The farm's central yard and barns looks like a bale site. The 67 soybean straw bales and 279 cornstalk bales, finished just now with being hauled in from the fields, joined with the 300 plus hay bales from our work all summer to make things look like a hay sale. But there is no sale here, but merely the collecting up of some of the farm's residue and produce temporarily. The hay bales will support the cattle through the winter as they get eaten on the pastures, while the bean straw and cornstalk bales will bed the hogs for the year, after which these and the manure they have soaked up will return to the crop fields to boost and enhance the soil enabling next year's yields.
It is our attempt to follow the cycle: growth, harvest, decay, then regeneration forming the basis once again for growth. Farming is right only when it attempts to honor this natural cycle. Absent that it becomes just one more extractive industry.
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