Pastures A Plenty

grant

2012-02-06T06:22:00.000-08:00

We have pretty big news today. The USDA rural development divison has awarded us a 300 thousand dollar grant. This is to be used to develop a better supply chain for hog supplies, fostering cooperation with other farms to market with us. We can also use it to improve our inventory and product flow management and to hire some very much needed help, employee(s) that we should be able to keep on once the grant expires in two years.

On the "let's take a deep breath" side, it must be said that this is a matching grant, which means very simply that to get the 300 thousand we must spend 300 thousand of our own. So 600 thousand must be spent on improvements for the meats business including buying of hogs from cooperating farmers. This is a little frightening, especially for a business like ours which has always run very tight financially. We need to pay ourselves a little better than we have. We probably also need to hire a bit of help. But also, as some of you know, we have been short on meat supply for the business which has grown steadily, thanks to your support.

Wish us luck and hope for the best! We will be using the grant to try to improve our service as we grow and to maintain the high quality of our products.

Remember that the book, "Conversation3 with the Land" is still available. Order it when you order your meat or call or e-mail. Just $17 which includes tax. Thanks

Jim

Conversations With the Land

2011-12-23T14:31:00.000-08:00

The book is here! Consisting of fifty-nine columns collected over about 15 years, it is one hundred sixty four pages long and covers topics like rural people, rural life, farming, agricultural economics and politics. See it soon on the website.(on Carye's art page) The cover photo alone is nearly worth the $15.95 price. Call us at the regular order number, or e-mail at grassroots@pasturesaplenty.com to get your copy. And have a Merry Christmas!

Jim

hunting season

2011-11-17T17:27:00.000-08:00

The boys came past in hunter orange today, one to walk the north windbreak from the north toward the yard, the other to start in the west windbreak, then proceed through the grove and walk through to the north windbreak. I don't know if they got a shot off. If they bagged anything, I didn't hear about it.

The old pheasant rooster took off awhile after they had given up, starting from near the yard and angling sharply up past the leafless box elders and cottonwoods, trailing behind him his raspy rusty scream as he cleared the tops of the Austrian pines. Not today, not today, he seemed to be saying. I am sure he was the same one that wintered partly on our yard cleaning up after the sows for some of last winter after the snow covered the entire farm to over a foot deep. Wily old bugger!

We don't have to leave the farm to hunt. That says a lot. Our farming is more generous to the wild things than it used to be. I am not taking up hunting anymore, but am taking real pleasure in noticing our large variety of birds and being able to find unfamiliar plants in the pastures and fencerows that I have to work to identify. Wild things are part of our farm's community.

Fall

2011-11-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

The season is winding down now. The cattle are on the cropping acres, cleaning up, the hog buildings have been repaired, well enough we hope. We have manure to haul, a little light tillage if we get the chance and we need to close up our new sow feeding project for us to finish in early winter. Time to relax for just a bit. Actually part of the relief from farming this year is the rush to put final touches on a book of essays we hope to publish by the holidays. We will make it available on the website when we get that far. Meanwhile, enjoy what is left of fall! Stay warm

Jim

winter

2011-10-31T06:25:00.000-07:00

The mountain of corn stalk bales continues to grow on our hoop site as we haul home and stack some three hundred bales. Due to difficult weather last year we found ourselves short on bedding which is a truly miserable thing for our livestock and us. So maybe we went a little overboard in the other direction this year. I don't think the animals will complain. Lots of bedding is the best way to cope with our old and not so well designed farm buildings.

General Electric

2011-10-12T06:30:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey Immelt, head of General Electric and Obama's new appointment as jobs development know it all was recently heard whining to Lesley Stahl about Americans not cheering on corporations like GE. They should be on our side, he said, like Germans side with their corporations and Japanese prize theirs.

These are, of course, not apples to apples comparisons. German corporations are not building profit margins by outsourcing German jobs. They cannot, as they have significant representation of German labor and the German public on their boards, groups which would not put up with that kind of behavior. German corporations are really nothing at all like American ones. Does Immelt want to change GE over into something like the German design? Because if he did, GE would have all the support it could use from the American people. But until he does, he and the others can expect unrest in the streets, including Wall Street.

Jim

construction

2011-10-07T11:46:00.000-07:00

This fall we are in the midst of changing our sow housing to make it easier to do the breeding and especially feeding of the sow herd. The end result will be that we will be able to feed each sow the amount of feed she needs individually each day, while observing her health and condition. And best of all, pasture access will be improved so that each of our three sow groups can have regular daily access to the pastures with the cattle throughout the gestation period. In the winter, when grasses aren't available, high quality hay will be available to the sows. It is all part of our effort to improve the condition of the pastures as well as the farm as a whole through increasing our emphasis on perennial plants such as pastures and hay. These crop do not have to be seeded every year and are very protective of the soil during periods of heavy rainfall or hot sun. We are excited about this change and hope to complete work before cold and snow.

Meanwhile also there is hay to be made, corn to harvest and corn stalks to bale for hog house bedding material. As always, October and November are a last hard push before we get to rest a little in winter. And it would be wrong to ignore the beauty that surrounds our efforts as the trees turn brown and gold and the grass fades to a deep quiet green against the tan of the ripening crops. Take care. Keep your eyes and hearts open!

Jim

Fall

2011-09-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

Fall always surprises. Maybe you find you don't need the fan to sleep now. Or that it gets dark earlier. Maybe you have to wait for daylight to start work now, or you can see that the plants are not the same kind of green they were.
It came during the state fair this year. The average temps dropped by ten or so degrees and we found it much easier to tie into some of the construction that always waits around here.

Fall appeals to every sense. I always smell late summer in the air in August. It is a weedy ripening kind of smell that I suppose must be difficult for allergy sufferers. The colors fade and deepen. While the grass isn't as green and lush as it was, the cattle gain better on fall grass. The cottonwoods talk in a different language. Cottonwoods are the prairie's gift to those who live away from running water. Their glossy leaves are getting stiffer now and the waterfall noise they make in the wind is louder in fall and carries further. At the time of leaf drop, they will start to rattle in the breeze.

We have frogs this fall. I startle a dozen or so up every time I walk to the cattle for a paddock change. This is new, and pleases us as much as the return of the grassland birds that we began to notice when we seeded the pastures down fifteen years ago. These creatures are our gauges, telling us that we are going in the right direction, or correcting us if we are not.

Today we set up huts in the permanent pasture for a small 14 sow September pasture farrowing. They start in about a week. Looking forward to it.

