Farmer or gardener?

Gardener or farmer?

I've been stumbling over how to articulate the meaning of these two terms over the past couple of years as our family's emotional, financial, and physical investments in growing vegetables and fruits and raising chickens and small livestock has increased. I think about these categories as I walk through my yard to gather food for an evening dinner or to pull weeds or amass a big basket of tomatoes for canning. And, I wonder, am I walking through a yard? Or am I walking through a farm?

Out of curiosity, I googled the definition of farmer tonight. I came up with a fairly broad range of hits, all of which seemed to unite, oddly, around a singular and somewhat capitalistic theme. A farm is a source of income. A farmer is one who works on a farm. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is even more specific. Its website on Farm Household Well-being provides a glossary that states: "A farm is defined as any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, during the year. " In short, if you're growing food but not selling it, you are technically not a farmer. You are ... well, what are you? 

That seems to be an interesting question. We will have farm income this year -- about $200 from the weekly sale of a dozen eggs that my husband makes to a colleague at the local food pantry where we both volunteer. So, I suppose that's a start. We also receive inquiries from friends and colleagues occasionally as to whether we sell at the local farmers markets or whether we might have some particular product for sale. I tend to see these inquiries as not particularly serious. Everyone's curious about what other people are doing, and asking such questions such as whether we'd sell some turnips seems like a good way to open up a conversation. 

More to the point, however, is our own motivation. We put a lot of work into our food-growing endeavors. But we have no large aspirations to create a market for our produce. We mostly want to enjoy the food that we raise for our own consumption, share it with friends when opportunities arise to do so, and make some regular donations to food banks that always are in need of fresh produce. The last thing I want to do is to try and put a value on this endeavor in the form of retail purchases.

So does this make us gardeners? According to Wikipedia, "Gardening is the practice of growing and cultivating plants as part of horticulture. In gardens, ornamental plants are often grown for their flowers, foliage, or overall appearance; useful plants, such as root vegetables, leaf vegetables, fruits, and herbs, are grown for consumption, for use as dyes, or for medicinal or cosmetic use. Gardening is considered to be a relaxing activity for many people." Without the immediate link to bringing the food to market, it does seem that "gardener" is an appropriate way to describe my husband and myself. But relaxing activity? I find myself puzzling over that point. 

Recently, I arrived late at a party. I attributed my lateness to the fact that I had been working in the gardens and needed to change clothes and scrub the dirt out of my fingernails. I was not expecting any particular reaction. Yet, I was surprised when people started exclaiming, "Oh, fun!" "Good times!" "My garden is so far behind this year." Gardening for this group of people was clearly a pleasurable pastime, as it is for us. But I couldn't help wondering: "Do they realize that we live off this garden?" "Do they know that if the tomatoes or peppers or kale doesn't get planted, we probably won't eat peppers, tomatoes, or kale through the winter?" "Do they understand that this is our food?" 

The linkage that I make between "growing and cultivating plants" and food to subsist on seems to straddle a line between "relaxing activity" and "$1,000 or more of agricultural products produced and sold during the year." I have always felt that growing food is a source of income in an indirect way: When one grows one's own food, one lessens the reliance upon other food growers. Hence, money is earned through not being spent on the capitalist market. I find the question to be of deeper interest as I recall how some "real farmers" -- those who definitely earn more than the requisite $1,000 a year from the production and sale of agricultural products -- responded when I asked once whether customers of farmers markets who get inspired by the farm produce around them to grow their own end up hurting the very farmers who were their prime suppliers at a particular point in time. My question drew several laughs and one fairly insightful response. "Are you kidding? The more people grow their own food, the less we have to grow it for them. You can't believe how excited we get when we see others doing what you're trying to do." 

One last definition comes up in discussions among farmers and gardeners. The term is "homesteading" and it refers, according again to Wikipedia and numerous other online sources, to "a lifestyle of self-sufficiency." Homesteading, according to Wikipedia, "is characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of foodstuffs, and it may or may not also involve the small scale production of textiles, clothing, and craftwork for household use or sale."

What does it mean, then, to be a homesteader? Is this the way of the future, of life after capitalism, when farmers cease to exist because all people are dedicated to becoming self-sufficient, a lifestyle that erodes the necessity of buying and selling produce via the market?