early snow

 Seven inches of snow in mid October is unusual.  So is the week long cold spell that keeps it with us.  Most farms here are just started with corn harvest, while most of the sugar beet and soybean harvest is done.  And our farm, as a small organic operation finds it difficult to own a combine and so must wait until those that own the machines are done with their own harvest.  Consequently all our corn and soybeans are standing in snow at this point.  Then, of course all the conventional grain must be cleaned out of the combine and trucks to make sure we meet organic standards before we start.  

The corn we will be able to get sooner or later, the soybeans are a bit more iffy.  This is the new world of climate change.

Corn stalks or stover are important for us since we depend upon a great deal of bedding materials for our hog business which operates entirely on bedding.  Our carryover from last year is gone.  So it is a race now between improving weather allowing us to harvest the corn and bale up the stalks and the need to buy bedding.

The cattle part of the operation is still grazing pastures, though the amount of feed there is reduced by this last rotation.  We keep them moving, feeding some hay in the pastures and then expecting them to root through the snow to find the available grass.  They look good.  The hogs too are happy and healthy. And efforts are being made to expand the chicken population here since the eggs from chickens that are allowed to roam are popular and sell well.  These are things to be very happy about since the livestock are the core of our farm. 

contact

 We have lost contact with the soil and that is the fundamental reason for our deteriorating world.  We started a few centuries ago with digging sticks.  Simple tools, the hoe and shovel and spade were devised from this start.

At some point we figured out how to use animal power.  The first "plow" behind an ox was essentially a large digging stick. Then iron was formed into plowshares and other cultivating tools which were drawn behind teams of animals, the farmer walking behind or in front of the creatures.  Gradually seeders and cultivators and hay mowers were devised, all drawn behind teams of animals and former human tasks began to be mechanized.  

Eventually someone put seats on many of these machines and farmers no longer walked as much.  The bond between soil and the human foot was stretched.  

Early tractors began to replace the animal teams.  Instead of feeling the soil underfoot the farmer felt mechanical vibrations up his spine as he rode the machine.  Additionally the noise of the machines separated him from hearing the wild things that had always surrounded him.  And the machines were now fed from the petroleum industry and not the farm.

From here for a while the machines changed by getting bigger and more powerful.  And now we have guidance systems.  Tillage marks in the fields are now in straighter lines than any human eye and hand on the steering wheel can accomplish.  

The next step, already underway, is to take the farmer out of the picture entirely, to make him obsolete.

And there are several principles here that we should study.  One is that the move in agriculture toward mechanization is in essence a move from the female toward the male. Women operated the digging sticks.  Few women have yet figured out how to make themselves obsolete.

Another is that the art has gone out of farming while the science of plants and animals has concentrated in the laboratories, which devise solutions that are administered through the corporate structure that rules us.