Jim

andouille

2011-07-18T04:30:00.000-07:00

Success with a small family run farm and business depends on a blending of the strengths of all the people involved. The picture of our andouille sausage on the cover of a recent Minnesota Monthly magazine as part of the general noise surrounding our products in the Twin Cities media goes to the credit of Josh and Cindy, our younger generation. They are the ones finding and creating and testing new recipes since our business started. They found an andouille recipe because they thought there would be a market for it, then modified it, and then needed to adjust it again to fit with a new base mix for our sausage products. They are the ones that try to respond to our customers' concerns about ingredients in our products. They devised the spice mix for our new (a year ago) brat and hot dog products, they worked for several of our early years, together with the Agriculture Utilization Research Institute (AURI), to perfect a no-added-nitrite recipe for our hams and bacon.

This fame simply amazes an old farmer. Hats off to our partners!

Jim

making lemonade

2011-06-30T06:02:00.000-07:00

The extremely wet spring and early summer, combined with a somewhat reduced cattle stocking rate resulted in pastures going to seed before we could react. Grasses in full seed are less than palatable to the cattle. We had practiced "long grazing" for the last two years to help our grasses to get better established, but had planned going back to a more normal practice this year. However, nature made up our minds for us.

The wet season also will make for fewer acres of small grains planted in the area, shortening our potential supply of bedding for the hogs and since the corn was all planted very late, it will not do to count heavily on being able to bale cornstalks, which is our other main bedding source. So we have been clipping the pasture paddocks after the cattle finish grazing, and then baling the mature grass stalks and leftover weeds to use as bedding in the hog areas. It is called "making lemonade" and farming involves quite a bit of it! I wish we could figure out a similar fix for the price and availability problems with corn, our main hog feed ingredient. We will just have to see what turns up.

spring

2011-05-18T05:18:00.000-07:00

The weather is slow to dry up and warm up this spring, which presents a challenge for our cropping plans, which include getting some corn planted to take the edge off the extremely high corn prices. The pasturing is going well though and as the days get warmer, the grass is beginning to boom. It is a pleasure to walk out there each afternoon to advance and check the cattle. The meadowlarks are everywhere singing. Purple martins are active around the bird boxes. The cattle are losing their rough winter coats and beginning to look sleek and healthy. Next we must patch the fence between the sow winter housing and the pasture so that the breeding herd can join the cattle on the grass. So much to do, so little time! Spring in the country keeps an old man young!

Jim

nutrients

2011-05-07T06:41:00.000-07:00

Today I will collect samples of the commercial soymeal we use to make feed, as well as the commercial corn and also our own organic corn. We have a build up of indications that there is something wrong with the way our hogs are being fed or something in their environment that is making hog production steadily more difficult for us. The animals do not breed satisfactorily, they are not developing a strong immune system, they do not seem to be able to live together in a manner that does not impede growth.

We will send these samples to the lab requesting a micronutrient analysis in addition to the usual feed value measurements. This is being done because Dr. Don Huber, professor emeritus at Purdue suspects on the basis of his work that Roundup herbicide and the genetics that allow its use as a broadcast over the top application on our feed crops is interfering with the uptake of micronutrients by breaking down the delicate and complex system of soil life that help plants to absorb these elements. Manganese deficiency is suspected, as well as copper, sulfer, zinc, boron and so forth. To check uptake of these, we will also assay samples of our hog's livers.

Dr Huber is, of course, being critized from within academic agriculture instead of being engaged in discussion and joint research work. The USDA, the "farmer" department cannot be bothered with thoughts such as these as they are entirely too busy releasing Roundup Ready alfalfa which many plant scientists admit will pass that gene around to all the alfalfa cultivars within a few years because of the way alfalfa breeds. As a farmer, I also have doubts about the organic corn seed I use. Judging from the overloaded Roundup Ready bandwagon I see around me, I don't see how it is possible to produce clean seed corn in this country. I suppose I will soon have to pay for that test as well. So much for the much ballyhooed nanny state.

We have plenty of government all right. It just doesn't work for us.

Jim

grassfed

2011-04-19T06:02:00.000-07:00

Our friend and long time customer Ginger recommends the book "Tender Grassfed Meats" by Stanley A Fishman. One of his recommendations has to do with marinating steaks in unfiltered olive oil for several hours ahead of cooking. This we have tried, as I pointed out earlier in the blog, and found it an excellent approach to grassfed steaks. It is a good way to prepare lean meats and the healthier fat they carry for the heating process. Give it a try. Better yet, pick up the book. Thank you Ginger!

Spring is slow this year and it is hard to be patient. The cattle gaze longingly at the first blush of green over the pastures and the sows are crabby from being penned up all winter. As soon as we get a few warm days, the pasture season will start and we all will get along better. Until then, be healthy and stay dry!

patriotism

2011-03-26T06:42:00.000-07:00

I hate airports. When I need to spend time there, as I did waiting for someone to fly in last week, I put myself in the "middle distance" to pass the time without noticing much of anything. Imagine my surprise when CNN, which I never otherwise watch, along with all the rest of the T V entertainment posturing as news, hammered me awake with the information that real questions were being asked in Congress about whether we could afford the attack we were making upon Libya. Congressmen seemed for the first time in recent memory to know how much each missle cost, what the cost was of supporting a bombing run, and so forth.

Now I have supported the idea of an active Congress keeping a watchful and suspicious eye on the warlike proclivities of the executive branch since I watched Senator William Fulbright, Dem-Arkansas (yes, that's right, believe it or not) chair hearings about the conduct of the Vietnam War in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that were anything but complimentary to President Lyndon Johnson, the leader of his own party. I in fact support the idea that since our constitutional division of powers pertaining to war has fallen into such disrepair due to Congressional weakness and Presidential viciousness, we should try to develop the understanding that war will never be undertaken (since we never anymore have anything close to WWII, a "war emergency"), without Congress passing a special tax levy to pay for the estimated cost. Taxes seem to be what most Americans understand the best.

On closer examination, though, the current events in Congress are not a sudden renewal there of an older sense of responsibility, but rather politics as usual. The same party and many of the same players raising the objections to Libya today were in control of Congress and making not a peep while George W Bush started Afghanistan and Iraq. Their noticing the cost of the military hardware being used today is less the patiotism that it sounds like at first blush, and more a simple hatred of Barack Obama. Accidental patriotism, you might say.

gratitude

2011-03-05T06:27:00.000-08:00

It is with a real sense of gratitiude that we approach the end of this winter here at Pastures A Plenty. It has been difficult. The constant snow accompanied with somewhat normal cold temperatures makes all our work more difficult. A day must be spent clearing snow away after each snow event, which then puts us a day behind on our necessary work. We hardly have it made up before it snows again. But today, water is dripping from the ice dams on the sow barn when the temperature is still only 20 degrees. The February sun is winning! Now we have March to get through. Hooray for mud! Until we start complaining about that, I guess.

But whatever the weather, notice what nature is up to. It will amaze you. Take care. Remember that you don't get this day to do again.

