pastures

 The good health of the group of feeding pigs we put to pasture in mid April is little short of astounding.  Much of pig disease is respiratory, which we knew of course since we have a history of producing pigs in pasture.  Therefore, pretty generally the pigs do better if they live in the sunshine and fresh air.  Any kind of confinement, even the loose hoop house production we use can have its issues.  The hoop houses are better than all alternatives but pasture, and necessary when pigs need to be supplied twelve months per year.

Now there are problems of course.  But they are all logistics issues.  Pigs need shelter, so we put a large hut out there, to which we can add several smaller ones as the pigs grow.  They need extra shade, which is provided by pulling a hay rack out there.  Self feeders must have lids that can be fastened down tight, because some of our rains come complete with high winds.  We installed several taps into the cattle watering system that runs through the entire pasture so that water can be automatic.

Currently we are transporting feed to the pastures using some of the four wheel drive equipment we have on hand anyway.  In future we will need to provide approach roads from various angles to assure that we can usually get the feed truck out there which will simplify matters considerably.

It is a pleasure to see our system work better since we decided to take half a loaf, so to speak, and use the pastures when weather permits.  There is a sense in which we have bent our operations to quit fighting nature, and doing that on the farm wherever and whenever possible always makes the operation go better.  Nature can be a stern taskmaster, but also a good and dependable friend.  We need to keep learning that! 

Pigs on pasture

 Andrew decided this year to try again to use the pastures in the hog production, even though we need production all year around and it is too cold for pigs in pasture in winter this far north.  The thinking is that several of the six groups of piglets farrowed each year could be fed in pasture, thus freeing up the usual feeding areas for a significant period to allow the level of disease microbes to decrease and thus making health easier to maintain year around. 

We moved them to pasture in the paddock where the cattle had been fed in winter about mid April.  In the three weeks since moving out, the pigs have dug into the feed supplied and really begun to shine with health.  As of now, they are confined to their shelter plus a generous area of the grass with electrified poultry wire.  This is more to keep predators out which we fear might be a problem when the pigs are small.  In a few more weeks, we will construct a single wire giving them several acres to run in.  Pigs grow fast.  We hope for the coyotes to stay away from somewhat larger pigs.  They always did with the sows.

We do our pig feeding in shelters with a large quantity of straw for them to play in.  It is a good system, the best we can devise for year around use.  But nothing beats pasture when it can be available.  I get a lift every day from watching them play.  We hope this summertime practice works out.

years ago

How things have changed in the sixty years since I left this farm for college! Our former American middle class is on its way out.  A few predator types at the top of the economy have decided to corner all of the world's wealth.  Every one else is on a slow slide to the bottom.  So much so that my farm organization, Farmers Union, decided to feature a former ranch kid who told and sang about his issues with bipolar disorder, especially the extreme depression part of it, at the National Convention.  He has had a real struggle with trying to stabilize himself to the point he could live a decent life.  It was a heartfelt and wonderful session.  It touched me.  Part of the reason though, was that I thought that his fight against depression individually applied as well to the generalized depression we Americans fight on a daily basis.

He ended with some of Roger Miller's long ago hit: "King of the Road".  I thought 40 years ago that this was just a fun and bouncy hit song.  This time it was different.  I heard the pain under the bouncy lyrics:"  . . .trailers for sale or rent. . .rooms to let, fifty cents. . .I smoke old stogies I have found, short and not too big around, I'm a man of means, by no means King of the Road. . .third box car midnight train. . ."

But this won't do.  People living like this need a hand up.  And that means someone to give them that hand.  That means us.  We must take back what has been taken from us, so that we can.  We must live now as if helping and looking out for others is the most important thing we do, because it is. 

Farming

 It is not easy to be happy about agriculture today.  For my neighbors, their soybean market has been given away by rancid domestic politics.  They await something of a gift from the government, something they really do not want, but can hardly turn down, given the circumstance.  Farm debt is up.  Fuel prices are skyrocketing due to Israel's and our war against Iran.  Fertilizer prices will soon head for the moon due to shipping difficulties in the Strait of Hormuz.  

Our state has been attacked by the authoritarians.  Minneapolis fought hard and valiantly against ICE, trying to protect terrified inhabitants using no weapons, but the damage caused there, as well as in the rural areas will cost the state millions over the coming years.

Last year like 2024 was very wet for the first part of the summer, and then dry.  In 2024 we lost our corn crop, most of the year"s pig feed, that had to be replaced out of the checkbook.  This year we lost the winter rye feed grain crop.  Much of the farm was flooded for much of the summer.  The fence chargers would not hold the cattle.

