Albemarle Farmer

Rent Seeking

2010-08-25T15:14:00.000-04:00

The Louisiana Casket lawsuit is analogous to the ridiculous requirements for selling milk. A powerful lobby doesn't want to compete with the little guys.

The Institute for Justice writes:

Saint Joseph Abbey, et al. v. Castille, et al.
Challenging Louisiana's Casket Cartel

Can the government restrict economic liberty just to enrich a group of politically favored insiders?

That’s the question the Institute for Justice and its client, Saint Joseph Abbey of St. Benedict, La., have taken to federal court in challenging the constitutionality of Louisiana’s outrageous requirement that the monks of the Abbey must be licensed as funeral directors and convert their monastery into a licensed funeral home in order to sell their handmade wooden casket.

Under Louisiana law, it is a crime for anyone but a licensed funeral director to sell “funeral merchandise,” which includes caskets. To sell caskets legally, the monks would have to abandon their calling for one full year to apprentice at a licensed funeral home, learn unnecessary skills and take a funeral industry test. They would also have to convert their monastery into a “funeral establishment” by, among other things, installing equipment for embalming human remains.

On August 12, 2010, the Institute for Justice teamed up with the monks of Saint Joseph Abbey to file a federal constitutional lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana to vindicate their right to earn an honest living. In a time of 10 percent unemployment and widespread economic pessimism, this case raises one of today’s most important constitutional questions: May the government restrict economic liberty just to enrich a group of politically favored insiders such as licensed funeral directors?

One of the freedoms we enjoy as Americans is the right to earn an honest living in the occupation of our choice without arbitrary government interference. Louisiana’s casket licensing law violates that right.

Click this link for the original and a video.

I Am The Rainmaker

2010-06-13T20:35:00.003-04:00

If I even think of cutting hay, the storm clouds start to build.

I'm thinking of selling my services to drought stricken communities.

I Beg To Disagree (Though Perhaps I'm Biased)

2010-06-13T20:19:00.002-04:00

A recent article in the Washington Post has me scratching my head.

A staffer conducted a (albeit unscientific) taste test and writes that supermarket eggs were just as tasty as backyard chicken eggs.

I can definitely taste the difference and am so snobby with my eggs that I can no longer order eggs at a restaurant. Everyone who has had our eggs has raved about them. They only thing I can think to explain the results is that the author has penned chickens who eat only conventional feed. Once you let the chickens harvest grass and insects, the eggs get awesome. Several comments on the article make the same point.

I'm An Unapologetic Carnivore

2010-06-13T20:16:00.000-04:00

Lamb

2010-05-28T13:38:00.003-04:00

Pictures (and video) of our newest addition.

Box Turtles

2010-05-28T11:25:00.004-04:00

When we see turtles crossing the road, we always stop and help them across if we can do it safely.

Box turtles are pretty common locally and I see them all the time in the spring. I had noticed that I rarely saw young turtles and I ran into a herpatologist at a party who explained why.

Box turtles are in big trouble. They are very long lived (a century!), but few young are hatching. We haven't noticed the decline because the adults are still around, but as the older turtles die off, there will not be replacements. The culprits in this tragedy are possums and raccoons. As humans have altered the environment, we have favored animals that can piggyback on our settlements. Raccoons and possums like to dig up and eat clutches of turtle eggs. As the vermin population expands, fewer box turtle clutches are left undiscovered.

You can read more here and here.

The baby box turtle we found was a female. You can easily sex box turtles. Females have yellow eyes and males have red eyes.

Studio Farm

2010-05-28T10:20:00.002-04:00

We are now grazing a new farm. The landowners are committed to sustainable agriculture and the fencing and watering system they put in are amazing - this is a showplace of environmentally sound farming. Here are some pics.

The entrance and first long field. There are four existing fields that I will further subdivide over the next year.
Jack spreading manure patties.
A beautiful view.
Looking back towards the entrance at some happy cows. I don't have enough girls to eat down thirty acres of grass, so I'll probably end up cutting a large part of it - Studio Farm is between two of my haying fields so I'll swing by in transit.
Cows from left to right: Orange Juice Snow White (Charlais), Cleo (Smoke - first generation Angus/Charlais cross), Charlotte (Angus/Holstein cross), Princess Mel (3/4 Angus, 1/4 Charlais), and Connie (Ayrshire/Angus cross). You can see four calves in the background. Just to be clear, my kids are responsible for the naming process.

