generations

 It is a rare blessing indeed to be able to work across the generations.  Over twenty five years ago, our son and daughter-in-law and their three children joined us on the farm.  We saw the need of a marketing arm for our products to collect more of the income we were being denied in the conventional markets, so we started a meat sales company, which today markets our pork, beef and eggs.  Our farming children were intimately involved with this new venture, and in fact provided much of the drive for it.  

As that generation saw the opportunity in marketing, one of their children, my grandson, has demonstrated a real interest in helping the farm succeed on its own merits.  His brother and sister are deeply involved in agriculture too, one on the supply side and the other with quality control in meats processing for one of our processors.

This is important to me.  I see around me numerous examples of people my age whose only possibility of continuing connection with farming is in renting their land out, driving someone's truck at harvest, and watching the changes in agriculture, most of which do not benefit them.  I am grateful not to be one of that number.

This year, as I built the road mentioned earlier that I thought we needed, I could pretty easily keep up with what was going on with the combining, corn stalk baling and tillage.  The machines are familiar from my farming, so is the routine.  The startling part is my not being first hand involved with it.

We can aim our children where we think they ought to go.  But at a certain age, we need to let go, stand back and hope for the best.  Hard to do but so necessary.  

If I can pass on one piece of advice to the younger ones, it would be to take the past, what you remember, what has been told to you, what has been passed down as tradition, or "how we always did it" with a goodly grain of salt.  Things are changing fast.  Change is beginning to look like an avalanche.  If you are to survive, you will need to be light on your feet.

Remember that much of the change coming is the result of what farming in the past has done and what it has not done.  It is yours not to resent the change, but not to wholeheartedly sign on either.  Your own judgment is going to need to be your closest friend and advisor. What the crowd is doing is apt to be short sighted and sometimes just wrong.  

You will need to do better than we have done in terms of caring for land, people and community and to do so in the midst of turmoil that only the very oldest among us has any experience with.    

Good luck!  You do the most important-and least recognized-work in the world. 

road

I built a road. A short one, not more than five hundred feet long, but still.  I built it with our old smallish skidloader and the loader tractor and did so while the younger ones here were carrying on their work as usual, work like getting machines ready for harvest, scheduling pigs into the farrowing, doing the sales work, controlling the meats inventory and so on.  I pushed the topsoil to the side, got in twenty or so semi truck loads of fill gravel mixed with clay hauled out from various building projects in town and shaped it into a roadway as it came.  I am not looking forward to getting the bill for the hauling, with diesel at five dollars a gallon.  It took some time to shape the road with the undersized equipment.

The reason for the project is that our farmstead, our houses, barns and hog buildings are situated on a small rise surrounded by low ground.  It is this low ground where we needed the road.  Every spring and fall we have trouble getting heavy loads of our hog bedding pack manure through from the buildings out to the crop ground which needs it.  We are then stuck with going around the road to the fields a mile and more extra travel and with the added risk of upsetting the neighbors when on the way home from work they hit a small pile of what may have fallen off our manure equipment on our way to the fields.

The loads are heavy and so many because we use bedding on the hogs. They are more comfortable that way.  The manure is better, composting and becoming less toxic to the all important soil life than the liquid slurries that are the alternative.  The difference of just a few days extra to haul in spring before planting and in the fall before winter are critical.  We do not want to spread manure on top of snow, as the melt will give it a free ride into the streams and rivers. This road gives us relief from needing to spread the manure just in summer, when the crops cover most of the acres.

And the need for the road is an important marker for the growth of understanding with the group of people that are our customers.  Increasingly they understand that farming is complex, that it takes a lot of management and planning to carry it out successfully, safely and humanely, and are willing to pay a good price for the resulting product.  They know, as we do, that quality can come at a good reasonable price, but not a cut rate one.  We are grateful for that understanding.

Short

 When you are desperately short of moisture-here it is extending to three years-last night's offering of three quarters of an inch of rain is a real blessing.

Important work

 Surely, I thought when I awoke this morning, there is something important going on in the world today.  Seemingly surrounded by the sound of revving truck engines and related racket, I soon figured out that the dairy factory just north was cutting and stacking silage and that my farm was fortunate enough to be on the route between the field and the pile.

