Thursday, July 19, 2018

Farmer thinking


Traditionally farmers have kept in their minds the idea that a problem can be a solution.  In these pictures, the rocks that must be collected and gotten off the cropping acres and especially the hay fields so that cutting equipment is not damaged can be used to firm up the generally soft soil at the entrance to a livestock area to help hold up the tractor or skidloader carrying bedding in or manure out.  Thus a problem in one place becomes, by means of work and thought, a solution in another.  Many barns and outbuildings formerly were built on foundations of collected field rocks, and for the same reasons.  The results of rock picking work also work well for controlling erosion by means of slowing water runoff.


A higher order of this thought pattern leads to thinking about using one enterprise to correct and improve another.  Thus, when free range laying hens are introduced into an area where hogs are fed, they will disrupt the fly cycle by scratching apart piles of wet wasted feed in their search for good things to eat.  The hens do not require much in the way of feed during the season, preferring instead the results of their own search and find.  The eggs are excellent, with bright orange yolks.

Flies are no longer a problem on the farm yard we share with the hogs.  But they do pester the cattle on their pastures and we are now in the process of expanding the egg production and making some of it mobile so that we may follow the cattle through the pastures with rolling egg laying houses, letting the chickens find what is out there that would taste good in an egg.  As one customer exclaims:  "Those eggs are like gold!" 



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