The fields are absolutely overrun with poison ivy. I will be adding a goat to the herd and she will start making a dent in the stuff. I won't bring Benji over - he has gotten quite arthritic in his old age. He did a great job at my place - the only poison ivy I have left is in the areas the goat doesn't graze.
With as much poison ivy as there is in this field, it will take a couple years to bring it under control no spraying and no animal pressure. You can also see that the grass is in pretty weak shape. I look forward to seeing the impact of rotational grazing on pasture biodiversity and plant density.
Heading toward the lower field. You can see the water line on the right side - there are hydrants at periodic intervals so that I can subdivide the fields and have water nearby.
The opening to the lower field. You can see one of the hydrants in front of Emilie and Jack.
View of the western field.
Emilie and Jack check out a wolf tree in the pasture. I wouldn't let them get any closer because the whole area underneath is a great mass of poison ivy. We have to wash our hands after petting the cows. The cows aren't bothered by the stuff, but the ivy juice will linger on their coats.
Frost free automatic waterer with pasture gates. The stone area is laid over a fabric base to prevent the area around the waterer from becoming a mud hole.
Leaving one of the waterer sites.

Another herd pic.

Harvard Cow

2010-05-28T10:05:00.000-04:00

I'm not the only loon who walks around with a cow.

When the Hollis Professorship was endowed at Harvard in 1721, one benefit of the position was the right to graze a cow on the college green. A retiring professor thought he should exercise his prerogative.

Article here.

If I had that chair, it wouldn't be a one-time stunt. I'd walk Bonnie to campus every morning and turn her loose while I taught.

Fishing With Ben

2010-05-27T14:28:00.000-04:00

One of our rented pastures has an awesome little bluegill pond just right for introducing kids to fishing. Here are some pics from Ben's first outing. In the first picture, Ben is holding my Uncle John's tacklebox that he used to carry when he took me fishing in farm ponds around Elkhorn, Wisconsin.

Here's a video of Ben reeling in a bluegill:

Hatched Eggs

2010-05-27T14:10:00.000-04:00

We have a bird family on the front porch. The kids eagerly checked the eggs everyday. Here is a picture from the day of the hatch.

Family Labor

2010-05-27T14:05:00.000-04:00

People often ask how we manage to keep up with everything on the farm.

Short answer: We don't always.

Better answer: With a little help from family. Dad does yeoman's work, especially when we are haying. Mom has been great at watching the kids when we are working outside.

Bonnie is Famous!

2010-05-27T14:00:00.001-04:00

She's in the Crozet Gazette:

Mark Tueting escorted his eight-year-old Ayrshire cow Bonnie at the head of the parade through the village of Batesville on Batesville Day May 1, marking the first time a cow has ever made a parade appearance—at least as far as anyone can remember.

Bonnie showed some reluctance to pass between the 400 to 500 people standing on either side of the road, but Tueting reassured her with strokes to her cheeks and with a strong stride kept up forward momentum. Tueting, who owns Sweet Season Farm south of Batesville, said that Bonnie likes to be rubbed under her chin and is now drying up after having raised three calves this spring.

Here's the picture accompanying the story:

Batesville Day

2010-05-27T13:48:00.001-04:00

We took part in the annual Batesville Day parade and set up a petting area for kids again this year (previous Batesville Day post here). Bonnie and I followed the kids' bicycle patrol at the head of the parade. Here are some pics:

Milk Monopsony Followup

2010-05-27T13:46:00.000-04:00

Dean Foods controls 70% of the milk market in the Northeast.

Spring Babies

2010-05-27T13:32:00.000-04:00

One benefit of farming organically is that we can coexist with the wildlife. While inspecting the grass in the side yard pasture, Emilie found a nest of baby rabbits.

Here is a video:

Grass, Glorious Grass

2010-05-27T13:26:00.000-04:00

Pictures from when the grass started exploding. Huzzah! I love the spring!

Raw Milk

2010-05-27T12:26:00.000-04:00

Virginia's requirement that milk be pasteurized prior to sale has little to do with health concerns. Two million people drink raw milk on a daily basis and we don't seem to have an epidemic of raw milk salmonella on our hands.