One thing that my seventy five years mostly spent here has taught me is that progress on the farm must always somehow entail hauling bigger amounts in bigger containers around in bigger circles.  It quite generally also involves an increase in noise.  "Sound and fury"

wonder

 Meaning to check the fence just before quitting time yesterday, I walked through the passage way to the north side of the grove.  When I stepped out from the last line of trees I suddenly found myself surrounded by butterflies.  I stood for a time enthralled, while butterflies circled my head and shoulders, occasionally perching on my sleeve for a bit.  

They were Monarchs, every one.  I think they are beginning to clump together for their long lifetime journey to Mexico.  One day very soon they will be gone.

I noticed dragonflies out over the hay field, in the middle distance, seemingly circling the millions of butterflies.  Dragonflies are predators, apex predators.  But somehow, I doubt they were threatening the butterflies, which seemed pretty much to ignore them.  I suppose the butterflies to be more threatened by birds.

That scene all along the northern edge of our grove, which I planted years ago, and which is a full quarter mile in length lifted my heart.  When I planted those trees, my head was full of profit margins and straight corn rows.  I thought I was planting a windbreak for us and the livestock.  

But today I am trying to grow aware as I grow old and I see other uses for trees, butterflies, hay fields and dragonflies.  One can rejoice in being alive at seventy five!

season change

The first hint of fall here on the prairie came in early August when the heat let up for a bit and the nights got cooler.  I could just about feel the ending of fast growth and the turn toward maturity in the crops and also, of course, the weeds.

Our pastures went dormant in July this year, due again to the heat and lack of moisture.  Now, with the beginning of what we can hope are the fall rains-we have gotten three plus inches in the last two weeks here-hope is rising that we will have good grazing into the fall.

The temperatures are coming back up again which will help the corn mature.  But the lengthening nighttime hours that August brings should moderate this hottest of all summers. 

I am reminded of conversations I had with a grazier some years ago who was beginning to be discouraged by the way in which his cool season grasses too often hardened off in summer while his neighbor's corn maintained its lush green color through the heat. We can learn from this perhaps.  In a sense this is the difference between our cool season pasture grasses and the warm season annual corn.

We tell ourselves European stories.  And it is Americans who bred up corn, while it is Europeans that provided our pasture grasses, such as brome, orchardgrass, fescue and so forth.  The Americans in question are, of course, natives and that is why that particular agronomic history has never been developed.  We have always had extreme difficulty admitting that the native population knew anything, or could do anything useful.  If we will pay attention to American stories, we will find that the natives bred up corn centuries ago, particularly in Central and some of South America as well as the southwestern corner of the USA.  The European pasture grasses are out of context, while corn is in its ancestral home.

Grasses are warm season, such as corn, sudan grass, sorghum, big and little Bluestem and Indian grass, or they are cool season, such as orchard and brome, meaning they grow best in the cooler parts of the growing season. We have a continental climate here in the upper Midwest with extremes of heat in summer and cold in winter and that is why the pasture grasses harden off and become dormant in summer while the warm season grasses such as corn, are just hitting their stride.

Heat update

Today is the third day of challenging heat.  Tomorrow promises somewhat cooler temps and we will need to see what the humidity will be.  Yesterday was butcher day and Andrew needed to get the hogs to the butcher in Belgrade.  There are risks in moving hogs in this weather. Most livestock trailers do not cool as well as they should, and even if they do, any air moving is very hot, mid nineties yesterday.  Andy generally has a good supply of ice frozen for these kinds of situations.  The hogs will play with the ice chunks, which helps them to cool down around the head and neck.  We also wet them down as regularly as needed, both in their hoop living quarters and in the livestock trailer.  Hogs do not sweat and wet skin is helpful for them to survive extreme temps.  Andy moved the delivery into the morning.

The cattle were grazed out in the sun on Tuesday in the regular pastures.  On Wednesday, I held them on the yard in their lot and fed them hay.  I put a bale in late last night and spent two hours early this morning finishing the fence around the grazing in the hay field that Andy had topped the day before to reduce the risk of alfalfa bloat.  By eight o'clock I had the charge in the fence up to 2000 around the thirty acres.  Not really enough, I thought but it will have to do.  Due to the rain on Tuesday and the high humidity, the grass stays really wet, pulling the charge down in the fence.  

I let them out into the new grazing at about 8:30 this morning and they grazed out there, staying close to the shade available north of the farmstead grove.  When I checked them after the noon, they had found their way back to their customary trees to pass the heat of the day.  Things are going to be easier after that first trip out and back in!

