The other day I was walking along Johnny Cake Road in Westerlo, enjoying the sunset and looking done along the grounds of Snow's Morgan Breeding Farm. This experience reinforced my belief in my notion of irrationality and the need to live life in a dimension far deeper then monetary gain and success judged through a limited lens of high technology.

The first thing you realize looking at most farms is that nobody makes real money. You don't see many gold plated milk houses or farmers walking around wearing chrono watches. A truly rational self would see these things as being the sole way to economic and personal success. Yet, we know there are things beyond monetary gain and owning lots of stuff. Individuals have passion, a desire for a deeper and more real sense of freedom, and a love for the environment around them. They are humans.

The second you realize is farms are not only about raising crops and animals and their rational virtues. They are places of recreation such as snowmobiling and four wheeling. People go there to hunt in the fall, or to walk along the fields to see the birds flying above. Farms are nature preserves in their own sense. They create such beauty along the highways and superhighways of the world.

The third thing is the rejection of contemporary values. The modern family farm is about confronting technology and embracing irrational tradition. It is the acceptance of outmoded attitudes for the protection of the self, the human. It is a about a deep relation with nature and finding a different kind of prestige as an individual making up a member of a family. Yes, farmers embrace technology and big toys like high-tech tractors, but they do so only in a way of rejecting technology.

I wish that we could see all of life in the irrational terms of the farmer. We should not celebrate money, technology, or big government, but instead the individual, nature, and the beauty of the world around us. That sounds easy to do, but like the struggles the farmer faces, we must embrace struggle for ourselves as individuals.