Raw milk bans may have made sense at the turn of the last century when Progressives, living in an era before refrigeration, tried to deal with the unsanitary conditions of urban dairies - sometimes cows were kept in tenement basements to serve the surrounding block of proletarians. These basements, in an era before flush toilets, were often unsanitary indeed. Milk could and did transmit nasty things like tuberculosis.

A grass-fed non-confinement operation that is regularly tested does not pose a health risk if the milk is properly handled.

So why the mania for pasteurization? Because the milk processors make a huge profit on the backs of dairy farmers. By blocking dairymen from selling directly to the consumer, the large processing corporations (who can afford to hire lobbyists in state legislatures) eliminate competition.

Classic rent-seeking behavior. Perverting Adam Smith's munificent invisible hand, rent-seekers look for profits by manipulating the system rather than producing quality products and winning the loyalty of customers in the competitive marketplace. One good way to manipulate the system is to use laws to create a coercive monopoly - government power blocks the entrance of competitors so you can keep prices high. Consumers suffer. Producers too - when farmers can't sell the products they produce, they become price takers rather than price makers. As the processing companies have gotten larger and their numbers have declined, the small number of purchasers creates a monopsony - in which they are able to drive down the prices who have to take lowball offers or nothing at all.

George Will explains how interior designers exploited the legislative process in a similar way here.

But consumers are starting to challenge the safety claims of milk processor lobbyists. The new breed of wholesome food enthusiasts is educated enough to make an impact.

From the Huffington Post:

...Massachusetts has long allowed sales from dairy farms, and delivery to consumers by any of a half dozen or more buying clubs.
Everything was working fine in Massachusetts -- more dairy farmers producing ever more raw milk and in the process creating a revival for the state's moribund dairy industry. No illnesses in over a decade.

The Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources seemed to be doing its job of supporting state agriculture by encouraging raw-milk-producing dairy farmers rather than harassing them, like the regulators do in New York state. Late last year, MDAR publicly supported a suburban Boston dairy farmer in his fight with state and local public health authorities and helped him gain approval to sell raw milk from his dairy.

But then something happened early this year to change MDAR's approach. The agency sent cease-and-desist letters to four buying clubs that had been quietly and efficiently delivering raw milk to consumers who didn't want to burn the gasoline or were unable because they don't have cars or even are disabled, to travel the hour or two hours to a dairy farm in central Massachusetts and pick up their milk. (Buying clubs are private businesses that deliver milk from raw dairies on a contractual basis for consumers.) The letters weren't well received by the owners of the buying clubs, and they began mobilizing support from their customers and legislators to challenge MDAR. They argued that Massachusetts laws and regulations don't specifically prohibit the buying clubs, making the cease-and-desist letters so much paper.

MDAR seems to have agreed, because two weeks ago, it proposed a new regulation to explicitly prohibit the buying clubs. The regulation would make Massachusetts the first state in the country to explicitly ban raw milk buying clubs.

In advance of a hearing May 10 on the proposed regulation, a Massachusetts legislator friendly with Soares set up a meeting on Monday for the regulator to discuss with a few consumers his reasons for going after the buying clubs.

Surprise -- 15 consumers and farmers showed up for the meeting, and started peppering the startled Soares with questions about why he was taking an action that will inevitably reduce consumers' access to raw milk, and quite possibly put at least a few of the more than twenty dairy farms selling raw milk out of business.

These 15 consumers weren't just a few people off the street. They included some prominent local citizens who know how the system works -- Boston employment lawyer Harvey Schwartz, Cambridge business owner Abby Rockefeller, and EPA whistleblower Hugh Kaufman. The latter has served as Chief Investigator with the Environmental Protection Agency's Ombudsman Office, among other high-level positions over a forty-year period.

Kaufman put Soares on the spot during the Monday meeting when Soares said at one point that there was as much passion from anti-raw-milk people as from pro-raw-milk people. Who were these anti-raw-milk people, Kaufman inquired.

"He said that large dairy producers had communicated to him," recalls Kaufman. "I asked him who they were. He said he couldn't tell me."

Read the whole article here.

Thin to Fat

2010-05-26T14:20:00.001-04:00

April:

May:

Sally objects to calling Bonnie fat. She is pregnant, Sally argues, so I should just cut her a break.

