. Okay. Why am I doing that? Well, a couple of things that just fits with today's cultural atmosphere is, you know, the health thing and food and all of that. And it's cheap. When I say it's cheap, you can raise an animal with far less cash investment if you're just doing grass-fed. Okay. Now, if you're going to feed them corn, you're going to fatten them fast and all that. Well, that changes the equation. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I mean by develop models and strategies for sustainable small scale farming.

And it might even include that a guy is a school teacher and a farmer. That's me. Yeah. Well, okay. Yeah. Because you teach here a lot and yet you have a farm, right? That's right. So, yeah. Wow. Well, okay. That would be really fun to go get some shots down there. And I would just mention a few other things in this area. For example, logging and woods and farm and trees and a big thing.

I didn't grow up with that, but I love fiddling with it. We're doing maple syrup. Oh, fun. Okay. Okay. And so here again, there are ways to actually make a living off the land that most of our people have not explored.

They've been doing other things. So, and maybe we should start looking into the advantages of doing that. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. I think it may even be a ministry to our world. Let me explain. One thing that has bothered me is that we buy quickly, Mennonites have bought quickly into modern farming methods, more fertilizers, more pesticides, more this, more that, more the other thing, in spite of mounting evidence that this is problematic.

We ought to be leaders in the field of saying, well, what are the alternative ways of doing this and how can we do it without becoming big businesses that almost nobody can access anyway? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I like that. It's almost like really, because I mean, I know some of my friends that still farm and so forth, and it's so commercialized and such a big scale, which, you know, there are a lot of people in the world to feed. But yeah, your approach is like, let's just reverse engineer this and go the other direction. I don't know. That's right. Well, and I wonder if we would not be able to get more productivity from the land over the long haul.

Keep it small enough that the family could actually run it. You didn't have to go out and hire so many people in order to actually make this work. I don't know. I have some vision there for it. It feels to me as though we have to do some innovative work there. Yeah. But that's one thing. A second thing is encourage small businesses, which our people have almost naturally moved that direction.

But we should find ways to actually encourage it, I think. So my dad's, I'm one of six boys and seven girls in our family.

And I remember my dad saying when I was just maybe a 12-year-old, he said, "You know, boys, you can't all farm." At least not, he didn't add this to it, but I'm adding to it, at least not on the scale he was farming.

Okay. This is not, so some of you are going to have to do something else. He thought I should be a mechanic, which is what I did go and do actually for a while.

Okay. Okay. Now, so I'm saying encourage small businesses because the core values of farming, whatever they were, if we could get our fingers on them, it's say, well, they were these, one, two, three, and four. You know, we've talked about them a little bit here, but they're more than we could explore.

They could probably be captured the easiest in small businesses or passed on to the next generation. Then say, even a professional career. I'm not opposed to a professional career, but it's hard to actually see the ideals that came off the farm coming to fruition in a highly professionalized lifestyle.

It could be done and is done sometimes. But I would say encourage small businesses. And incidentally, I'm so delighted that Anabaptist Financial, this would be an example of encouraging it. You actually create the forums, the money flows that make it possible. And you have a Mennonite organization that is actually, they're hard at work trying to make this happen. Yeah. Okay. That's a good thing. Yeah.

Third, I take agricultural and business to the city. Ooh, okay. This is really kind of brand new and I know it's cutting edge. But some of my friends right in this area here, and I'll mention one by name Kevin Schenk from New York. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Has special interest in like aquaponics and other ways of actually taking very different forms of farming, but farming into the city.

And that fascinates me. It's like, well, okay, why not? Why not find ways of actually creating food productivity right in town? There are limits there, of course. But why not explore the limits? Yeah. It seems to me. So that one fascinates me. And I think we should pursue it. It really, I don't have opposition of the younger generation's interest in city life. They have to think carefully about the gains and the losses.

Okay. And there always are gains and losses. So you can't fix everything. Right. But my suggestion here is, well, perhaps there's something to be gained by actually carrying some of our natural instinctive actions in respect to farming right into the city.

That is really genius though. Because like there could be basically what you're advocating here is, look, there were a lot of benefits that we got from this kind of lifestyle. So we're not saying all these new things are bad, but let's try to get those benefits from this lifestyle that we are losing and apply it to the new. Yeah. Just apply it to the new. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, this is going to take a lot of work. It's going to be really deliberate, but you'll lose some money off and on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, maybe there's a future there for that. Yeah. I think there is.

And I would encourage some entrepreneurs to pursue it. And the fourth one I have is, this is beyond the farm now. So what do we need to do? Well, integrate professionals into community culture. So I gave a little bit of an array there. So from farm to trades to business to semi-professional to professional. We're seeing that kind of movement. But what about the professionals?

Yeah. What I hear from them, doctors and nurses and so on, is I hear from them that in the typical Mennonite community, particularly if it's agricultural, they feel like they're at sea.

I think more effort needs to be made to integrate the professional into, whether it's an agricultural community or whatever. Feels to me as though we don't do really well there. That's, yeah. And that's one. And we haven't done an episode on this, but I would love to do an episode on the community mindset of Mennonites and how, you know, that is in danger. And it's always in a way being attacked. But I think now more than ever, especially with, you know, the new professional occupations that are coming into our circles, like those are good things, but there's strengths in our community too. That's right. Yeah. And I'm sure there's many, many, many other things that could be considered for next steps.

But the kind of the summary I wrote to my paper is identify core values and promote them through these avenues. Find ways to actually carry them forward generationally. And take the work ethic, for example. It was as natural as could be on the farm.

That just was its life. It's not as natural to create that same sense of just grit, determination for the dad who is a professional nurse. He comes home, evenings are free. They're not free, I know, but they feel more free.

And there's more leisure time. And so in my, just in my generation, to just give one example here, I saw the culture change in the sense that, say, playing softball on a Wednesday evening or a Thursday evening or volleyball or whatever.

My dad would have said, "You're going to what?"

I mean, there's a hate on load. What do you mean you're playing volleyball this evening? Well, that's changed dramatically. Wow. And I'm not crying sour grapes so much. It's just saying, well, that has been a change. And it's harder to maintain that sturdy work ethic that just was naturally a part of the farm.

Yeah. I use that as one example of a core value that we should have put our finger on it and ask ourselves, how do we carry it forward, whether we're professionals or whatever?

That sums it up really well. I mean, we've got, you know, each generation faces its unique challenges, but this feels like, feels very much like a transition generation. It really does.

I guess we'll see. I guess we can come back in 20 years and do this interview and we'll look back at this and see how right we were or how wrong we were. And I will be 81 and you should know that my wife's greatest fear is that I will grow old and see Nile and won't know it. And I'll be doing interviews and teaching and doing this and that. And everybody will say, "What's?" So you can try. We can try.

Wow. Thank you very much for being on this episode. That was very, very interesting because like for myself personally, I was never in the agricultural scene. And I love hearing that perspective. Yeah. A lot to think about. And yeah, thank you everyone for watching. And if you like what you see, you have questions, just put a comment in. And or if there's maybe a topic you would like us to cover next, just let us know and we'll see about doing that. So yeah, we have new videos each week. So come back if you want to see more stuff like this. And we'll see you guys in the next video.