Has higher education joined the ranks of the rip-off artists? Are high-cost college and university degrees what you really want or need? Could antiquated, scheduled education be deliberately dumbing you down? Do you want to start off life deep in student loan debt? Will you be happy in the job that you are being educated for? Will that job be available? Tuition is up, up, up while employment is down, down, down.
With technological advancements worldwide, the cost of college education should be coming down. Welcome is the boom in online education, as courses are fast becoming available over the Internet. The burning curiosity and desire to learn, and continue to learn with age, creed, colour and mobility non-discriminatory, can now be accomplished from the comforts of your own home, dispelling completely travel cost and residency.
I have lived a life of sufficient length to have gained a strong suspicion that higher education, in agriculture, pharmaceutical and medical fields, does a better job of tunnel vision teaching, favouring big business misinformation, encouraging every possible symptom to be treated with a drug, rather than dwelling on the cause or seeking non-toxic, non-addictive, low-cost environmentally friendly alternatives.
Despite their extensive schooling, the bottom line is when it is time to make an informed decision about your health, realize that it is up to you – not your doctor – to decide what’s best for you. Take control of your own health by paying attention to what your mind and body are telling you.
On the farm front, I myself am being re-educated. Having started off life in a mixed farming community, back in the days of longer hours, slower pace and common sense, when things lacked complication, I find myself now positioned to have my memory updated. What worked in the past seems not appropriate now. I am learning about overly expensive milk replacers for lamb and calf, both different. I am learning about species-specific starter diets, vitamin shots, worming methods and hoof trimming.
Though pigs are pigs, I am learning from short shelf-life baked items and veggies picked up for recycle from the local grocery store, that there are many things that they love to eat and certain things they will just not eat.
That brings back memories of when my mother used to rescue runt pigs from the litter. Their first few days were spent bottle-fed while wrapped in a huge towel in a laundry basket on the open oven door of our huge cast-iron wood stove in the kitchen. By the end of the week, you would hear the tic, tic, tic of their tiny cloven hooves as they scampered to urinate on the provided cloth on the linoleum-covered floor in the corner. No diaper was necessary. Pigs, though given little credit, are actually quite clever, and contrary to their love of mud, as a heat and insect repellent, are quite clean animals.
As we sold butter as well as eggs at the local farmers’ market, our Jersey calves were taught immediately to drink from the pail, and after the first three days on the colostrum lactation, they were raised on “all they could drink” skim milk. I can still hear the imaginary purr of the milk and cream as it streamed from the, at the time, state-of-the-art hand-turned separator’s spouts, each to its separate pail. That was, of course, if it wasn’t drowned out by the purr of the lined-up multi-coloured mouse-catching barn cats as they waited impatiently for their saucer filled to the brim with milk that was still warm.
It was not unusual for us kids to be encouraged to drink a brimming glass of warm milk direct from the stream of the skimmed milk spout.
Take care, ‘cause we care.
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