FarmAid

This summer, in the midst of the clatter and surplus of work, more work than can be done timely, we were contacted by FarmAid.  They wanted us to be part of a podcast they were putting together about where farmers and farms are going from here.  Their preferred subject was the idea of joining marketing of farm products to their production, all to the benefit of the farm family and community.

    We were happy to be part of it, of course, as we are happy anytime the ongoing bustle of urban America admits that we and the food we produce are critical to everyone's health and survival.  LeeAnn, I and grandson Andrew were first interviewed about the origins of Pastures farm, the start of grazing and straw based hog production, as well as the forming up of the marketing and the learning process taken on especially by LeeAnn and Josh and Cindy and the work and twists and turns it has taken to get it this far.  

        Then Josh and Cindy took the story to the next level talking about their work revitalizing rural processing businesses, the facilitating of the transfer of business to the next generation and the start that has been made here in Minnesota to train and educate the next generation of processing workers and more than a few, it is hoped, future owner operators.  Much Covid spending in our state went to this rural effort.  It is appreciated and we hope it bears fruit long term.

        A bit later the new food coop started up in New London was the subject. Started on a shoestring and operated by true believers in a new approach to food growing and provision, it promises to be a real blessing to our farm and business. New London lost its local grocery store some years ago and the new food effort may well benefit because of the hole left in the community by the departure.  Our marketing arm has been busy facilitating and helping with the start up.

       And, of course, our reward, besides the satisfaction of talking food and farming with someone who certainly seems to care how it all comes out, is that we could buy at a reduced price, FarmAid concert tickets for later this summer. For LeeAnn and I this will be our first big concert since Peter Paul and Mary at the auditorium on campus at the University of Minnesota in 1970.  

 

Smoke

 Smoke from the fires in Saskatchewan and Manitoba sent thick smoke south to us again this weekend. This is not normal weather.  Air quality index claims danger in exposure for older people and folks with heart and lung problems.  

The earth is on fire and we are the cause of it.  We will figure out how to live with it of course. We always do.  But the other question, the one about longer term results and tipping points and if the earth coming toward us in the near future is at all like the one we are adjusted to remains.

What we try for here at Pastures A Plenty in view of all this is to keep our production of crops and animals as close as possible to what might be happening here if we were not here.  We do not know what is coming.  But we can look back and see that the earth has produced growing green things and animals have reproduced as far back as we know.  This we need to take to heart and to learn.

We think it is a pretty good bet that all the certified smart people and all the corporate money will not be able to figure out a solution.  We only hope they don't make it too much worse than they already have.  And we hope they may give up their age old habit of thinking they know better and begin occasionally to listen to the people doing the work of the world.

We put our faith in the capacity of earth, given kindly use and care, to figure out how to heal itself.  We need to figure out how to feed ourselves and others without doing huge damage.  To do this, we must learn an attitude of listening, of careful attention to what the earth is telling us.

Humility is required.  Listening to the earth and the animals on it and in it does not come naturally to us humans.  But we will have to learn.  The earth will teach us.  So we carry on our work with the plants and animals and try to do so in a way that makes things better and not worse.

twin cities liberal

 But isn't he a Twin Cities liberal? This question from a newspaper reporter who went on to mention her time in a bar hearing liberals painted with every abomination and ill known to man.  This prompted me to reply that indeed he is but that didn't make him a bad person.

This response gained me a certain notoriety, I guess, but to me it was merely a reflection of my lived reality.  The occasion was a meeting in western Minnesota featuring Attorney General Keith Ellison about efforts he is making to hold machinery companies to account for their efforts to withhold vital technical information from independent repair shops.

This is "liberal" I suppose, in that it reflects the typically liberal desire for a level playing field for all.  But it also speaks to the need for openness in the marketplace which is, or certainly should be, essential to a conservative view. 

Increasingly, we allow our political hatreds to drive our commonsense underground and this is very detrimental to our lives together.  Grandson Andrew, who farms, was there to tell about the difficulties we were having with a tractor, trying to get it repaired and keep it running.  This is something nearly every farmer has experience with and it matters not at all who he voted for in the election.  We should be able to say that and act accordingly.

And indeed, this is detrimental.  If we must ask who our neighbors voted for before we will agree to stand together on a matter that impacts all of us, then we have truly left behind the rural life that I came back to in the late seventies.  That rural life meant that if my barn was burning neighbors would show up offering what help they could without ever considering who I voted for.  

If we have already left, or ever will leave that attitude behind in favor of making sure my political bunch drives out your political bunch, we will have given up most of what was good and right about our lives together.

That would be a tragedy!

vaccinate

 Did I miss something?  My seventy plus years spent mostly on this farm dealing with livestock has resulted for me in a healthy respect for vaccines.  It has gotten to the point with our overproduction of pigs in the upper Midwest, that I do not know if it is possible to produce pigs at any scale here without vaccines.

