Farmers’ Market: Farm porn
Understandably, pornography does not have the best of reputations. At best, pornography is some sort of soft-focus, air brushed fantasyland recognized as having little to do with the real world.
Farm porn is similar. Seed catalogs portray lush, brilliantly colored tomatoes and peppers that do not suffer from blossom-end rot, splitting, fungal infection, or insect infestations. Greenhouses and high hoops never have great flags of torn plastic flapping in a harsh wind nor contain murky dark mudholes where the irrigation steadily drips regardless of how many times it is adjusted; snow load is never a consideration.
Brilliantly colored, shiny painted tractors appear in farm-supply catalogs as well. The machines never seem to have a 3-inch casing of dried-on mud plastered across their fenders from sinking axle-deep in a low spot in the field nor does that mud cover palm-sized rust holes still waiting to be patched. The portrayed bohemoths have as many attachable implements as Microsoft has apps.
The human models, a politically correct demographic of young, healthy 20-something males and females, driving or standing in a field with brand new tools, apparently are in no hurry to get to work or beat the darkness. They never wear clothing caked with dirt, blown-out knees, or hanging in ribbons from a close encounter with that “rope of the devil,” barbed wire. The models’ hands are clean and unbloodied with intact, unblackened nails. There is not a single bug bite on their bodies anywhere. Each wears a supercilious smile more akin to a night at a Bach concert than a long day in a field.
Real growers and livestock producers recognize that their own lives entail a near-permanent patina of mud or manure on their boots, that they will lose the smooth, shiny finish on those boots about one minute out of the box. The photos are as bogus, we tell ourselves, as the words and images of all porn. Certainly, thinking adults prefer living, breathing, thinking and sharing real-life partners and farmers walk into their chosen profession with their eyes open.
Fantasy is exactly that, with no particular bearing on real life. Except when it isn’t. Sunrise Farm in Woodland is neat as a pin with straight fences, painted buildings, renovated cropland and healthy, happy animals. But this is not “ag-porn!” Owners Phil and Jackie Doak are not 20-something aggie models from a Farm-Tek catalog, but they still demonstrate a level of perfectionism and professionalism in their endeavors that is tough to duplicate.
Visitors, whether the 75-100 participants in Open Farm Days, 2013 who enjoyed their hospitality or the regular customers who visit their tables on a Saturday morning at the Presque Isle Farmers’ Market in the parking lot in front of Sears, clearly appreciate the attention to detail and the concern for customers’ welfare displayed by the Doaks. Their wares at the Market, whether cuts of lamb and sausage or jars of preserves, relishes, and vinegars, support the sense that their business is to enhance the pleasure of their customers.
Pride comes through in Jackie’s voice when she notes that “Phil improves everything,” not surprising in view of the fact that during the 32 years they operated a florist business in Caribou and now retired to farming, Phil’s mantra has remained “Things can always be better.” Sometimes it is tough to figure out how!
This column is written by members of the Presque Isle Farmers’ Market. For more information, visit their website at https://sites.google.com/site/presqueislefarmersmarket/home.