Jim

Tenderize grassfed beef

2011-03-01T12:26:00.000-08:00

Tenderizing grassfed beef
marinate in unfiltered olive oil for approximately 2 hours.

high school

2011-03-01T05:41:00.001-08:00

Events in Wisconsin have the capacity to teach us some things if we will pay attention. The right wing has succeeded often enough in separating lower paid or what is called common labor from more professional organizations like teacher unions. Wages are of course an issue and every American on the lower end of the economy is worried about employment, which doesn't help. But primary in this problem is our national superstition that education always improves people and that this itself ought to entitle the educated person to a higher standard of living. Of course, there is nothing at all in the history of thought, philosophy or religion that backs this notion up. But it is easy enough to see the perniciousness of it by considering a case. Assume that a college educated person, because he has shown an aptitude for the arrangement of lines in a drawing, or words on a page, finds employment in the advertising industry. Now further consider that a high school graduate, more familiar with tools than words, finds employment as a meat cutter in a slaughterplant. How can anyone argue that the second individual is less valuable to society than the first?

While the first fellow will spend his life and talent helping his employer convince us all to buy what we do not need and probably cannot afford, the second can, if he applies both his skill and his humanity to his job, help provide us with the food we want to eat while allowing us some hope that the hog, one of God's creatures, is being treated with the respect it deserves on its way to our plate.

We need to rethink some of our attitudes.

social

2011-02-28T06:13:00.000-08:00

The first two of Gandhi's seven deadly social sins are on full display in Wisconsin now. These are "politics without principle" and "wealth without work" As far as the first of these is concerned, bear in mind that though the troubles the states are in comes mostly from the criminal behavior on Wall Street, their response, almost exlusively has been to continue to let the wealthy within their own borders get away without paying the taxes they should pay, while reducing spending on things like fuel assistance. This is particularly deadly in a northern state.

And the effrontery of the Koch brothers getting on the media to announce that they are bankrolling this disenfranchising of public employees because (to paraphrase)"everyone knows that everyone does better when the government does less" is unbelieveable. This is directed at public employees who do necessary work by the poster boys for "wealth without work", who have spent their lives polluting the atmosphere and carelessly putting employees' lives at risk in their refineries while stiff arming the EPA and rolling in the government cash that results from being involved in oil, the most heavily subsidized of all economic activities. Why do we put up with it?

Egypt

2011-02-22T06:05:00.000-08:00

Our hearts and minds are with the people of Egypt these days. They did an amazing thing by throwing off a murderous dictator. They are in a dangerous time now, with all that power lying around loose, so to speak. We wish them well.

Jim

corn

2011-02-15T08:56:00.001-08:00

We have needed to raise our prices because of the zooming corn market and we notice that is causing some confusion with some customers. We need to clear some things up.

Our farm is named Pastures A Plenty because we live and do our work in the middle of 100 plus acres of grass which is grazed in a planned, rotational manner with dairy heifers, beef animals and sows. Just as important, we think that every species of livestock should be fed as much as possible with forages, and as much as possible of this forage should be grazed fresh by the animal itself. This because forages are usually perennials, and our agriculture needs to move toward perennial production and away from annual cropping to cut down on fuel use. And pastures make a healthy environment for all animals, with some limitations having to do with predators and severe weather.

The only class of animals that we know of that can live and thrive on a strict forage or pasture diet are ruminants. For our purposes, that class includes cattle, sheep, bison and goats. Pigs, chickens and turkeys are not ruminants. Pigs have a simple digestive system similar to the human stomach. They need protein in a different form and much more energy than their systems are able to get from grass or even legumes like alfalfa. So when we use the word "pasture" connected with pigs, we are saying that pigs live there, not that they subsist entirely on a diet of grazed forages. It is rather that they are getting the advantage of fresh air, sunshine, freedom of movement and a good forage supplement to their main diet.

The pig's digestive system matures considerably as they get beyond the age at which they are usually slaughtered. The herd of sows here, for instance, average age perhaps three years, is much more able to get value out of forage than are the finishing pigs, which average perhaps four months of age. So we focus very much effort upon increasing the proportion of the sow's ration that comes from pasture and from hays in the winter months. Currently, we are trying to improve our sow facilites so that we can carefully reduce the grain portion of their ration, encouraging them to eat more pasture and hay. We are very encouraged by this, as we have indications we may be able to reduce the sow herd's grain ration from five lb/head/day down to two or even less. Our gestating or dry sows spend the summer grazing our pastures with the cattle herd. Until last summer, when it was so terribly wet for so much of the summer, we also had pigs born on pasture. We are talking currently about the role of pasture farrowing for us in the future. One thing we must think of is that our markets ask for a year around supply of pork, which means we must often farrow the newborns inside of the barns to protect them from the weather.

We think that the pictures we have on our literature and on the website may be leading people into thinking we are able to do all our production in pastures. We are not, for reasons named above, and are considering changes to the image we project. Most of the pictures we show are of sows or sows and baby pigs on grass, or occasionally on straw in the barns. It is clear to us that it is mainly the sows with access to pastures, but probably not to anyone who does not operate a hog farm. For this we apologize. Steps will be taken to make our image more accurate.

Since we cannot do all our production in pastures, we take it as very important that we live up to certain standards for pig production. All pigs, for instance, have straw to bed in and manipulate and play with. We never confine a pig into a space in which it has no freedom of movement. Space provided per pig is always double the amount allowed in conventional system or more. Efforts are made to maximize sun and natural air movement in all our buildings. We take very seriously the truth that when we humans domesticated livestock animals, we took on certain responsibilities for them and that for the good of our own spirit, we must carry them out.

A word about the grains. Our American system of agriculture is very much skewed to the production of corn and soybeans. On the grain side, the price and availability of corn controls everything else about the market. We, for instance, feed oats, sometimes barley, field peas, and dairy whey, as well as hay to all of the older animals in our rations. However, the price of all these, even when they are available, is set by the corn market. Therefore when we must buy corn or any of the other grains, and we do need to buy, as we don't have enough land to grow sufficient quantities, we are impacted by the corn price.

Pigs can eat other things. We feed dried whey, as mentioned above. A hog farm located next to a cheese plant could feed mostly wet whey, I think. A farm located in orchard country or in the middle of vegetable production could benefit in a large way from cull vegetables and apples. Pigs could be run under nut trees. Cannery byproducts, or the byproducts of any kind of food processing, are useable by pigs. However, ours is a prairie farm, with no very good access to any of this. So that is why we stick mainly to a corn and soymeal diet for the pigs, with as much inclusion of hay and the other grains as we can. The only other choice we have been able to come up with is fast food garbage, and our thinking is that our customers wouldn't like that. We don't either, even more than we don't like high corn prices.

