A friend of mine comes from a farming/ranching family.  Like a lot of people who have this type of upbringing Nathan still has his hand in the business.  Actually, it would be more accurate to say he still has his back in it.  I am pretty sure he performs a good deal more physical labor at his “hobby” work than he does at his regular job…and that’s assuming he labors at his daily job, which is not necessarily true.  We will accept that as a fact, if only for purposes of literary flow.

              From what I understand, Nathan spends the bulk of his time helping his brother with the operation of the cattle business.  This is called “ranching” when performed in the “West,” which is anywhere this side of Ohio.  Granted, you can have a place like this in the “East” (which is made up of any state that touches the Atlantic Ocean) or the “Midwest” (this is still the “East” to everyone except the people in New England which has nothing to do with England except they speak English there – after a fashion…).  Anyway, you can call your place in the “East” a ranch, if you want, but everyone will just smile and shake their heads like they do when you have a bumper sticker on your Chevy Cavalier that says “MY OTHER CAR IS A GULL-WING MERCEDES BUT IT’S IN THE SHOP ‘CAUSE I CAN’T AFFORD THE AIR FOR THE TIRES.”

              Oh, yes!  Ranching.  In most cases, farming is also involved in ranching, largely in the form of feed for the cattle since they can’t eat out all the time.  From here on in this article, any combination of farming and ranching will be referred to as hobby farming.

              The purpose of hobby farming is…well, in today’s society there is no really outstanding reason to have a hobby farm.  That’s why they call it a “hobby” – you do it because you enjoy it, or at least because you want to…for some reason.  The most predominant reason is that you make way too much money way too easily which causes you to have a compulsive need to engage in a labor intensive endeavor which is certain to result in a financial loss without the addition of government subsidies.  This allows you to psychologically ease your guilt about making all that money without actually doing anything.  This is not Nathan’s reason, trust me – I know where he works!  Oh, he could make a comfortable living with proper money management and less beer intake.  Instead, he spends most of his money on travel expenses to and from the ranch, and the business of ranching.  This entails breeding and raising cattle or, even more specialized in approach, buying feeder cattle from someone else and raising them.  This approach consists of buying young cows for, say $321, feeding them, growing them and caring for them and then selling them for $123…  That’s really not funny – farming is worse.

              Still, it’s a labor of love for those who cherish the way of life.  And it should be pointed out that some people do actually make money at it, though the odds are only slightly better than winning the Powerball jackpot. 

             Another quasi-agricultural endeavor for the hobby farmer is the pheasant farm.  Granted, telling people you operate a “pheasant ranch” sounds a bit self important, but the term “pheasant farmer” gives the impression that you plant the birds with a “bird seeder” run by the power-take-off on your John Deere tractor, or maybe wander through the fields like Johnny Pheasant Seed.  A more appropriate term would be “pheasant raiser,” but if you only HEAR the words, it sounds like you shave birds for a living – that’s not quite right, either.  Perhaps pheasant “grower” would be the best term.

             Anyway, whatever you want to call it, this is another enterprise that Nathan has tried out.  Granted, there is a market for pheasant, from the pheasant feathers to the pheasant flesh (that sounds more cruel and torturous than pheasant “meat”, but didn’t sound as phonetically fine in my head when I wrote it.)  The price of pheasant is higher than that of more common foul such as chicken or turkey, but the scarcity and eccentricity of the product allows a higher price and that’s useful, from a business point of view, to make up for the lack of people actually buying your stuff.  Or the government giving you money NOT to grow pheasants.

             In many areas, pheasant growers do so to supplement the wild population so they can release the fowl to increase the number of birds available for paying hunters.  This increases the value of their land in relation to other “outfitters” who don’t have as much game for their clients to bag.  Having more birds actually allows the customer to spend less time walking around and actually “hunting” and more time sitting in the bar telling their friends about their exciting hunting exploits.  These fellahs are “hunters” in the same way strip club customers are “gentlemen.”  In truth, to pick on these people here, in this article about…whatever this is about, is not fair.  So we’ll save that for another time.  And, yes, I mean both the “hunters” who have more money than time, AND the gentlemen’s club customers who have some serious issues, I would guess.

             And, with the emergence of the word “gentlemen,” we will end our look at hobby farming by looking at a final type of hobby farmer (you’re welcome) that Nathan is not:  the Gentleman Farmer.  Now this is not to say that Nathan is not a gentleman.  He isn’t, necessarily, but I wouldn’t say that.  According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, a gentleman farmer is “a man of independent means who farms chiefly for pleasure rather than income.”

              Let’s all understand this point:  Nathan is wanting the income.  Just like the pheasant, um, growing, if it doesn’t pay, it’s history. (Don’t read any dead pheasants into that!  No animals of any type were harmed in the writing of this article.)  Nathan, for love of the lifestyle and a total lack of the fear of accidentally doing any hard work, farms, ranches and labors not for any guilty feelings about having too much money or the need to have somewhere to wander with his patch-elbowed blazer and imported ebony walking stick while smoking his pipe.  No, Nathan does it to make some extra cash, to have a little more to invest after the ends are met and just because he likes it.

              So here’s to Nathan and hobby farmers everywhere.  Hope you get to be “gentlemen.”