Rats

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

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

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

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

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

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.

"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.