rules

News lately is of controversy around raw milk and then too we have notified many of you of the coming USDA rulemaking for pathogen testing at small meats plants. It is important to us that everyone interested in our business, including certainly any who are customers or who might become customers know that our intention here at Pastures A Plenty is to continue to do everything we can to comply with regulations. We operate under license from and are inspected by the State of Minnesota at considerable cost to us. In addition, of course, our processor operates under the state "equal-to-USDA" licensing and will continue to do so. We are inspected by the Midwest Food Alliance for wholesomeness and humane treatment in our animal production, and meet Niman Ranch's standards along those lines as well. These licenses and certifications are important to us and will be kept up.

If you would like to make a comment to USDA about the proposed new pathogen testing requirements e-mail to: DraftValidationGuideComments@fsis.usda.gov. For a copy of the document proposing the extra testing, call the Small Plants help desk at (202)418-8820. The basic argument is that extra testing is unnecessary for small plants, as they do not slaughter and process 24/7 (ours slaughters once a week for a half day), and that it is a special hardship because the cost can be spread over a much lower volume of products than is the case with the mainstream meat industry. You need to respond by June 19th. Thanks!

spring

The food safety bill making its way through Congress is a conflict for those of us who try to foster more direct contact between farmers and customers and more responsible farming. We know better than most how very slipshod and untrustworthy our current food safety regimens are, and can hardly help favoring a general tightening. But the way in which these things are usually carried out by Congress and the USDA is a major concern. We smaller farmers and processors are generally the target because we are easier to push around and do not generally hire lawyers. So one size fits all regulations and practices, such as irradiation of meats and other foods are apt to bear heavily on smaller businesses, while actually benefitting the conventional industry. Our concern, in the meats area, is that inspectors in major meat plants do not have the power to shut the production down if they see something they don't like. We can assure you that if our inspector in our small plant sees something amiss, she will stop it and we will hear about it.

Has anyone connected with government food regulation ever asked if smaller plants and independent farmers regularly sicken their customers with dirty products? And isn't that the question we should be starting with?

methane

The Massey coal mine in West Virginia that claimed the lives of 25 plus miners yesterday belches so much methane that even the broken government agency in charge of mine safety thought it should be inspected every five days. It will be interesting to see what gets done about this loss of life by the government and by the people of West Virginia who seem to be pretty much of the opinion that government is the problem. Perhaps it is when it only fines Massey a few hundred thousand for many violations this past year alone. But whose fault is that? Would we have a better government if we invested some effort in demanding it?

This level of methane release by "clean coal" puts grazing cows in the shade, I think.

Jim

spring

It is a curious thing. I keep expecting it to change each year as I grow older. But each year, as the snow melts and the frost leaves the earth, the old feeling is back. It is the welling up of a fierce kind of joy. I need less sleep. I must be out walking on the land and waiting for the next thing. It is as if I want to throw myself into the great awakening that surrounds me and push it forward. There are the seeds to buy or to clean and ready for planting. Each year there is something new to plant and hope for. The machines must be readied. The cattle lean longingly on the lot fence and gaze at the first faint blushes of green over the slopes. Piles of manure must be hauled out and spread for the benefit of the plantings. Ahead stretch long days getting the year started which will then blend into the heat and dust of haying as the sun reaches its zenith and seems to hang there for weeks, holding its breath while we race to catch up.

How is it that I was born so lucky?

spring

I could smell the wet cedar boards as I stepped out on the deck this morning to check the weather. Temp stayed above freezing last night and the entire world smelled like it was warming up. Two geese honked their way across the southern sky and everywhere I look I can see standing water. Nearly half of our pasture acres are covered as well as a goodly number of the cropping acres. The drainage is full and the river towns are worried. Most of the water visible from our house will leave as the water level goes down in the drainage, but the last of it will linger and soak in among the roots of the pasture sward. Staying for a while, it will find cracks and crevices plus earthworm holes and gopher tunnels to help make its way into the subsoil, where it will do the farm some good in the hot months to come as it becomes available to accelerate growth of the perennials that feed our cattle and sows each grazing season. The same water our farming system has kept out of homes in the towns down river will help us and our farm to prosper.

It is not often in life that one can do an unconflicted good. I am not much of a believer in the idea of win-win. But these days, as I stand on our slice of wet prairie sponge watching the water that is taking its time with leaving, I get a chance to feel good about something. That is something to savor.

Jim

snowshoe

It is possible to get a little claustrophobic in a winter like this. The yard on which we do our work has gotten smaller with every snowfall this winter, since we can never push the new snow quite as far back as before. I put on the snowshoes this Saturday afternoon and took a walk to the north through the pig pastures, across last year's hay field to the township road on the north, ostensibly to see whether we had a chance of getting manure out through that approach this early spring, but really for the chance to be out and about.

The snow on the prairie is drifted this winter so that it looks like a white ocean frozen in time. We don't get this very often; I can only remember three winters out of my 62 years where the snow stayed out on the land all winter, and that would be this year, last year and ten years ago. Generally the wind has it immediately stacked up in the groves and tree lines. I sank in a bit walking through the grove, flushing up a group of pheasant which have been staying close to the yard despite the dogs. We have taken to deliberately spilling a little feed regularly to feed them for wild birds have a very tough time with all this snow cover. On the prairie, the snow immediately bore me up and as I looked behind I could sometimes not make out tracks of the snowshoe frames for my own shoes carried me on the hard drifts.

No tracks out there to speak of. The mice and gophers are underneath which would make it tough for the coyotes if it were not for the carcasses of wild things scattered about plus a few pig and calf casulaties. I didn't see one coyote track in my half mile walk, but I will bet there is a well worn trail between the cattail slough and our dead animal compost pile. Coyotes are opportunists. I saw one mink track making it from the growe at an angle toward the drainage ditch, where it probably has a den in the bank. I wondered what it was finding on the yard.

No rabbits either, once I cleared the grove. The air was cold and clear, making the lungs feel young again and very efficient. I walked toward home at an angle so that I came onto the yard on the opposite end from where I began. I walked along a ten year old tree line which we have been trying to expand by starting two more similar lines next to. These winters have been hard on the little trees, bending them over during the spring melt and stripping some of the branches down under the weight. The banks next to the trees offered me a chance to look down about ten or fifteen feet to the tops of the adjacent fence posts which are about five feet tall.

Spring feels a long way off here at Pastures A Plenty on the 27th of February. And when the melt does start, the fear is that the Minnesota will flood. We are kind of hoping for a slow thaw for that reason.

eagle

I saw another bald eagle today. This is unusual, as we have occasionally seen them for a day or two in spring and thought that they are on their way back to the Minnesota River valley for the season, but this is the third of February, a dazzling bright day with the snow reflecting the sun's full power in all directions. Wild things seem to know a tractor is different from a man on foot, for when I got back from feeding cattle and saw the eagle sitting near the top of the cottonwood tree I drove next to, it simply looked down at me watchfully. But when I stopped the machine and got off a few hundred feet further along, it decided I was too close and took off. I watched it fly, those huge wings in a lazy easy motion as it made the thousand feet to the electric transmission line we have on the south side of the farm and perched atop a pole and looked back at me. Somehow, these majestic raptors have made a comeback here in western Minnesota and they are welcome here. And this is a sign of progress, that they are no longer being poisoned by agricultural chemicals.