losing

I had hoped that one good result of Lyndon Johnson's losing the south for the Democrats for at least a generation, to put it in his own terms, would be that the stranglehold the south held over farm policy would let up.  The disappearance of the "Dixiecrats" and the lessening political influence of the huge rice and cotton farming empires (think plantations) they represented should have allowed enough room for the building of a farm policy that would benefit ordinary rural citizens more by bolstering rural communities and keeping farm ownership as spread across the population as feasible.  It hasn't happened.

Instead, the southernization of our American politics seems to have beaten electoral change to the punch and we now have northern "Democrats" such as my congressman, who see to it that most of the dollars flow to the hugest few farms by means of crop insurance payments and that even the smaller stream that comes directly from the government is restricted only by declared income.  One must have one million dollars in declared income before any restriction is placed upon receipt of government help.  It is difficult for me to imagine, given our Swiss cheese of a tax structure, anyone crafty enough to amass a huge farming empire being stupid enough to declare one million dollars in income to the IRS. 

There have always been alternatives.  A very simple one would have been to support the first few bushels or bales of whatever the dominant crop is and nothing after that.  That simple approach would have gotten the government out of the business of building huge crop empires, it would have kept the wealth somewhat spread out, and it would result in land priced reasonably enough that a young person who is not a member of a farming empire family could think about buying or renting enough land to give farming a try.  That is manifestly not what we did and we ought to ask ourselves and our political representatives why we did not.  That question is the beginning of a political education.

waiting

The Willmar airport reports 28 degrees this morning at six again.  Yesterday the same.  I am hopeful that will be enough to take the danger out of the alfalfa and simplify the job of grazing.  We have them on the hay fields now, taking the last crop directly and have needed to be pretty restrictive to keep them from bloat.  Between that and the regrowth of the rape/turnip in the cover crop experiment, plus soon the cornstalks we hope to keep from having to feed much hay until December 1.  Winter hay is an expensive proposition and success with cattle like the rest of farming, has much to do with what you don't spend. 

gratitude

We got a Facebook notice several days ago from a woman we occasionally work with on soil projects.  She was thanking all of us who do whatever we can to keep living plants on our land, and keep the soil covered by means of farming practices we have had the nerve to try.   This was in view of the high winds stirring up the tilled soil and making the air dirty and hard to breathe. 

This is the first time ever that I can recall being thanked for our farming practices as regards the soil.  We do occasionally hear, usually from a customer, their appreciation of our livestock practices.  Thank you Robin, and thanks for noticing.  We are, after all, all in this together.

freeze

It is getting late for our first hard freeze of the season and I guess that is a good thing for our late planted corn.  However, it makes late season grazing more difficult.  We graze our hay fields in lieu of a final machine cutting.  Because the sward is something over fifty percent alfalfa and clovers, and because those two plants get quite dangerous for bloat whenever there is a nip frost in the fall, we are reduced to cutting the grazing ahead and letting it lay and cure for most of a day before turning the cattle in.  We don't cut too far ahead of course, for fear of heavy rain on the swath making it unpalatable.  It is a nuisance to get the machinery out there every fourth or fifth  day.  But then so is hay feeding, or dead cattle, if it comes to that. 

Next month we will go back to the complex cover crop to graze the rape/turnip and ryegrass one final time.  The sorghum sudan in that planting will be standing straw by then, as it is an African crop and will not tolerate even a light frost.  We hope to be able to set the fences to take advantage of the corn stalks and thus extend the grazing season well into December.  We will evidently need more acres in a grazing practice to go much later than that.

Meanwhile, of course, we mainly work getting the place ready to winter livestock.  I look forward to the first snow covering and the peaceful restful time it implies.  That feeling will hold for a few hours until we have to get out there and push the stuff around.

 

Autumn

Besides being the most beautiful time of year here in the Upper Midwest, September and October is a time for "drawing in", for harvest in its largest sense, for getting ready for the winter to come.  After a lifetime spent farming, it takes a particular and intense effort for me to realize that most people no longer live with these necessities, realities that have always, with a few years off at University, driven my life.  It is tempting to use this as a starting point for a lengthy argument about how much healthier would be our body politic and common life together if more of us faced this kind of necessity.  I won't do that though, out of respect for the fact that many of us do face tremendous odds in living a good life, odds that would keep many in bed in the morning.  These challenges are significant, even if not seasonal. 

Here at Pastures, we work every day this fall at getting fences up around newly poured concrete in the sow area.  We have moved from a single group of mother sows to three groups in the last several years to accommodate our customers' desires for pork on a regular basis.  This requires more complex housing and feeding arrangements as well as provisions to make breeding easier and we are just now nearing completion on the needed building.  Everything is further complicated by the fact that we wish to maintain the gestating sows on pasture to the extent possible.  In that vein, we will be in a position this winter due to the new layout and a good supply of high quality hay to continue the access to forage for the sow herd through the winter.  In addition, there are gardens to harvest, of course, machinery to ready and use in the fall season, the other buildings to repair and maintain.  We will, it is hoped, get to some improvement in the pasture water points for the cattle next year.

It is critical to our well being that we take notice of the low sun angle, and the beautiful light that creates, of the turning and falling leaves, the briskness in the morning breeze and the shortening days.  We will not pass this way again.

Jim  

radish

Today we use the old drills to attempt to interseed tillage radish with the regrowing sorghum sudan and rape.  It is part of a project to measure the effect of the plant on soil compaction.  But my interest is also in learning to start another crop in the late growth or residue of the current one as an attempt to minimize tillage and open soil. 

The cattle came off the sorghum sudan three days ago.  The hope is that the regrowth is subdued enough to allow new seed to start.  This depends upon the timing of first frost and regular rains.

bottles

The bottle had on it a wrap at the top that was made to look something like bottled beer fifty years ago, except that it was made of plastic rather than foil.  The plastic balked the cap from coming unscrewed.  Extremely tough plastic.  You know what I mean.  Parts come this way now and by the time you get the thing unwrapped you are left only hoping that the part is as tough and unbreakable as the wrapper.  It needed to come off at the point of a scissors.  Once the cap was off, the next problem, in the form of a seal with finger loop that was too small to allow the point of my finger.  Back to the silverware drawer!  So two seals protecting cooking oil.  Folks, this is simple paranoia.  We are nuts.

Meanwhile, of course, no one seems interested in examining or thinking about the contents of the bottle.  This was canola oil, so it was made by Monsanto.  There is no such thing as gmo free canola. Monsanto has pushed it out of existence.  So the top of the bottle has been made safe against some nitwit with a hypodermic needle, while the contents are a brew made from a plant containing foreign genetic material to let it tolerate glysophate herbicide.   I notice also that sweet corn being grown for the canneries is gmo: the fields have the same unreal unearthly look as the fields of field corn.  We have given up sweet corn for that reason, or only eat what we can grow ourselves.  The oil is harder to justify, except to say that we are making progress against fifty years of conditioning on our way back to lard and butter as cooking oils.  Olive oil is good, but long distance.  We will get there.  It took us most of a decade to get the margarine propaganda out of our heads.

Jim