We never use drugs in the feed or otherwise to promote rapid pig growth. Hormones are illegal in hog production. We do use antibiotics on an occasional basis to treat sick animals. Our goal is always to use vaccinations and good environment to short circuit disease rather than having to treat sick animals. Hope this helps.

snow

2011-01-03T06:32:00.000-08:00

Snow is in the forecast everyday now as we enter the new year and it is hard to imagine anything that could make livestock work more difficult. Especially is this so when the farm runs, as ours does, with a commitment to minimize confinement of any animals and a real commitment to animal comfort. Snow must always be moved from where ever it lands and after that is done, the wind all too often puts it right back there.

This is the major glitch in our production system. The same approach that works well nine months of the year falters with winter. But in another sense, this is just a description of human life on earth. We don't do perfect, any of us, and that includes our systems here at Pastures A Plenty. Some of it is mostly a matter of living through it. We are now several weeks into increasing day length and are regularly cheering for the sun.

I think with longing of the statement of a Russian immigrant with whom I shared snow shoveling chores five decades ago at the parking services of the Unversity of Minnesota. Igor used to say wistfully "God put it there, why don't we let God take it away?" Amen to that! I wish!

Jim

winter

2010-12-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

Prairie winters can grab you and hold you still, which can be a blessing for those of us who run so hard trying to be competent, or successful. Unlike so much of Nature, which appears to have deteriorated pretty much to the level of tornadoes, with young men dressed in LL Bean gear chasing after them with high priced cameras in high priced vehicles just for the fun of it, prairie winters demand respect. So when I headed out to check the cattle this morning, hoping that the extra hay I put out yesterday would hold them off until tomorrow, I braced against that strong wind, and knew that I was in something that could win, and would, if I insisted upon being too stupid.

Not so many years ago, a man just south of here, who was at the time younger than I am now, became stuck with his pickup in a snow drift. Being no stranger to winter, he figured he could hoof it home. He made it too, through the strengthening wind and dropping temperatures. They found him the next day frozen to death on his own front step. He had gotten there, but at the cost of enough lost body heat that he could not figure out how to get the door open and go inside.

The insane rush that makes up our society and economy infects those of us who try to do things differently too. And it is tempting to think that our lives together as a nation might be much improved if more of us could have the experience with weather, and memories of it, that I had today. I stood there for awhile, looking at the cattle, who were standing around several of the hay rings with their backs to the wind, covered with snow, chewing their cuds and watching me. I knew they could live through weather that would kill me. So I walked back to the main yard, checking the hog feeding hoops along the way and eventually got to this keyboard in front of this computer, writing these thoughts. I think I will work on getting my heart to slow down, stay where it is warm to wait it out, and find a good book to read or get back to the one I am trying to write. After a nap, maybe.

Jim

facts

2010-12-02T05:44:00.000-08:00

I spent several days in the company of well established conventional farmers recently and it drove home the truth to me that the country may be ungovernable at this point. These folks knew, in considerable detail, as it turns out, about the troubles surrounding a Minnesota dairy farmer who seems to have sickened several people by selling them raw milk, but they had simply not heard anything about the DeCoster egg empire and its troubles with salmonella. They didn't dispute the facts as I related them to the best of my knowledge, they simply had not heard.

If your source of national news is Fox and your source for farm news is a typical "prices and farmer jokes" serving, you are simply going to be looking at different facts from someone who reads newpapers, some of them foreign, on the internet and gains farm information from several listservs. Some of what is available to each is fantasy, no doubt, but I am thinking now about facts. Fox and the conventional farm press are going to assume that DeCoster's problems are merely a glitch in an otherwise excellent system of large players, and my listservs will take the approach that the eggs problem is symtomatic of a rotten food system. These opinion based "fact screens" will have to do with what gets noticed and what gets repeated. We will hear different facts. The country does not become governable until we deliberately and calmly share facts, which does not seem likely to happen soon.

It could be said, for one thing, that the scale of these events are vastly different. The dairy farmer, if he is found to have caused a sickening of customers, will only have exposed perhaps several dozen people. DeCoster's eggs were available to millions. On the other hand, many more Americans depend upon the likes of DeCoster for their eggs than are served by farms like ours and many others. This has implications in a democracy for food safety rules, inspections and so forth.

Surrounding the entire question is the matter of what kind of country and agriculture we want to build for the future. Is our future an endless series of DeCoster empires, or will there be an increasing number of opportunities for folks to connect more closely with their food, as our customers do?

Rats

2010-12-01T05:23:00.000-08:00

If you burn down an old building to get rid of the rats that infest it, the rats will simply move to another building and start to destroy it. Any farmer knows this. And it is not hard to see this happening in our current economic situation. Corn and soybean markets zoom to unheard of highs in the midst of a steady barrage of news of good crops nationwide, good evidence of the increasing influence of people who prefer to let their money do the working(otherwise known as speculators). Land prices in our area have pretty much doubled in the past two or three years, from three thousand to nearly six thousand per acre as refugees from the softening stock market buy land at any price.

The next generation of farmers,which was at severe risk at three thousand/acre already is the first casualty. Also on the chopping block is any new or inovative farming practice. It seems as if the one viable economic alternative right now is to farm just as the government wants so that you can stay closely attached to the subsidy teat, while desperately hoping that the commodity prices stay up.

But my lifetime experience has been that I never came close to succeeding with this farm until I gave up following the standard practice. I don't think more emphasis on corn and beans is an appropriate response to six thousand dollar land. It is simply to retreat further into a cave from which there is no escape. And make no mistake about it, that "cave" is no natural structure, but rather an elaborate trap constructed by the agricultural and financial powers that be.

Over priced land and speculator driven commodity markets are just two more evidences of the failure of our democratic government to protect us from huge economic power. The last election delivered government power more completely into the hands of the Wall Streeters. So we are on our own, whether or not we are ready for that role. While the wealthy sector continues to buy us up, the republicans will try to do what they always do, which is to talk a good game about getting the government off our backs while they do everything in their power to tilt the table toward the largest businesses and banks in the nation. We are in for an accelerated move toward less regulation of the powerful and more regulation of the small. The fact that the Pork Producers group dropped its support of the Food Safety bill being discussed in Congress when the Tester amendment, which would exempt from increased regulation small marketing efforts (500 thousand annually or less) was added is all the evidence we need of things to come.

Winter

2010-11-19T16:14:00.000-08:00

A dozen pheasants flew up ahead of me as I walked along the west tree line checking the fence last Sunday. They were a little hunter spooky too, I guess, like the deer that had run through the polywire I had set up to keep the cattle off the new hay seeding. Ordinarily pheasants wait until you nearly step on them before taking off, wings a-whistling.

I needed to try to get more power in the wire, now that the cattle knew how good that fenced out grazing was, and I ended up unhooking the bottom wire on the perimeter fence because it was still under a pretty wet load of grass in the lower areas. The power quadrupled. The puppy and I slowly got the cattle to decide to head for home for a drink(the pup thinks he had something to do with it), and I rebuilt the fence. So much for my Sunday off.