So why do we have our Secretary in charge of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration, a known vaccine opponent who also is a Kennedy, now say, after a lifetime of denial of vaccine usefulness, that he will make measles vaccines available in view of the situation in Texas, but will do nothing to require them.  Why?  This runs contrary to virtually everything I have been taught, in large measure by veterinarians

Vaccine effectiveness relies mostly upon uptake.  The more casual the use of vaccines in a situation, the less well they will work.  I think I am right here.  Anyone who wishes to argue against that belief can start discussion by making a comment below.

I think the real controversy about vaccines is due to the ascendancy of libertarian thought and action.  Due to the success of this philosophy over the last half century, we have difficulty doing anything that helps the neighborhood or community, even if it would benefit us as well.  Our minds just no longer work that way.  We think that for us to succeed others must fail, as Gore Vidal said.    

gloom

 It is easy to feel under the weather this holiday season.  The country continues at war with itself and we have just finished another holiday where we have to worry about politics as a flashpoint around the dinner table.  This morning the weather is warming and foggy, weird for the days between Christmas and New Year's.  

But closer to home, the steer that was acting about to break with pneumonia turned the corner and made a recovery on its own, without intervention.  Given the pessimistic outlook in ag circles for any prosperity on the farm, our decision twenty years ago to try to go as directly as possible to the buyers and eaters of the food looks pretty good.  And on New Year's day we gather with extended family including several very recent additions to celebrate the fact that we have each other and to miss those not there.  Functioning families like ours and others are the very basis of a good country, if the nation ever gets bright enough to realize it and value those families that are still going.  

Change is constant, and that includes the weather, and importantly people, who it is easy to believe never change.  But they do, and mostly the reason for the change, when it comes, has nothing to do with winning and everything to do with love.

Take care of yours.  And be grateful for them.

rain

 About a week ago we got an inch and six tenths of rain. This is not enough to break the drought but I am taking it as a hopeful sign. Since the rains cut off abruptly in early summer after spoiling any chance we had of getting the corn planted, it has been a roller coaster of planning and worry.

There is one aspect of it we shouldn't forget.  Our soil is very miserly when it comes to giving up moisture.  This is one of the soil characteristics that drove us around the bend this spring when it was continuously too wet to plant, but it is also a blessing when the weather turns hot and dry.

It was late by the time we could think of getting a tractor, let alone tillage, through the wet soil where we had planned corn.  It was mid July, and we had weeds two and three feet tall on the acres we had planned for corn.  Looking at the situation, it seemed we would be better off not tilling and planting a cover crop in part because we were thinking about trying to plant a winter annual on at least some of the acres.  But no farmer can sleep at night surrounded by fields of weeds about to go to seed.  We needed to do something.

We chopped the weeds down in late July.  We got the old stalk chopper out there, hoping it would hold together when challenged by the extra load offered by the green weeds.  We thought that the chopper made more sense because it was cheaper and closer to the junkyard than the hay mower.  It came through for us so we ended up with fields of cut off annual weeds poking through a rough mulch of chopped lambsquarter and pigweed and foxtail grass.  

As it turned out, this operation held the weeds in check and covered the soil completely protecting it from the heat of late summer.  And when we did disc in fall to prepare for planting the rye, we could see the advantages of what we did.  Instead of powder dry soil six inches deep, which is what would have been the result of complete tillage to control the weed growth we had a decent level of moisture throughout, enough to start the rye we planted.

There is another aspect of this, something of which I had not a clue until I started studying various aspects of soil health a decade ago.  A good complete cover of living plants or even residue will keep the soil from heating to temperatures well over 125 degrees, which is more than hot enough to destroy much of the soil life.  When you allow soil to be overheated like that you can plan on a delay in getting a healthy soil life back.  And soil life is critical to growth and production!  Life long learning, I guess.

hybrid rye

This year we did not get the corn planted in anything like a timely fashion, so we took the crop insurance option of prevented planting.  What this meant is that land would be available for planting a winter annual in August thru September.  We purchased hybrid rye seed for thirty acres and got it seeded just after the fifteenth of September.  It was seeded into what was by that time, very dry soil.  It seemed iffy indeed, especially given the cost of the seed.  Andy wrestled with the suggested planting depth of 3/4 inch and the knowledge that the soil was dry at that level.  He seeded a bit deeper than that.  Setting depth is tricky with our old grain drill, but a few days into October we were pleased to see the rye standing in narrow rows across the first part of the field.

Hybrid rye may be important to our farm.  It is a high yielder, consistently doing over 100 bu/acre with much less in fertilizer and weed control expense compared to corn.  It feeds as well as corn, while offering the animals a better range of protein and fiber.  

Importantly for us, it is planted in late summer, which means that including it in the rotation opens an opportunity for manure spreading and tripping up the weed production cycle by interrupting weed control with summer tillage or mowing, something that is just not available with full season crops such as corn.

Moving heavy equipment such as tillage or big manure spreaders across the land in summer minimizes the risk of soil compaction.  And increasing the diversity of crops grown is always a plus for soil health, as the life in the soil thrives on variety.

We will tell you more about rye as we find it out.  We feel pretty good about our successful year with Kernza, good enough to take on another challenge!