We are due for some R and R now tomorrow.  We better not let the pile of work here bully us out of a bit of easy time after the three day emergency we have just farmed through!

Heat

 The heat predicted for some time lands on us starting today.  Temps of 95 plus are expected plus a rising humidity.  We have been busy with preparations.  Today we move the bales off the nearby hayfield and set up fence along the adjacent corn field.  The cattle will be able to shade up on the yard in the north pen under the shade of trees planted just twenty years ago, and then spend the evening, overnight and early morning grazing the stubble plus ten acres of poor stand we have left them.  This should last a week or a bit more, and we hope for a weather change by then. 

For the hogs, Andrew has been spreading fresh bedding in all the hoops.  When manure is stored under foot it composts, creating heat.  This is an attribute of hoop hog production.  To counter this, we must spread fresh bedding regularly so that the pigs are not lying in manure and soiled bedding, which is hot.  

Additionally, we are able several times a day to wet the concrete area where the feeders stand so that the animals can stay wet.  

Heat causes work here as surely as cold does in winter. 

Hay

 The leafhoppers were blowing in the west wind and hitting me in the shirt, neck and face as I walked back to the tractor and mower in the west hay field after the noon dinnertime.  I had started work this morning on cutting the nurse crop of oats, mustard and various other weeds off the new hay seeding.  We seed hay every year and also take a like amount out of the older hay stands to plant corn in the following year.  

Lately we have had trouble getting a good stand because of the dry conditions.  This spring I rigged the old grain drill to route the legume and grass seeds down into the openers rather than just scattering the seeds on the surface ahead of the drill and hoping for the best.  I was gratified to see, as the mower cleared a bit of each swath, that the new hay sprouts seemed satisfactorily thick.  We seem to have beaten the dry conditions, at least for this job this year. 

I like mowing.  I like it for the smells of new cut hay and then toward the end of the day, the smell of wet plants beginning to cure.  But most of all, I like it for the abundance of bird and insect life on display.  Soon after the first trip around the field, the swallows-barn swallows and tree swallows and purple martins-show up to work at harvesting the insects kicked up by the activity in the grass.  Swooping in graceful arcs, they no sooner swallow one insect and they are aiming for the next.  They will work at this all day. 

They are soon followed by the hawks and eagles, patrolling the cut over parts of the field, ever alert for the exposed mouse, mole or gopher.  This day I saw no mature bald eagles, but several juveniles, which lack the white head showed up.  The red tail hawks, formerly known as chicken hawks when farmers kept chickens on the yard, dominated the show.  Most of them were well fed by evening.

Butterflies were everywhere, sometimes the target of the swallows.  There were Monarchs and Viceroys and several dark and also white ones I do not have names for. 

 When I was taking a break from driving and walked a short distance from the idling tractor I heard and saw meadowlarks.  It was a pair, but these were Eastern Meadowlarks, not the Western version so common here when I grew up.  The Eastern is a beautiful bird and welcome, but its song cannot compare with the nine or ten note multi fluted call of the Western. Maps show the Eastern territory as far west as Wisconsin while the Western shows up throughout southern Minnesota and points west.

The call of the Western Meadowlark was the sound track of my youth here on the western Minnesota prairie.  I last heard it two years ago in our pastures, and if it is gone from us for good, I will miss it and mourn its passing.  And I hope my farming operations do not have anything to do with its leaving.

As I lifted the bar for the last time in the evening, and headed for home, I saw a turkey buzzard feasting on something in the middle of the field.  An unlovely but necessary bird.

The next day, walking out to inspect my work, I spotted the first dragonfly of the year.  We have arrived at midsummer. 

June

    June is crunch month.  Most farmers would say this. But it is particularly accurate about farms that are diverse.  And it is even more so when the diverse farm has gone to organic production. We have three livestock species on our farm, and use corn plus a hay seeding consisting of two or three grass species and four or five legumes.  Plus a new seeding of Kernza which management we are trying to learn as we go.  And then of course there are the weeds, too plentiful to count.  All of this diversity, we now know, is just what the soil needs to be healthy.

    Hay and corn conflict with each other. The corn, if planted in April which we hope for, may make it from six or eight inches on June 1st to four plus feet on June 30th, thus putting whatever weeds are in the crop out of reach of the cultivator because the corn is too tall to cultivate.  The hay, meanwhile, generally needs cutting in the first week of June and then raking and baling.  All of these operations on the corn and hay are best done in afternoons when the dew is gone.

