Anti trust

 Interesting isn't it, how for most of a century anti trust law goes unenforced, basically tearing apart diversified agriculture in the farm country and dispossessing God only knows how many farm families until there are only four huge conglomerates, mostly not American, supplying all our meats and no diversified farms left, but the Supreme Court and the entire regulatory presence of the government can finally rouse themselves to action when it is a college kid wanting to play a kid's game who thinks he ought to get more than room, board and tuition free for doing so.

Hard snow

I stood for long periods listening, alert to what I might perceive under the snow, trying in vain to hear the tiny lives there getting about their business and resolving to learn more about their world in whatever time I have left on the land.  And I listened too, between the clang of the first Payloader scoop of frozen sugar beets to hit the bottom of the semi trailer three miles to the northwest and the sound of another Payloader revving as it hit the silage pile at the ten thousand cow dairy factory just two miles north and it seemed to me that we have missed the point and have gone on a long tangent and that if we are ever to belong here, to become native to this place, we have to begin to get quiet enough to think we hear the wind in the eight foot prairie grass, the sound our grandfathers heard in this place.

The solutions to our lives in this place will only come in the quiet and humility of a man, any man, or woman willing to stand and try to hear the sounds of life among the clatter of industry.  They cannot be theorized, or imposed from above, or bought and paid for.

1988

 Anyone of a certain age is beginning to see the similarities between this year and the drought year of 1988.

rain

 

Seven tenths inch in the gauge as I write this on Thursday, May 27.  The rain started in the night and is predicted to continue for the day today and into the night.  It will start those seeds lying in dry soil, soak up some of the surface dryness and help the soil into a better condition for the next hot dry wind we seem to be getting so much of this year.

The last of the spring's calves are being born, most recently in the rain this morning, so a little bedding will need to be spread for their comfort.  A little extra work, but they are hardy healthy little buggers and will be just fine.  When I checked this morning, several were playing, running full tilt from one end of the pasture to the other, tails in the air like flags.  They have very good tree protection and will be fine.  We are grateful for the rain.

drifts

 Again yesterday we were faced with the bad effects of tillage here on the prairie.  The winds blew strongly out of the southeast and then southwest as they have nearly every day for the last month.  The air was gloomy and gritty with blowing dirt.  Few fields have enough growing plants to stop this-only hay fields and pastures.  Driving home in the evening from the CRP acreage I am developing as pasture I could see soil blowing off the fields belonging to the same farmer who provided the soil drifts along our fence and far into our hay field in February.  Check the post from Feb 26.

Andy told me that he had waded through soil as deep as his bootlaces there.  So have I.  And it is not just one of us farmers.  It is all of us.  With our hay fields and pastures we have about half our acres protected from this, but the half we put to annual crops is exposed.  We in agriculture have not devised a solution to this tillage problem other than a massive annual chemical dump to facilitate no-till(and all too often, tillage farming as well).  This is a dire situation ranking right up there with growing inequality.  Blowing soil is climate deterioration made real.  It is not just about polar bears.

The Universities have been little help here.  And the Silicon Valley hotshots think the solution to everything is to create fake meat from-you guessed it-these same annual crops.

We pray for rain to save the production year.  Then, of course, the wind erosion will pause for a bit and water erosion can take center stage.  We need real change!

Flags

Dandelions serve as yellow warning flags in the spring pasture.  Where they are especially plentiful and thick the sward has been recently abused.  Dandelions are opportunists, shedding many seeds and colonizing every bare spot.  These may be around watering places where animals spend enough time to wear the sod thin or out.  But if they are spread somewhat across a paddock overgrazing is indicated.  This can happen when animals are left too long before being moved, thus constantly grazing too short, or it can be, as is nearly always the case with me, that I have come back too soon.  Adequate rest is a most important principle and often the cause of a poor stand.  Tilling and reseeding will not help.  The only cure is the changing of the farmer's mind, leading to more careful following of a grazing plan.

Anticipation

 There is on a farm like ours a sense of waiting, of anticipation in the spring.  We wait for the soil to warm and dry, for the grass to start to boom, the annual plants to begin to sprout.  Gardens are partially planted, seed ordered, machines prepared, the farrowing house ready for the spring litters.  Chickens begin to roam the yard in search of whatever tastes good in an egg.  As the temperatures jack up and down and all things hold their breath and hope for the new season, we occupy ourselves with making the animals more comfortable, bringing them out of their winter confinement and toward the sun.  We begin to haul the winter pile of manure to the crop ground that needs it, preparing it for the seed.

The cattle sense the time better than we.  They begin to hate their hay, instead gazing wistfully across the fence to the grass in the next paddock over, which begins to intensify in greenness as it readies itself for the coming spring growth surge.  Soon there will be not enough hours in the day for us to do the work.