I’m not a pheasant plucker

…I’m a pheasant pluckers son. My pedigree as a farmer is without flaw. My father, his father, and father before him, all had farms. Well maybe the oldest guy, my great grandfather, just worked on someone else’s farm, but one gets the idea. There is one thing more. The women involved, my mother, my grandmother and my great grandmother, were the one’s who did most of the work on those farms. Which brings me to the point of this article. Farming, and women.

More than ever today we see the need for food producers to step up to the plate (oops) and grind out those huge numbers of organic output. More than ever is the hand of the woman in the house needed to streamline the production. I reflect that if my father were to be left alone only the fields would have been ploughed, not a stalk of cane would have greeted the south Trinidad sky. After the grandstanding, it was my mother who hoed, rowed, and sowed. I mean it- all three.

Unfortunately it seems as we acquire developed country status, more of our women are placed, or are seeking placement in jobs which would take them as far from the fields as possible. Try this. Head down one warm sultry evening to the local watering hole where the best, the brightest and the most beautiful women might gather. Do remember to go with the old wellies on, even as you roll up in the latest Toyota 4X4 bought by the sweat of your brow.

You may find seats next to you perpetually empty as the bevy seeks pheromones generated by the office workers instead of swarming to your hot zone of masculine endeavor. The thing is, if farming is not an attraction, will food production in small farms ever take precedence as an occupation for young people?

Used to be the guy who could bring in the bacon was the guy who would command the attention of the bevy. Not that it has changed, only the definition of ‘bacon’ has. And about the pheasant thing? The doggerel goes like this;

‘I’m not a pheasant plucker
I’m a pheasant pluckers son,
and I never finish plucking pheasants,
’til the pheasants plucking done.’

Now say that fast and repeatedly. And in my next post I’ll actually talk about farming issues.