    And yet, hay and corn are tightly linked with each other.  And especially is this so on an organic farm.  It is the hay with its legume component that builds nitrogen fertility into the soil.  Hay is going to be necessary to get the cattle through the winter.  Corn is pig and chicken feed.  The very best seed bed in which to plant the corn is tilled hay ground.  The generous root structure that has developed under that grass/alfalfa/clover combination not only offers the best chance at fixing atmospheric nitrogen into the soil, but the root decomposition the next spring at corn planting time offers a seed bed par excellence.  Nothing else comes close.  This hay ground tends to be a bit drier than other acres, thus allowing some of the corn planting to happen earlier.   

The fact that the hay crop has for several years prior been cut and baled several times each year means that annual weeds have mostly sprouted and been killed. The perennials, such as thistles, have had their root strength considerably diminished due to the frequent cutting. 

    Hay and corn go together.  The smart farmer is going to figure out how to get all that work done in one month.  Perhaps the best approach is to custom hire some of it.  Or maybe livestock work can be scheduled away from June as much as possible. For the diverse farmer, getting out of hay and corn production is not optional.  It is the very core of what makes a diverse and organic farm work.

mRNA vaccines

 I am seeing stories  that seem to identify mRNA vaccines as "gene therapy".  Does anyone know what this is about? To my mind there seems to be some distance between vaccination, which builds an immune response to a threat, and therapy, which would seem to apply some version of treatment toward the gene itself.  What is the story here?  Is this an attempt to sort the mRNA approach to vaccine development from the methods used formerly to cast doubt on the efficacy of the vaccine involved, or even ascribe nefarious motives to any who use messenger RNA in vaccine development? 

This is becoming an issue in our meats business.

Adjusting a pasture attitude

 I have always leaned toward a grazing practice based upon the idea of using animals to harvest what nature wants to grow on soil I pretty much take for granted.  Lately I am seeing some holes in the usefulness of  that attitude.

For one thing, the soil can never be taken for granted.  It must be cared for in use and that truth is as real for a farmer who harvests by grazing as it is for one who is reliant on tractors and tillage.  Cows in wet times can compact the soil.  Careless grazing opens too much of it to the wind and water.  Care with haying must be taken not to transport too many nutrients away.

Attitudes must exhibit some flexibility.

So now we have about 25 or 30 acres needing attention due either to our drainage installation in the wettest area of the pasture a year ago or our practice of winter feeding of hay on pasture.  There is too much bare soil out there and a certain amount of leftover hay mixed with manure in about six paddocks.  Plans are to reseed two of these pads to a hay and grazing mix of perennial forage plants and use the other four to grow a single season grazing crop which will finish early enough for us to reseed pastures then, hopefully without much in the way of tillage.  

Plans are to use Japanese Millet for hay or grazing in three of the four pads that will grow an annual crop with the other one planted to an oats/rape mixture which should be ready for grazing a bit sooner than the millet.

There is another damaged paddock of about four acres adjacent to these which we will leave to its own devices, to see if there really has been any benefit to all this running about with tractors and tools causing extra use of fuel.  I am cheering for the left alone paddock to prove to me that a pasture managed correctly can fix itself!    

old dog

 My dog Lily, or as I call her along with every other dog I have ever had, "dog", is getting old.  When I am tied up working in the shop, which is usually not my first choice, she comes with and chooses a comfortable place-not too far from the heater, and out of range of the sparks thrown by the acetylene torch, angle grinder and arc welder, and lies there watching me work.  Tomorrow she may bounce along with me as I walk the pastures and fields looking for first signs of spring life and figuring out how long until the soil will bear the weight of the cattle.  Today she     rests.  She chose a soft pile of floor sweepings to rest on today.

Sometimes she hurts and takes the day off.  So do I.  We understand each other.

She is master of appreciating the explosive flight of the started pheasant.  She cocks her head, better to listen to the increasingly rare sound of the meadowlark.  She pretends, on our walks, to dig up the pocket gophers which have been busy making tunnels.  Sometimes, when she thinks she knows where I am headed, she will lie down in the field and wait for my return.

She is not much of a stock dog, even though she is a shepherd by breeding (Aussie).   She tends to hold her ground as cattle approach to examine her until they are close and then she turns to run, through a gate if I have been dumb enough to leave it down, the whole herd following her.