Still, though, it is the same pleasure it has always been to have a job I live, instead of just going to. Farming for a lifetime changes a person. I have an increasingly difficult time carrying on a conversation with lifetime friends who have chosen another path. I honestly sometimes don't really know what they are talking about. Something the poet said about the path not chosen. Those times when I feel best about the farm and its people and animals, I see that I have taken a path not often used, and it has made all the difference! Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. It means that winter is coming, along with a little well deserved rest.

perennial

2010-10-18T09:16:00.000-07:00

We are busy at work in addition to our end of the season cropping work with changing and improving our breeding and gestation facilities and handling. We have two main goals; first that we should be able to time the breeding and get enough sows with pig so that our farrowing areas remain full and second, that we are more able to feed our sow herd with perennial plants such as pasture, hay and silage. This means we need to be able to feed our regular haylage bales to the herd regularly in the winter, and that the sow herd needs access to the pasture at all times when the pasture is not too muddy. This part of it requires that we reorganize some of our lot and close to the farm yard fences as well as building perhaps a half mile of pasture lanes this fall and next spring. This is a fair amount of work, but we can see that maximizing the use of perennial feeds is becoming necessary for all classes of livestock for both environmental and economic reasons connected with fuel use. In a hog business, the place to start with that is the sow, who can digest much more forage than can the younger animals.

Last weekend, we took some of Saturday off to help our sister add an observation deck to her cabin on the Minnesota river. What a beautiful day in a beautiful place! Many hands really do make light work. Much of the day, a huge red tail hawk rode the thermals above us as we worked just under the bluff. Fringe benefit!

haying weather

2010-10-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

We have finally gotten two days in a row of good hay curing weather, that is, the last two days of September. I am beginning to think we may be able to bale this crop dry without plastic bagging it by Monday next week. Who knew? It shouldn't have been possible this late. And the forecast is still good. We are checking our little field of organic soybeans to see if they can soon be harvested.

The cattle are about half way through their final rotation on the permanent grass and will need to go to the cropping fields to clean up residue and too short to cut hay in about two weeks. Next week we start work on converting one of our hog finishing hoops into a combination sow breeding and replacement gilt facility. It needs concrete flooring and will feature handy to use breeding pens and pasture access for the sow herd. This kind of improvement to make things both easier for us and better for the hogs has been a long time coming. When we started to make a decent living with the hogs due to the growing marketing business about ten years ago, we had to pay for quite a lot of prior debt. Now we relish the thought of getting on with improving things!

I wish I could see a way of improving some of what goes on with our country and its government. We are facing the necessity of voting for people who do not thrill us just to help keep the lunatic fringe from running the show. Corporate money poisons the politics. We cannot do more than put in a stop gap solution nationally at this point, if that, but we must begin to plan in a different direction.

I think it is critical that more and more of us have a basic security outside the national government. As long as we are so dependent upon what they do, the bankers have us all by the short hairs. We need to build families back together, surround them with working (beloved) communities and then build from that base to achieve functioning and relatively honest local and state government. This is important because we cannot sucessfully go to the national government with our hats in hand and beg. But if we come from sound families and good communities that have already started much of the necessary work for the future, we have a base to stand upon. A person who knows what he/she is and is capable of is always a force to be reckoned with. We cannot simultaneously suck on the corporate teat and control the corporation.

Competence is power.

climate

2010-09-21T05:45:00.000-07:00

It seems as if we are headed into another fall season very much like '09. Since midsummer this year, we have had rain in the forecast pretty much every week and a large proportion of the rains turn out to be heavy. Last fall was so wet that we pulled the cattle off the permanent pastures in October to keep them from being destroyed, and unusual problem with permanent pastures and those tough root systems.
We have straw laying in windrows that should have been baled in early August, a first crop of hay on the new seeding that was cut the first week of August and we cannot get to the point where either is dry enough to bale. We have turned each swath three or four times to keep it from rotting and smothering the new grass coming beneath.

It is this kind of thing that brings climate change to mind. This weather is unusual even in our forty years of experience. It is difficult to see what a farm might look like as it modifies itself to cope with this kind of weather. One thing that appears to be true is that, muddy pastures or not, perennial agriculture does better in adverse weather than annual cropping. I am pleased to see that attention is finally being paid to the Land Institute's work on developing perennial grain crops by the more conventional academic institutions.

Most of them, most of the time of course, are burying their head in the sand after the fashion of our own University of Minnesota, which just cancelled the showing of a well researched documentary about the Minnesota river on the grounds that it was too critical of annual cropping and conventional agriculture. Pivot point for the deed was a vice president of public relations who is married to a board member of the Minnesota Agri-Growth council and whose law firm serves as a lobbying mouth piece for conventional agriculture at the legislature.

Ever the same, ever the same.

stalling

2010-09-03T08:59:00.000-07:00

Another oil well blows up in the Gulf just as we were being lullabied into forgetting the last one, the one bigger than twenty Exxon Valdez's. The oil industry sponsors demonstrations peopled by oil workers fearful of losing their jobs while nothing is heard of any effort to clean up the Minerals Management Service of the federal government that let it all happen. Meanwhile, Blankenship of Massey Coal is still running around loose acting arrogant about the death and destruction he has caused for miners and their families.

Nothing much changes until we change it in our own lives. That is what we are trying to do here at Pastures A Plenty with our constant efforts to get more of our production from perennial rather than annual plants. When you buy our products, you support these efforts, helping us learn to feed our sows and cattle more from grass and clover thus reducing the amount of grain needed, as well as getting more of the energy straight from the sun.

And our meat products are grown, processed and sold in the state of Minnesota, putting a pretty strict limit on shipping distances. We have a long way to go but we are headed in the right direction. Remember that your food dollars really do as much to conserve energy and redirect our economy as your vote. Maybe more.

2010-08-02T11:30:00.000-07:00

"Good weather for the lake" means tough work for a livestock farmer. It is easier to keep animals comfortable in the cold of winter than in the heat of summer. This past July was a hot month, but more importantly, it was humid. When you get that combination you hope it is also cloudy and windy. Hogs and cattle have different requirements in regard to heat and humidity. Cattle are a grassland animal and are pretty comfortable in the sun if there is a bit of breeze and plenty of fresh water. They cool themselves by drinking, and will drink about twice the water on a hot day as they ordinarily do. When it is still and hot, cattle can benefit from shade.

Hogs, on the other hand, are a woodland animal by ancestry. They cannot cool by drinking and have no sweat glands. They cannot tolerate the summer sun and must have shade. For hogs the ticket is fresh water to drink, a good breeze, plenty of shade and water with which to make the mud they need to cool their skin.

