How about cows without those nasty cow pies to contend with? Hens but no nauseating chicken coop stench? Catfish fresh from the pond–without ever having to bait a hook or look at a slimy, whiskery face?
In short, it’s farming without the fuss.
At prices ranging from $38.99 to $97.99 (and just in time for Christmas), you can give the city slickers on your gift list a year-long lease on a cow, chicken, a catfish pond, even a piglet named “Porky.”
As Roy Reiman, the man who dreamed it all up, says: “These one-of-a-kind gifts let folks enjoy a sense of `ownership’ without having to get up with the sun to clean the barn, hoe the weeds or pay the taxes.”
Don’t go getting Grinchy and start whining about what society has come to because some people are willing to pay that kind of money for a Christmas present for urban geeks who consider barnyard animals “cute.” It turns out this farm lease program offers a kind of sweet, if sanitized, link to an era when people actually did work with their hands on farms, from daybreak ’til dark. In some ways, the rental program offers a glimpse back at the good old days when it took more than dialing an 800 number to come up with a holiday gift for a loved one.
Consider, for example, the hogs-without-hassle plan offered by the pig-farming Temple family of Fulton, Ill., an hour south of Galena. For $78.99, college student Laura Temple will provide four written updates on farm life and the development of Porky, an all-black Hampshire mix.
(“I did not choose the name,” says Temple. “Normally, our hogs are not named, there are so many of them.”)
Temple, 19, who lives with about 50 other women in the 4-H house at the University of Illinois at Champaign, says her family did not get into the rent-a-hog gig for the money. At a total of $400 for the year, it’s hardly a profit center.
She looks at it as a chance to tell people about what farm life is like today. Most people, she rightly observes, “don’t think of where the bacon comes from . . . or that Christmas ham.”
Nor, says Temple, do most of us understand that farming today takes business sense, scientific know-how, marketing and a huge commitment of time. (“You never get weekends off,” she says.) All of this she hopes to impart in her letters to the people who rent Porky for the year.
This is the second year that Country Magazine (based in Greendale, Wis., outside of Milwaukee) has organized the lease plans for a number of farm products–an acre of tulips, a maple tree, a nut farm, an “Amish Acre”–and animals, including a lamb and a riding horse.
Last year the program drew 6,000 customers; that number is expected to double this year. And the cow is twice as popular as any of the other offerings.
Country Magazine founder Reiman says the rental scheme is not a big moneymaker, but was started as a novelty to get people interested in farming–and his magazine.
“There’s a connection there,” he says. “The renter feels they’re part of the farm and the farmer feels they’ve got a new friend.”
Many of the participating farms welcome renters to come by and pay a personal visit to their adopted country cousins. That’s not as contrived as it sounds.
One renter–of a Holstein cow named Annie–was the entire 2nd-grade class at Wayne Thomas Elementary School in suburban Highland Park. Some of the kids even went and visited their cow on a Saturday field trip.
“They were a wonderful family. They were so nice to us,” said teacher Stephanie Clark, who organized the Annie adventure to visit John and Mary Cull on their dairy farm in Pewaukee, Wis.
As part of the fee, renters get a color photo of their farm animal that is suitable for framing, four letters a year from the farmer, a related wall calendar and, throughout the year, a bunch of little farm-appropriate gifts.
But certain aspects of farm animal life–the part where they die and we eat them–are glossed over in this stylized view of our rural friends. The renters in this program don’t get steaks, pork chops or drumsticks from their new barnyard buddies.
The hen you adopt will produce eggs for the egg noodles in the gift package, not the chicken in chicken noodle soup. Annie the cow was strictly a milk-producer, and cheese from a Wisconsin dairy was the food gift in the package. Laura Temple assures that the pig from her farm is destined to be a breeding sow, not a future Christmas ham. The smoked meat sampler that comes with this gift is from a nearby farm, not Porky’s hinder cheeks.
Reiman grew up on a farm in Iowa. So he understands well the importance of distinguishing between a pet and a meal. As the farmers say, “If you name it, don’t eat it.”
(Call 800-558-1013 for information on the farm animal adoption program; orders must by placed by Tuesday to assure Christmas delivery.)