I love shepherds for their perceptiveness-they know who they belong to-focus and loyalty.  It sobers me to realize that some shepherd dog someday is going to mope and mourn my disappearance from her life.

Lily is in the world and of the world in a way that I like other humans, have trouble  being.  She simply lives out the time allotted to her, fully present at all times.  She does not do art.

Humans do art. It is how we are comfortable in the world that confronts us. Farmers do art, especially diversified small ones.  In this idea I have no great group of fellow travelers for the art I do will never hang in a museum.  But I insist on it.  If no one else, I can count on my dog to agree, if not understand.

Today I mend two posts that the hogs have bent and rusted off.  Though years of experience, I have figured out how to do this spending a minimum of money and in a manner that will not cause someone soon to need to do it over again.  No course of study teaches this very necessary art.

This morning I studied seed catalogs choosing seeds to plant in the bare drowned out places in the pasture and also where the sward was torn up to install drainage a year ago.  I need to consider longevity. palatability, winter hardiness and cost.  In addition, I decided to plant permanent pasture in half of it only, seeding annual grazing in the other half.  This spreads the cost-perennial seeds are expensive-and may  make it possible to get around a difficult season if that is what we get.

When the season opens I will start grazing the herd and the decisions come daily:  How hard to graze, when to move, when to stock more heavily or destock, what the weather will do, can I get more acres to graze for late summer, how far into the fall can I graze and how do I make that happen.  These are decisions that are made daily and cannot be found in a book or from a consultant.  They are based on experience gained by observation, by hearing and smelling and then trying to put the big, impossible to fully understand picture together.  They must be based on judgement-what I know about this farm, and what I can  make happen. 

There are a multitude of similar choices that cropping entails too, but I have pretty much passed that part of the farming on to the next generation.  I hope they will learn too, and that farms are art forms.  They will not get any support in that idea.  I have not.

Part of this is due to the extreme prejudice in our country against anything small or made by work. 

 I wish them well.  They will need to learn from their dogs.

Winter

 Winter-I assume it is finally over now with tonight's temps to be down to 25 degrees-pushed on for most of April this year.  A warmup is projected from here. As the pile of hay shrinks the manure stacks up and composts in the hog houses.  Since we handle manure as a solid, and always mixed with bedding, it is much easier to store safely and minimize the nitrogen losses to the environment even in the case of a long spring.  But there gets to be a lot of it this time of year.  

There is always this aspect of a tightly wound clock in spring, where the manure stacks up, the buildings fill with feeding animals, the cattle get sick of hay and start lining up at the fence to watch the grass grow.  It will be a relief when we can open the gates, hook up the manure spreader and do our part to start the crop year.  This year we have cornstalks leftover from last fall that will need to be chopped and baled for bedding and moved off before we can plant as well. 

It has been hard on the wild things.  Pheasants lined both sides of the roads searching for the least bit to eat as the snow cover lasted for a full five months.  We traveled to the west border of the state for a celebration of music several weeks ago and must have seen close to a hundred deer, some of which were pretty skinny stripping the bark from whatever trees they could find. 

For our kind of diversified farm, it seems there is too much work when the snow finally retreats and the frost comes out of the soil.  Besides the livestock work there is the manure to haul and spread ahead of corn planting.  The planters and grain drills must be ready to use, though we are beginning to consider that spring small grains may not be the best choice for our low and somewhat wet farm.  We generally plant those crops too late-in May-because the soil is not ready to bear the weight of equipment in April.  

We are thinking a better choice may be winter grain crops such as rye, wheat or triticale which are planted in late summer or early fall.  This would necessitate a change in rotation but would open up a wonderful slot in mid to late summer for applying manure when the soils are best able to stand up under the heavy equipment.  Manure is not like fertilizer.  Soils can be fortified with manure and the good effects will carry on for several years.  There is no inherent need to spread manure right ahead of the planting.  

The cattle are necessary for this kind of farm operation because they can use a short season complex cover seeding done in May for grazing in July or hay in August, thus opening the field for manure and/or seed at a time of year where it seems that time is available to do it.

These are critical matters in trying to run a successful small farm.  A clay soil, when worked or even just driven over before it is sufficiently dry will form lumps pretty nearly rock hard when it dries.  Such an area is essentially out of service for the year until the freeze and thaw of winter can rescue the damage.  It is an expensive and discouraging loss.  If you are going to have a different kind of farm, be it organic or biodynamic or diversified, it seems to me necessary to farm differently.  This business of nothing but two full season crops just will not do.

