Farmers and Artists

It occurred to me the other day that there are similarities between being a farmer and being an artist.

My father was a farmer, as his father was before him. He raised apples out in Green Valley, just west and north of the Pajaro Valley, near the Monterey Bay. My mother raised my brother and me, kept the house up, and did the book keeping for the farm, and occasionally played the piano.

How is being a farmer/book keeper/mom a lot like being a singer/mom/house drudge (I prefer that term to homemaker)? You work at home, you’re at your job all day and all night, every day of the year, and while you do have a routine, the unexpected will always pop up.

For the farmer the unexpected most often takes the form of natural events: weather, critters, bugs, and disease. One more natural event out there in Green Valley was earthquakes. In 1906 there was a major earthquake on the San Andreas Fault. You may have heard about it. The epicenter was north of San Francisco, where the displacement between the two plates was over twenty feet. San Francisco got most of the publicity, but the quake affected Green Valley, about 100 miles south of San Francisco.

The quake literally moved mountains as well as the alluvial plain of the Pajaro Valley and one of the effects of that movement was that springs that had been there for as long as anyone could remember, including the Costanoan natives who were living there when Gaspar de Portola and Father Juan Crespi came barging through in 1769, dried up.

(Brief imaginary conversation on the banks of the Pajaro River in 1769:

Portola: Where the heck is Monterey Bay?

Fr. Juan Crespi: I do not know, but this is a good country, and we can bring these heathen natives to Christ.

First Costanoan: These guys look like trouble.

Second Costanoan: Let’s give them some of that acorn meal that we didn’t boil long enough.

First Costanoan: Ha ha.

But I digress.)

The springs drying up in 1906 was quite a shock for the farmers. The water found new outlets in new cracks in the earth, and farming went on, but that spring and summer was shaky in more ways than one.

Man made disasters also occur in farming. One year my father was offered $27 a ton for his apples, and my mother explained to me that it cost $35 a ton to raise the apples. My father sold his apples and ate the losses, but many farmers let their apples fall on the ground and rot that year.

Yep, any farmer can tell you about the unpredictability of farming, just like any singer, writer, artist, or mom can tell you about the unpredictability of their professions.

One thing farmers and artists have in common is that if you are ill, you don’t have a boss to lean on you about missing work. My mother enjoyed rude good health, but my father had, and I still have, migraine headaches. Holding down a regular job is a challenge for the migraine sufferer. When you work for yourself, you can make yourself work through pain and illness, but if you give in and lie down you don’t have to answer to anyone but yourself.

One thing I remember sharply is the contempt my parents had for artists. Farming = respectable work; art = goofing off. Farmers don’t have to put up with attitude about their work, even if they spend many days on the couch with a migraine, as my father did. Becoming a singer in the face of that contempt was tough, and the migraines didn’t help, but I had to give in and do the work for which I was suited.

Looking back, I realize that I became myself in spite of everything, as well as because of everything. Looking back, I can also see that, oddly enough, my parents, those stern Republican farmers, who tried to discourage me from a life in music, were proud of me in the end. Funny that.