In times like we experienced last July, we try to get everything done that needs doing in the morning, so we can rest in the afternoon and then work into the evening. Sometimes it doesn't work, and something the animals have caused to happen means we have to work in the humidity and heat of the afternoon sun setting things right for them. It is not easy. Sometimes it is dangerous. But it is part of what we take on when we decide to make our living with livestock. And in August of any hot summer, the days start to get shorter and we can look forward to fall.

FSIS

2010-06-23T07:41:00.000-07:00

Thank you to all our customers and others who responded so passionately on our behalf to the USDA call for comments on the proposed guidelines for small and very small meat plants. By speaking up for us, you spoke up for yourselves as well, and for the kind of life you want to live. We will keep you posted on any movements on this issue. The battle has probably just begun.

When needing to deal with the insanity of government, and the obstinate wrong headedness of bureaucrats that are too often in corporate pockets, it is a joy and pleasure to turn away again toward farming and that endless fascination with nature and growing things. Though nature is often a tough adversary it is also a balm to the troubled soul and a reminder that some things are bigger than politics. The weather has been wet here at Pastures A Plenty, meaning difficulty with getting the hay made and the row crop work done. However the grass is growing into a grazing beasts' paradise and it is a pure pleasure to walk out there and be part of it. One of the results of our change to long grass and slower cattle rotations is that the grassland birds seem to be having a better go at their nesting. Western meadowlarks with their multi noted songs, cattle and cat birds and killdeers are everywhere. The little wet weather slough is full of redwing blackbirds declaring territory. Red tail hawks bank and soar overhead. It would be a kind of sacrilege to walk out there with headphones on!

With the oil volcano gushing in the Gulf and destroying the livelihoods of so many families for decades to come as well as all the natural wonder and beauty of the place, I have been trying to imagine what it would be like for our entire farm to have been covered in six inches of salt, for instance. Or worse, if all the farms in our community had been. It is impossible to imagine the heavy changes we are forcing upon the Gulf and the people there.

rules

2010-06-01T05:53:00.000-07:00

News lately is of controversy around raw milk and then too we have notified many of you of the coming USDA rulemaking for pathogen testing at small meats plants. It is important to us that everyone interested in our business, including certainly any who are customers or who might become customers know that our intention here at Pastures A Plenty is to continue to do everything we can to comply with regulations. We operate under license from and are inspected by the State of Minnesota at considerable cost to us. In addition, of course, our processor operates under the state "equal-to-USDA" licensing and will continue to do so. We are inspected by the Midwest Food Alliance for wholesomeness and humane treatment in our animal production, and meet Niman Ranch's standards along those lines as well. These licenses and certifications are important to us and will be kept up.

If you would like to make a comment to USDA about the proposed new pathogen testing requirements e-mail to: DraftValidationGuideComments@fsis.usda.gov. For a copy of the document proposing the extra testing, call the Small Plants help desk at (202)418-8820. The basic argument is that extra testing is unnecessary for small plants, as they do not slaughter and process 24/7 (ours slaughters once a week for a half day), and that it is a special hardship because the cost can be spread over a much lower volume of products than is the case with the mainstream meat industry. You need to respond by June 19th. Thanks!

spring

2010-04-27T05:56:00.000-07:00

The food safety bill making its way through Congress is a conflict for those of us who try to foster more direct contact between farmers and customers and more responsible farming. We know better than most how very slipshod and untrustworthy our current food safety regimens are, and can hardly help favoring a general tightening. But the way in which these things are usually carried out by Congress and the USDA is a major concern. We smaller farmers and processors are generally the target because we are easier to push around and do not generally hire lawyers. So one size fits all regulations and practices, such as irradiation of meats and other foods are apt to bear heavily on smaller businesses, while actually benefitting the conventional industry. Our concern, in the meats area, is that inspectors in major meat plants do not have the power to shut the production down if they see something they don't like. We can assure you that if our inspector in our small plant sees something amiss, she will stop it and we will hear about it.

Has anyone connected with government food regulation ever asked if smaller plants and independent farmers regularly sicken their customers with dirty products? And isn't that the question we should be starting with?

methane

2010-04-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

The Massey coal mine in West Virginia that claimed the lives of 25 plus miners yesterday belches so much methane that even the broken government agency in charge of mine safety thought it should be inspected every five days. It will be interesting to see what gets done about this loss of life by the government and by the people of West Virginia who seem to be pretty much of the opinion that government is the problem. Perhaps it is when it only fines Massey a few hundred thousand for many violations this past year alone. But whose fault is that? Would we have a better government if we invested some effort in demanding it?

This level of methane release by "clean coal" puts grazing cows in the shade, I think.

Jim

spring

2010-03-29T05:23:00.000-07:00

It is a curious thing. I keep expecting it to change each year as I grow older. But each year, as the snow melts and the frost leaves the earth, the old feeling is back. It is the welling up of a fierce kind of joy. I need less sleep. I must be out walking on the land and waiting for the next thing. It is as if I want to throw myself into the great awakening that surrounds me and push it forward. There are the seeds to buy or to clean and ready for planting. Each year there is something new to plant and hope for. The machines must be readied. The cattle lean longingly on the lot fence and gaze at the first faint blushes of green over the slopes. Piles of manure must be hauled out and spread for the benefit of the plantings. Ahead stretch long days getting the year started which will then blend into the heat and dust of haying as the sun reaches its zenith and seems to hang there for weeks, holding its breath while we race to catch up.

How is it that I was born so lucky?

spring

2010-03-14T14:11:00.000-07:00

I could smell the wet cedar boards as I stepped out on the deck this morning to check the weather. Temp stayed above freezing last night and the entire world smelled like it was warming up. Two geese honked their way across the southern sky and everywhere I look I can see standing water. Nearly half of our pasture acres are covered as well as a goodly number of the cropping acres. The drainage is full and the river towns are worried. Most of the water visible from our house will leave as the water level goes down in the drainage, but the last of it will linger and soak in among the roots of the pasture sward. Staying for a while, it will find cracks and crevices plus earthworm holes and gopher tunnels to help make its way into the subsoil, where it will do the farm some good in the hot months to come as it becomes available to accelerate growth of the perennials that feed our cattle and sows each grazing season. The same water our farming system has kept out of homes in the towns down river will help us and our farm to prosper.

It is not often in life that one can do an unconflicted good. I am not much of a believer in the idea of win-win. But these days, as I stand on our slice of wet prairie sponge watching the water that is taking its time with leaving, I get a chance to feel good about something. That is something to savor.

Jim

snowshoe

2010-02-27T15:28:00.000-08:00

It is possible to get a little claustrophobic in a winter like this. The yard on which we do our work has gotten smaller with every snowfall this winter, since we can never push the new snow quite as far back as before. I put on the snowshoes this Saturday afternoon and took a walk to the north through the pig pastures, across last year's hay field to the township road on the north, ostensibly to see whether we had a chance of getting manure out through that approach this early spring, but really for the chance to be out and about.