There is very much to do and to decide this season.  For the next month or so we are going to be busier than we really want to be.  Yet it is exciting.  Even for an old guy, farming never fails to perk up the spirit.  Working hard to be in synch with the season just seems right!

Jim

Harassment

 Someone made the statement not long ago that we have passed the point of winter and that it is now harassment.   I was amused and sick enough of winter and so started to pass the thought around.  But today I realized that some of life really is being harassed.  This constant snow cover, looking as if it will now extend all the way to April is kind of a death warrant for some of the wildlife.  I woke to the fact that I have seen pheasants, for example, near the roads and right up to the buildings on our farm since January.  They are looking for seeds to eat and if their luck doesn't improve, they will soon die.  On our farm grain and feed spillage as well as stockpiled manure is a regular occurrence, so that might partly explain why I see so many.  

In demonstration of the thought that it is an ill wind that blows no one some good, I can say that we put seed out last fall that we are optimistic will succeed in sprouting a crop of Kernza.  And I have seen no sign of the soil drifts, often several inches deep on the snow that are usually evident.

Eagle

 The bald eagle was perched high in the cottonwood tree that towers over the dugout where the fill for the hoghouse was bladed out at the northwest corner of the grove.  He watched me, head turning slowly, as I came past with the tractor headed to the bale site where I would load up two bales to feed the cattle in the pasture as I did every day.

We have had a two week stopover from a pair of bald eagles each of the past ten years, usually in March, when the retreating snow cover reveals a number of carcasses of wild things and the occasional casualty from farm operations.  They seem to be on the way somewhere, possibly the river bottom some thirty miles south of here, though I have never seen them take off in that direction.  Their behavior while here reveals their essential nature as buzzards.  At least while I have observed, they do not hunt while there is something available that is already dead.  I can't say I even know what a hunting bald eagle looks like.  I am, on the other hand, surrounded by hunting red tail hawks all season long.

But this eagle was alone.  I did take the time to look for the mate.  I pushed in the clutch and sat for awhile, scanning the grove carefully for sign of another perching bird of prey, but came up empty.

I have taken to paying much more careful attention to any change I see in the wild things surrounding me.  These changes might include different species growing in the grove and odd ends of fields that generally get left alone.  I have brought to mind that I regularly seed fescue with pasture and hay mixes, an idea my Dad would have scoffed at, knowing as he did that it would not succeed this far north.  I have brought to my own notice the fact that I have fewer grassland birds and songbirds of any kind than he did. I have begun to assume that mostly because of our own behavior, we are in the midst of massive change-deterioration might be a better word-and we are not going to like where it brings us out.  One eagle where there have been two is an alarm bell.

I wonder what else has changed or is changing that I have not yet noticed.

It is an ironic truth that I and a few others are becoming more acutely aware of the world around us, our plant and animal companions on our farms, just as they are fading because of the threat our way of living has put them under.  

Perhaps I will see the eagle and his mate today.  If I do not, and if the mate continues in its absence, I will have to question why it has happened.  Obviously, animals die.  But just as obviously it is not always because of age.  If it is instead that change is making it impossible for them to live here, I will need to question myself, us all, and how we are living and farming.  We cannot succeed on earth by pushing other species out. 

movement

 The spring is moving in, today most visible in the appearance of meltwater under the thick snow pack we have.  It generally starts this way, with snow melting from the bottom up a bit ahead of the warmup from above which manifests in a compacting of the snow cover.  We find it easy to forget that the earth is warm at heart and that the conduction of heat from the earth's core has as much to do with spring as the warming air.  

There is a sense that the season told us we needed to bundle up and lay in supply in November and December so that we could sleep more and work less.  This is followed by the returning light and invitation in spring to stir and wake up, to get on with the joy and work of the farm.  It would be difficult, pretty much impossible, not to respond.  Impossible anyway for me!

late winter

The days have been lengthening steadily, slowly at first, coming away from December 21st, then accelerating into the summer.  By mid-February, a meteorologist proclaimed from the television yesterday, we have added a full hour of daylight. 

And it feels like it.  For us who have lived in a northern climate all our lives, we recognize that subtle awakening going on inside, the coming back of a bit of spring to the step, and the looking forward again to the changing earth and what it might bring to our notice.  We wake earlier and better refreshed at that.

