hope

The woman's voice on the radio as we drove home from Niagara yesterday belonged to a professor at Texas Tech, a climate scientist who works in communicating about climate.  She asserted that we need two things:  One, the scientific knowledge about the climate and the changes that threaten us, and two, some basis for rational hope.

She mentioned regenerative agriculture as one bright spot in view of its ability to, as she put it, sequester carbon.  There is no reason to doubt she is right.  But what nagged at me as I listened, was the thought that some of the climate specialists, those few who would actually talk to farmers, would not carry on a conversation, that is, that they would not ask, listen, and be guided by a serious farmer's thoughts on the matter, guided by his many years of working with and observing a particular piece of land.

It is just this approach that makes farmers so hard to talk to.  And this is important.  We are in desperate need of whatever perspective we can access on climate and we should start by assuming that all answers do not come from the top, or from the lab.  Some answers are available only from people with their hands in the dirt. 

cattle

Snow is crunchy now on top with currently nothing new falling.  The cows are fed in their cramped quarters,the newborn calves are doing OK.  The newly weaned calves have a deep bed of cornstalks on which to spend the night, and the youngstock is standing in mud and snow two feet to thirty inches deep in the livestock lot we determinedly moved out of just a week ago.  There they have water and my promise they will move back out to their hay bales tomorrow morning.  Perhaps tonight we can sleep.

blizzard

The predicted blizzard has landed with results that are predictable.  While the hogs do pretty well on their straw beds, the cattle, which live in the pasture have had their routines disrupted.  The cows, just starting calving, are crowded together in a half hoop usually used for sows on hastily provided stalk bedding.  They are crowded not by us, but because they are reluctant to go out and face the wind. 

The two calves already born are so far alright, and at last check, no more have arrived.  We hold our breath, hoping for the end of the wind and snow, predicted for sometime Friday morning.  Life, meanwhile, is as difficult for us as for the cows.  This is the second year in a row that blizzards have interrupted the start of calving season.  Last year we had no losses.  We have trouble believing that will be the case again.  Again we talk of holding the bulls away for two or three more weeks, getting calving into May instead.  And again we come up against the knowledge that by doing so we risk putting late calves into the midst of the fly season, seemingly worse every year with heat and humidity in June already.  

The choice to produce the cattle in a more natural way, in synch with the seasons, has consequences.  Especially is this so when Nature herself seems unbalanced and reeling like a drunk on the sidewalk.

But clearer thinking shows that whatever Nature is suffering, the drunk on the sidewalk is none other than us, all of us, with our thoughtless careless use and misuse over generations now of what God has given us.  For a farmer who sees clearly that what we have been doing is wrong, there really is no other choice than to go toward and with Nature.  And to comfort ourselves with the thought that Nature has deeper pockets and deeper and truer aims than any of us.  And that however calving turns out, Nature has a great capacity to regenerate and heal.  It is up to us to do our best to stay out of the way, and to learn to the extent possible, to move and farm in synchrony with Nature   

light

The light this morning at dawn is golden as honey poured from a jar, almost looking substantial enough to touch.  Looking through it to the south west where the blizzard approaches, we watched it change rapidly against the dark blue of the sky as dawn moves into morning.  A beautiful warning bell.

Predicted is somewhere between 15 and 20 inches of snow over the next 36 hours along with high winds and temps just above freezing.  The hogs are pretty well situated to ride it out on their straw beds in the hoops or in farrowing, where the closest to farrowing are.  We have one sow area to clean and rebed yet today.  The market herd of cattle is set up with enough hay for a week or a bit more on a somewhat wind protected hill.  They will be tough it out.  But we have the calving cows-two have dropped calves so far-here on the southeast side of the yard and trees.  We will have to move them back to the nearest paddock giving them access to the lane that runs the length of the south side of the yard.  The winds will blow mostly from the ENE according to the NOA website, so the cows will want to move toward the west end of the lane and thus up into the livestock area.  We will have to provide for them there.  Perhaps we can allow them access to the one half hoop we have cleaned and empty for extra wind protection.

The calves are a concern.  And when the air pressure changes, it tends to bring on birth in close up livestock animals  We will be patrolling all hours for the next day and a half.   

soil

Here is David Montgomery writing in his "Dirt, the Erosion of Civilizations" in 2007.  He says it well:

"The philosophical basis of the new agriculture lies in treating the soil as a locally adapted biological system rather than a chemical system.  Yet agroecology is not simply a return to old labor intensive ways of farming.  It is just as scientific as the latest genetically modified technologies-but based on biology and ecology rather than chemistry and genetics.  Rooted in the complex interactions between soil, water, plants, animals and microbes, agroecology depends more on understanding local conditions and context than on using standardized products or techniques.  It requires farming guided by locally adapted knowledge-farming with brains rather than by habit or convenience.

Agroecology doesn't mean simply going organic.  Even forgoing pesticides, California's newly industrialized organic factory farms are not necessarily conserving soil.  When demand for organic produce began to skyrocket in the 1990's industrial farms began planting monocultural stands of lettuce that retained the flaws of conventional agriculture-just without the pesticides."

There it is!  The argument for people on the land we have been looking for and from the words of an observant geologist.