The snow on the prairie is drifted this winter so that it looks like a white ocean frozen in time. We don't get this very often; I can only remember three winters out of my 62 years where the snow stayed out on the land all winter, and that would be this year, last year and ten years ago. Generally the wind has it immediately stacked up in the groves and tree lines. I sank in a bit walking through the grove, flushing up a group of pheasant which have been staying close to the yard despite the dogs. We have taken to deliberately spilling a little feed regularly to feed them for wild birds have a very tough time with all this snow cover. On the prairie, the snow immediately bore me up and as I looked behind I could sometimes not make out tracks of the snowshoe frames for my own shoes carried me on the hard drifts.

No tracks out there to speak of. The mice and gophers are underneath which would make it tough for the coyotes if it were not for the carcasses of wild things scattered about plus a few pig and calf casulaties. I didn't see one coyote track in my half mile walk, but I will bet there is a well worn trail between the cattail slough and our dead animal compost pile. Coyotes are opportunists. I saw one mink track making it from the growe at an angle toward the drainage ditch, where it probably has a den in the bank. I wondered what it was finding on the yard.

No rabbits either, once I cleared the grove. The air was cold and clear, making the lungs feel young again and very efficient. I walked toward home at an angle so that I came onto the yard on the opposite end from where I began. I walked along a ten year old tree line which we have been trying to expand by starting two more similar lines next to. These winters have been hard on the little trees, bending them over during the spring melt and stripping some of the branches down under the weight. The banks next to the trees offered me a chance to look down about ten or fifteen feet to the tops of the adjacent fence posts which are about five feet tall.

Spring feels a long way off here at Pastures A Plenty on the 27th of February. And when the melt does start, the fear is that the Minnesota will flood. We are kind of hoping for a slow thaw for that reason.

eagle

2010-02-03T11:28:00.000-08:00

I saw another bald eagle today. This is unusual, as we have occasionally seen them for a day or two in spring and thought that they are on their way back to the Minnesota River valley for the season, but this is the third of February, a dazzling bright day with the snow reflecting the sun's full power in all directions. Wild things seem to know a tractor is different from a man on foot, for when I got back from feeding cattle and saw the eagle sitting near the top of the cottonwood tree I drove next to, it simply looked down at me watchfully. But when I stopped the machine and got off a few hundred feet further along, it decided I was too close and took off. I watched it fly, those huge wings in a lazy easy motion as it made the thousand feet to the electric transmission line we have on the south side of the farm and perched atop a pole and looked back at me. Somehow, these majestic raptors have made a comeback here in western Minnesota and they are welcome here. And this is a sign of progress, that they are no longer being poisoned by agricultural chemicals.

Sunday Chores

2010-01-18T05:36:00.000-08:00

Sunday was my day for chores and it was enjoyable, as it often is, with no other work pushing in and demanding attention. There is something pretty nice about having the time to watch the sows and calves eat their rations. Temperatures were a little warmer, so there was no problem with frozen drinkers and I could make the rounds of the hog feeding groups checking for bedding, pig comfort and health. I ran the tarp up on the north end of the hoop where the biggest group is to help the little breeze clear the steam rising from the bedding out before it encourages pneumonia.

A slow walk through the pasture where the close up and breeding heifers are getting their winter hay showed that the warmer weather pushed their appetite down a little, good news for the hay inventory. We are just done with farrowing this group of sows so the barns are full of pigs suckling and sows eating a lot. Nothing that had to be dealt with. Later, in the evening, I found two calves with their heads stuck in the sheep hay feeder that I use for the youngest calves. I helped them out, closed them and the others into the barn so they didn't panic at some sound during the night, and made a mental note that it is time to move them up to the next hay feeder and put the sheep feeders away until the next batch of little ones arrive. I rolled the tarp back down on the feeding hoop and called it a day. Sometimes a Sunday chores is just as good as a Sunday off.

Jim

2010-01-10T14:34:00.000-08:00

After this toughest Fall in memory, winter has settled in for real. We have by now torn up all the hay and straw moving equipment we fixed last summer from the previous winter's damage and must start emergency repairs. The main problem is that it rained most of the Fall and then when the temperature dropped in Winter, everything froze solid to the ground. Farming is, as most people know, not easy.

It is not easy either, to cope with some of the machinations that go with our food system. You should know that we have been notified by the company which makes the non-chemical premix we have just started using for our new sausages that they will cease production as they have been notified by another premix company of its intention to patent the process and the bacteria used. While we are hopeful that the US Patent Office will not participate in such foolishness, we are nevertheless on notice to watch the process unfold as we go back to the drawing board for our sausage recipes. We will keep you posted.

But here's an upper: Our bacon got notice in the Metro magazine! "The winner: Pastures A Plenty's thick cut bacon for its precise balance. It's a textbook example of what bacon is supposed to be." Hooray for our side! Thanks for your support. Stay warm.

Jim Van Der Pol, for
Pastures A Plenty

2009-12-19T11:22:00.000-08:00

The southern one third of the state of Minnesota is under a pollution warning this last week before Christmas, which is an unwelcome reminder that we here in western Minnesota are connected with the entire world when it comes to suffering from the bad effects of our careless living. It matters not whether this is home grown pollution or that it drifted in from China. Burning eyes and restricted breathing don't make those distinctions. Neither, anymore, can we.

Early winter

2009-11-28T08:44:00.000-08:00

After all the rainy days in October, November was a blessing with moderate temperatures, little rain and a few chances to see the sun. It let us get the soybeans harvested, and many of the endless list of to-do's that go with a livestock farm done so that we are about as ready for winter as we ever have been.

The prairie skies have been beautiful this month with fiery reds and vivid pinks blending into indigo and then azure blue as the sun moves. Television and DVD's can't compare with this display. Sitting on the porch or even by an east window with the morning's coffee is the best way to begin a winter's day! Winter, with its list of things that can't be done, must be nature's way of telling us to slow down and notice. It is harder to work a long day this time of year. In July it is relatively easy for even an oldtimer like me to work a ten or twelve hour day on six hours of sleep. But as winter solstice approaches, I find myself needing a full eight hours sleep again.

By the way, this message and other observations and thoughts both farm related and not appear on the blog on our website. Go to "News" from the home page or just straight to PasturesAPlenty.blogspot to have a look. Comments encouraged. Take care of yourself and whomever else you can this Christmas!

Jim

2009-11-12T08:41:00.000-08:00

Now the weather has dried up a little in November and we are able to get some of our work done before freeze up, we hope. We took the small field of soybeans last week and found about ten percent dark and discolored which the buyers won't like very well but we are happy to get as far as we did. The corn still stands on the stalk and is showing blue green mold on many of the ears. We will try to get it harvested before Christmas and hope the mold doesn't interfere with the feeding value.

