Work

Jenna Woginrich has embarked on a series of vlogs that have been, well, painful to watch.  I cannot watch a single one of them through until the end.  Jenna has become a full fledged public figure and is redeeming this designation to try and reap more income from her adoring (cough) fans.  Those of us who actually farm, and pay our bills know what work is.  We do it every single day.

Jenna's most recent vlog is on "work".  Really Jenna? Honestly?  Have you *ever* done anything at that place of yours that does not include the majority of the work being done by your adoring fans, or friends? If you have, maybe you should tell us when.  With the abundance of blog posts on your recent forays into new hobbies, you don't really seem to actually do anything alone.

Let me tell you what work is Jenna.  Work is getting up at dawn, downing a cup of coffee, if you have time and pounding posts, by yourself, pounding until you cannot move another muscle and have to sit and rest.. Just long enough to catch your breath and go back to it, and you go until you cannot physically do one more single thing.  Then you rest again, and do a bit more, just to push yourself.

Work is getting on the tractor and mowing fields sun up to sun down, bouncing around when you hit holes, or mounds, and only stopping to fill up with diesel, and when done feeling like you are still moving.. and getting blisters from holding onto the steering wheel so long.

Work is stacking hundreds of bales with one person throwing the bales off the wagon (not five people helping).  It is cleaning the barn muck bucket by muck bucket every single day so your livestock don't live in their own filth.

It is looking at a problem, figuring it out, and addressing it by yourself.. doing a good job, because a job worth doing is a job worth doing well.  It is having worked so hard you feel like you can't get out of bed the next morning because you over did it, but having to suck it up and take an Aleve and get to your agenda.

Work is not: Hauling buckets of water to your animals because you refuse to get a hose, because sharing that you carry buckets of water will get you more hits to your website (lookit me I am so strong).

Work is not: Chatting like a school girl into a webcam, and pretending to know what farming is.

Work is not:  Owning lots of poultry because you know the majority will be killed and eaten by predators simply because you do not have space to keep them in.

Work is not:  Leaving mangy pigs in a mud pit, can calling it "raising them".  Neither is it leaving pigs in a dark barn, until they are old enough to be put out of their misery.

Work is not: Riding horses.


PLEASE do not espouse that people are afraid to work when you would not know work if it bumped square into you.  You live off the backs of hard working people, you do *not* work.

By all means, keep on with the vlogs, because we can archive them as examples for how NOT to conduct oneself.