 And the worst result of all this is that it has become a battle to maintain a sense of caring for the community.  This we cannot do without.  This we must have.  We cannot let government be the cause of estrangement between us and our neighbors.

 Our truck will once again make its regular deliveries.  We will continue to work on our "farm to school" project.  We will continue sales from our farm shop and to rural outlets we have worked to put together.  We will continue.  Despair is not an option.

We know that many others are affected as are we.  We know it is going to be difficult for some to pay the slightly higher cost of some of our products.  We understand this and hold no grievance about it.

Farmers understand that there are times when it is critical to keep moving and to try to make things come out even against tall odds.  Farmers often face an uphill battle, with weather and bad markets.  But farms, especially livestock farms, teach that quitting is not an option.  The sun will rise tomorrow and the animals will need feed and our care and attention.

The best way, maybe the only way, through a disaster is to keep going, keep putting one foot ahead of the other.  

We appreciate all of you, our customers.  If you must back away for a time we understand that.  Know that you will always be welcomed back.

Take care

Our best to you:      Jim, LeeAnn, Josh and Cindy and all our families. 

ICE

 We are keenly aware that our customers are a wide variety of people representing a wide variety of thinking.  We expect no one to take a side in the current troubles in Minneapolis as a precondition of accessing our meats. But we do think that there is room for everyone to regret and try to ease the pain of those who are affected by government actions against the Twin Cities and indeed Minnesota as a whole.  Our rural area has been impacted as well.  As a farm and company we will continue to deliver as best we can, including by driving our truck into the Twin Cities as scheduled.  We neither expect nor seek trouble. We simply want to honor the commitments we have made.

It is our fervent hope that the current stress and suffering be over for all our friends and neighbors.  Take care, all of you.  As will we here at Pastures A Plenty. 

glacier

 This year we find out again about the wonders of livestock work on the glacier like ice mother nature has provided us.  We have had since the first snowfall the regular alternation of snow fall and freezing days and thawing days that rapidly turns snow cover into ice.

And how to do the chores?  Add on spikes, of course!  Staying in the house, as the weather man cautions, is not an option.  Avoiding a spell in the hospital in traction from a fall becomes very desirable.  The animals need attention and immediately, or very soon, that need becomes job one.

You see, when you take on livestock farming, if you have the older understanding of the farmer's role, you have assumed a calling.  It is not dissimilar to having a child.  When you do this, in either example, some things become non optional.  Like a child that needs the care it needs, no matter what, the livestock make that kind of demand.  You have made a deal with the world or with your understanding of it.  The use of the livestock for food to sustain our lives requires an absolute adherence to the care and feeding of that livestock. There should be nothing careless or offhanded about that.

This understanding is older.  And it is one of the things that modern farming with its illusions that animals are merely some kind of machine for our use and satisfaction has left in the past.

Like so many of the things we have left in the past, there is a cost.  Carelessness in this will cost us too much of our humanity.  Eating carefully assumes that we take responsibility for careful husbandry of the lives we mean to take for food. 

Fall

 Here in western Minnesota, we are at that time when digging in the earth is going to need to stop for several months simply because the earth will be too hard.  There are a host of other things set to happen, all of which signal the end of the something, and also the beginning of something else.  There is no other season like it on the farm in terms of the imperative of getting some things done and the reality of needing the accept the human limits we all live with.  

Many of the things I have thought would be done by now are not and will not be.  I will live in next year country in some important ways.  But it is critical to remember that this is illusion, that our crackerjack communication system regularly confronts us with impossibility, from the celebrity who can change his/her circumstance in life with what seems a mere wave of the hand, to cyberspace superhumans who can accomplish wonders by just thinking about them.

Those of us willingly(and sometimes not so willingly) stuck in reality know that there are things to be seen to, and that if we ourselves do not take it up it is we who will suffer the lack.  Are the potatoes dug up and stored?  Is the house ready for winter?  Are the winter livestock quarters usable?  Will the water freeze?  Is the soil properly covered and protected for the winter?

In reality though, it is all of us who suffer the lack of quality living, as our common life deteriorates and our government falls apart.  Our wise ones have tried to tell us these things for generations.

In the Great Digest Confucius says, in a fragment of a longer thought:  ". . .wanting good government in their states, they first established order in their own families, wanting order in the home they first disciplined themselves. . ."

As the chaos grows around us we need to continue to pay strict attention to getting the critical things done that we can do.  The order we so badly need in our government today grows from the order we focus on establishing in our own lives, beginning with ourselves.  Work carefully!  Be well.  Enjoy your Thanksgiving!