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.