Now I can go walking in the pastures and pause my wading through the snow to push a little of it aside to see the greening of the grass, the coming of the first little spears of new life.  This is ancient wisdom. this coming of life(spring) after death(winter).  It is in late winter I feel the most sympathy for the snowbirds, the ones that have gone south for the winter.  They have meddled with that all important seasonal clock and neglected the fact that much well being comes of changing with the seasons, making us acutely aware of the rebirth of the earth and all its wonders.

Soon as the snow melts back, there will be the return of the seasonal birds and the warming of the soil will cause it to send up that unique smell, only available to us when the earth is warming or we have disturbed the soil.  It is this time of year when the need to be at home on earth is most apparent to those of us who are place bound.

Really?

 I just listened to a news report, an in depth one, I guess, about California's heavy rains and flooding.  The in depth label comes from the story's attempt to get into what or anything would mitigate some of the damage.  It was all about drainage systems and flood control structures and water diversion projects.  None of it spoke to the truth that any attempt to deal with severe climate disruptions must always start with land use.  

When huge amounts of water are running off a surface it matters what the surface is.  Is it flat and somewhat impervious or more sponge like in consistency?  It matters very much how whatever water was in the system at the outset of the event existed in the land.  Was it very much tied up in soil particles?  Are there parts of the landscape that will always be wet and that have been deliberately not meddled with by capitalism?  Is the entire surface in the area tied up with economic production or are there a significant number of acres in a closer to natural state? 

We humans are not helpless unless we make ourselves so by failure to think and reluctance to act upon what we have thought.

adjust

 Success, or sometimes just survival on the farm requires an ability to adjust.  Especially is this true in times of large and frequent change, which is happening now largely because of the pandemic, the climate, and the war in Ukraine.  For example, prices of hog feeds have skyrocketed over the last several years, due to the drought we are experiencing and the upset in the grain markets caused by the war in Ukraine.

The same drought caused our pastures to slow down early and severely cut into our hay supply, necessary to get the herd through the winter.

We are using two strategies to cope.  With the hogs our markets are continuous and ongoing.  Therefore we cannot shrink the size of the hog operation to compensate for the expensive feed because below a certain level of production we risk losing the market.  So we focus upon moderating the cost of feed by leaner operations and by substitute feedstuffs.  For the last several years we have been using product from our local pretzel factory, which is free, organic and also pretty readily available.  This becomes available because at start up and shut down for the various production runs, the resulting product is not something the company wants to sell.

These are great hog feeds.  On a traditional farm, hogs are always fed feeds that are similar to those for us humans, but that for one reason or another, we do not want to eat.  But the labor and extra machine use required to deal with them is something we need to keep in mind.  Labor is always in short supply in a livestock operation and diesel fuel has also been much impacted by the war and the pandemic.  We cannot rest easy expecting to work extra hours and using extra fuel.

We will soon have to solve a problem that came with our solution to the current problem.

Now with the cattle, the situation is a bit different.  Our cattle are a grazing and forage based operation that uses no grain and moderate amounts of fuel(for baling and wintertime feeding).  Additionally we had spent the last several years building up the cattle numbers to run a small stocker development business alongside the grass feds.  This plus our decision a year or so ago to sell the cowherd and buy in replacement feeder animals instead enabled us to destock which is the first need in responding to a drought situation.

We have marketed the cows-I am currently trying to adjust myself to the fact they are gone-sold a group of fat cattle at the sale barn and brought another group of feeder animals to the feeder cattle and bred cow sale.  Cattle prices are good now, which is helpful to us in our need for destocking.

The second rule of a cattle business coping with a drought is to buy any needed hay early, which is what we are currently doing, as our cattle sales did not reduce the appetite here quite enough to get through without purchase.  And hay is expensive. 

Our marketing with the beef is a bit more flexible, as it is all frozen product.  Thus the cattle processing can be a bit more seasonal and tends to be easier to adjust.  We do not have the same weekly need for market animals we have with the pigs. The role of the cattle in the farm operation is to benefit from the need to grow hay in our organic cropping rotation and also to serve as a third crop opportunity as they can be used to harvest crops that are harder to sell but necessary in a good crop rotation, such as the small grains and various annual forages.

Implied in everything I have written here is the predominance of marketing in the operations.  The late Allan Nation said it well when he wrote that the marketing locomotive must pull the production train.  This can make coping with difficult weather and high input prices harder than it would otherwise be, but without marketing, farms do not succeed.