All of which goes to show, I guess, that farming is not industry. Farmers have far less control than the owners of factories and are often needing to change plans part way through. Our farm is diverse, and we have options. If we cannot harvest the corn with combine harvestors, we will figure out a way to send out the hogs! They know how.

2009-10-25T14:20:00.000-07:00

After the heavy rains in late September, October has developed into a trying month. We have not had more that two rain free days the entire month even though the amounts of rain have generally been moderate. Like other farmers, we cannot harvest our fall crops, but in addition to that, we must cope with mud everywhere in trying to keep animals comfortable and productive. We have also much work around the yard and facilties to finish before freezeup and that proceeds slowly. Much of it involves digging; we must dig up a cattle drinker to fix the underground valve, we have two shorts in the underground electric cables that must be found so that we can keep the water frost free this winter. We have a gas line to trench in so that we can keep the pigs warm.

And any animal that lives mostly outdoors in putting up with the weather right now. We are nearly half through our inventory of bedding and the ground hasn't even frozen yet. It will be an expensive month. I don't usually look forward to winter, but when the ground freezes I will be able to walk outside again and that won't be all bad! We are hanging in there. It keeps us out of the saloons, as they say. At least we have work. Boy do we have work. But some don't and that's worse.

2009-10-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

We have received six inches of rain here at Pastures A Plenty in the two weeks starting on the 24th of September. The amazing thing is that we don't have any water standing anywhere except for wheel ruts around the livestock lots and barns. Now we have run a bit short of rainfall for the last several years, but to have no ponding is remarkable. I remember large rainfalls in the eighties that resulted in ponding that froze over in December, the ice lasting til the next spring. This is due to the difference in our farming, I am convinced. Pastures hold and store water better than any other agricultural use, and the soil, even in the cropping areas, is much higher in organic matter and waterholding capacity due to our long rotations including grass and hay.

Flood control starts not with levees, but with farming done right. The condition of the acres in the watershed is both the most important flood control and the hardest to accomplish, depending as it does upon the resolve of ordinary people to farm responsibly.

2009-09-14T10:24:00.001-07:00

"Don't contaminate your grill with anything less than a Pastures A Plenty brat!" This comment was overheard at the Slow Food Minnesota event at the Callister farm in SE Minnesota last Sunday, the 13th. It is bragging, I suppose, to mention it on the website, but we are extraordinarily proud of this brat and the hot dog, (both of them "No added Nitrite") because the spice recipe used to make them was devised by us, namely Josh and Cindy, who then found the additive free sausage base mix to use in the process. All this was done in response to a customer who noticed something on the label she did not like the looks of. The entire process took not more than three months. No one in the meat industry responds this fast! But we did. Try the brat!
Jim

2009-09-10T12:03:00.000-07:00

Health care reform is, of course, critical to us farmers. We must buy individual policies at well above the group rate, or we must sponsor our own doctor visits and hospitalizations at rates fifty percent higher than are charged to insurance companies.

Most farmers, and I would be one of these, do not think much of insurance anyway, because we pay far too much of our incomes out in insurance to cover vehicles, crops, livestock, farm liability, fire, wind and on and on. This most often without seeing any payout. That is why this "reform" effort puzzles me. Without government involvement in paying for health care, we are left with the promises of a bunch of insurance and drug companies that they will not jack up prices too much, they will not kick us off when we are sick, they will not disallow payment for necessary care and so forth. Government supposedly will regulate this. Regulation didn't work very well on Wall Street, did it?

I don't think government will be able to decently regulate anything until we the people develop some pride in aspects of our character that don't have to do with accumulation of wealth and power. Then we can encourage and honor honest behavior in jour public servants and thus encourage a job well done.

Jim

2009-09-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

Most notable about the Time article on cheap food is the statement about needing more people on farms. Has anyone ever heard before that more people are needed in any form of productive work in this economy? Such language is against the faith for the economists running our government and corporate systems. For them there is no place for people except as consumers, which is an animal something like a feedlot steer. Bottomless appetite.

Jim

August News

2009-08-26T18:43:00.000-07:00

News from the Farm at Pastures A' Plenty

We are coming to the end of summer again which brings us to several welcome events. Fairs, of course, have been important to farmers for generations, coming as they do at the time when the battle against weeds is ending again for the season and the hopes for crops and livestock are about to bear fruit. Thus the Pastures children/grandchildren will be showing the farm's hogs at the Chippewa County fair in Montevideo on August 12th through the 15th. And then we look forward to the Minnesota Cooks event at the Minnesota State Fair on September 1st from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon at Carousel Park. Our pork will be cooked for the crowd at one and the chef is our own J D Fratzke of the new Strip Club on the east side in St Paul. We are looking forward to tasting what he has for us. We will be sampling our products at the nearby tent in the morning and most of us will be there. Come and visit with us and celebrate the local food idea you helped create! And then remember our annual on the farm open house and customer appreciation September 26th this year. We will have more on that next time. Enjoy these days of the waning sun. Winter comes soon enough!
Jim
You may want to check out the August 31 issue of Time Magazine article
"The Real Cost of Cheap Food." LeeAnn

News from the Red Tail Valley

Dear customers,
Bursts of rain, rain and more rain was the story for this weekend. We received about 2 1/4" over the past three days, about five times the previous total from mid May. This morning I stayed home to take advantage of the cooler temperatures to do some of my farm work and the humidity that accompanies the rain had me sweating little puddles into my boots by 9:30. Mind you I'm not complaining! Three days ago I wasn't sure what the cows would have to eat next week and I can now see a grazing strategy into late November.

It's time for some steaks on the grill and we're well stocked. Remember, grass fed meat cooks more quickly and at lower temperatures than corn fed beef. The interstitial fat insulates the protein in conventional meat requiring higher temperatures and longer cooking times. On the grill, that means move those steaks further away from the heat source and watch them carefully! Also, defrost thoroughly and take the steaks out of the refrigerator for awhile before grilling so they cook evenly.

I tried some burgers on the grill with our new ground beef and pork mix and they were great. Since the ground pork tends to be a little softer I brushed the hot grill with a little oil before I put them on.

Stew meat is great on a skewer on the grill. Or, order some of our regular round steak and cut it into strips or chunks. (If you're grilling for a crowd, a chuck or an arm roast works well for this too.) These cuts brim with flavor but they will be tough unless tenderized in the cooking process. Marinating with any citrus acid helps. One of my favorites is equal parts orange juice, soy sauce, and olive oil with chopped garlic and ginger. Flavored vinegars are also effective and can really enhance the flavor of the beef

Have a great August! Let's hope the rains keep coming and the rough weather stays away.

See you soon!
Terry