Editor’s note: This commentary is by Sam Lincoln, a Randolph Center native who operates a farm and a mechanized timber harvesting business, one of four Master Logger certified companies in Vermont. He has served previously as president of the Orange County Farm Bureau, chair of the Randolph Budget Committee and vice chair of the Development Review Board, and currently sits on the Randolph Planning Commission.
[I]t was 30 years ago this month, my 12th birthday on a dairy farm in Randolph Center, that I received a brand new Stihl model 011 chainsaw from my folks. It was my second saw, the first being a Jonsered 50 that lacked some, well let’s be honest, all, of the essential safety features an 11-year-old cutting firewood should have. It was 1986 after all and Johnson Wool was nearing the end of its century-long reign as OSHA-approved safety gear in nearly all counties of Vermont. I started out blocking firewood for our family’s farm and over the years learned to fell trees and cut firewood for some neighbors too. It was my pride and joy and I recall classmates in school having a very puzzled look on their face when I eagerly told them about it. My dad spent untold hours teaching me how to work with these chainsaws and every other tool or machine we had on the farm. What I didn’t know then, that I do know now, was the real gifts I’d been given were responsibility, opportunity and purpose.
It’s amazing how the trajectory of society has arced in those 30 years. Today, many of our youth aren’t expected or allowed to handle tools, machines or responsibilities. It was still very common for rural kids back in those days to feed calves, milk cows, drive tractors, split firewood, have a well used jackknife crammed in their pocket, throw hay bales and push a full wheelbarrow around a dairy barn after school, farm raised or not. By their early teens, these kids could proficiently care for livestock, drive most things, successfully apply a wrench to even more things and understood the value of not just things, but people and places too. With our own sons, at 10 and 12 years old, we’ve done what we and generations before us naturally felt compelled to do and given them the opportunity to create, produce and engage with the family business and no, before you ask, they’re not cutting down trees.
This summer at a farm show I struck up a conversation with a sales rep from a major equipment manufacturer that was hosting a display for kids to operate heavy equipment. He said they were struggling — nationwide — to find new technicians to fill good jobs. What, you might ask, would the corporate headquarters of a nearly 100-year-old manufacturing company with global reach, assign as the cause of this trend: The demise of the family farm. He said farm-raised kids were resourceful problem solvers, knew how to fix things and had an unbeatable work ethic.
I’m not advocating that every sixth-grader be issued a chainsaw, but I do believe that if kids were given more responsibility at a younger age we’d be turning head-on into some of these trends.
It’s also been reported in well circulated news articles that one in six males, almost 10 million Americans, between the ages of 25 and 54 and considered in their prime, have left the workforce. Business owners I converse with are very frustrated by the lack of people that are seeking to become employed, stay employed, much less ask for more responsibility or growth in their employment.
With or without these anecdotal stories, it is no surprise to me that the outcome of the compression occurring between less potential employees and more mandates added or considered in the form of additional payroll taxes, that some sectors of the economy are naturally gravitating toward automation.
I’m not advocating that every sixth-grader be issued a chainsaw, but I do believe that if kids were given more responsibility at a younger age we’d be turning head-on into some of these trends. What if they knew they mattered to someone and were held accountable to show up at a regular assignment and be productive? We can’t artificially replace good parenting for those innocent kids that aren’t off to a great start, but I’ll ponder that giving them a sense of belonging to a noble purpose is one way, of many, that we’ll need to curb the heroin epidemic or a growing need and budget for social services. “Noble purpose” can be defined in so many adaptable ways that I couldn’t begin to list them here.
Continuously applying money to many of these societal problems is viewed by some as sweeping the root causes under the rug. It’s easier than taking the time to teach and mentor which requires swallowing frustration, giving guidance, corrective advice and second or third chances. Regulators and policymakers may need to blink first if they believe in such a concept, as liability and restrictive labor rules for employers are created under the golden dome but self worth and pride can’t also be mandated from the Statehouse. We are a people of ingenuity and resourcefulness, can we tap those strengths in Vermont’s coming decades to raise more capable children and have a subsequent impact on many of today’s headlines?
As the seasons pass and I’m hustling around searching for tools or parts, I still notice that little chainsaw in the corner of the shop floor and it always takes me back to that crisp October morning 30 years ago. Those were not prosperous years on the farm for my parents and it chokes me up to think that they had scraped together scarce resources and turned them into such an extravagant gift for me. I see now that it wasn’t a toy or just a material object, it was an investment in me, one of the countless they made in those early years. I’ve since owned larger and far more productive equipment in my life, but they’ve all just been assets on a balance sheet and none have meant more to me or did more for my future than that little Stihl chainsaw. Responsibility, opportunity and purpose.