The Cows Move Out On Grass In April

2010-05-26T14:15:00.001-04:00

The girls were still getting hay when I took these pictures; the grass is just starting to green up. You don't want to turn cows used to dry hay out onto lush fields suddenly - you have to gradually introduce them to avoid digestive upset - what farmers bluntly call the "Jersey squirts."

You can see that Bonnie has gotten pretty thin raising three calves with no grain. I was going to let her keep making milk until summer, but Dad convinced me to wean them. She has since put on a fair amount of weight.

New Farm Dog

2010-05-26T13:15:00.000-04:00

We mourned the passing of Kermit. He was a great dog even if he never lived up to the rat terrier breed's reputation as an excellent farm dog choice. My family has had rat terriers going back to my grandfather Carl. Kermit was named after Teddy Roosevelt's son, not the frog. T.R. popularized these little working dogs and at one time they were the most common breed in the Midwest (growing prosperity after WW II led to a bourgeois trend towards attractive dogs over working dogs).

Another popular image of the rat terrier comes from the RCA advertising:

I had to take Ben to town for a birthday party and had to kill an hour with the other kids, so we stopped at the SPCA. I had no intention of adopting a new dog, but they had a rat terrier who was very gentle with the kids. So we have a new addition to the family: Laika.

She's not trained, but she is very good with the kids and does having the ratting instinct.

We named her after the rat terrier mutnik who opened the space race with Sputnik.

Easter on the Farm

2010-05-26T13:07:00.001-04:00

Spring is Here!

2010-05-26T11:44:00.000-04:00

Life is skittles and life is beer!

Advanced Placement exams and Standards of Learning tests are over at school so my work load has suddenly decreased. Watch this space for updates covering the last few months.

Local Slaughterhouse in the Washington Post

2010-03-17T15:20:00.000-04:00

I use Valley Meats, but T & E is another slaughterhouse in Harrisonburg that supports small farmers. Go check out the article in the Washington Post.

True Love

2010-01-06T10:57:00.000-05:00

Dick Kleis knows how to woo his wife.

Dick Kleis gave his wife Carole a birthday present for herself and their farm. Mr Kleis bought 120,000 pounds of manure for Carole Kleis’ birthday present. Mr Kleis used the manure to spell out a shorthand message to read “Happy Birthday, Love You”.

The Kleis live in eastern Iowa and their farm benefitted from the manure as it went down into the ground and mushed with the snow. Kleis took 3 hours to use his manure loader to drive over their field to spell out the greeting.

Carole Kleis is pleased with her husband’s gift. Dick’s birthday is in may and she is already thinking of ways she can out do him.

2010-01-01T17:21:00.000-05:00

The cows look like ships sailing over a white sea.

Winter Storm

2010-01-01T17:08:00.001-05:00

Emilie's Birthday

2009-11-30T15:43:00.000-05:00

Emilie took her friends out to meet her cows. My friend Dave took these pics.

Zach in the Leaves

2009-11-30T15:24:00.000-05:00

Halloween

2009-11-30T15:18:00.000-05:00

Ben is the cow, Jack is Peter Pan, and Emilie is a cat.

The kids love our next door neighbors Ruby and Calvin. We do too - they are great people. This was out first stop for the night before we rolled into town where the houses were close enough together for trick or treating. Bonus points to those who "get" my costume - most people were mystified, but three people laughed uproariously.

Carving Pumpkins

2009-11-30T15:14:00.001-05:00

Dad was never much for playing with kids when I was little - my mom loved it, but Dad was always very busy. He is making up for lost time with the grandkids. I had a rare day off from work and Dad and I took a break from working on farm machinery to help Emilie's class carve pumpkins. I'm glad he came - several kids did not have any adult show up and we ended up "adopting" several for the project. It was kind of fun to see Dad working so well with the wee ones.

Making Cider

2009-11-30T15:05:00.001-05:00

Friends of ours have an awesome cider press and we make an annual party out of turning a bushel or so of apples into cider.

Life is good. Life is indeed good.

Ben may have eaten a good chunk of the raw materials.

2009-11-28T02:09:00.001-05:00

Tasty home grown turkey. Mmmm.

2009-11-28T02:09:00.000-05:00

Turkeys

2009-11-25T19:00:00.000-05:00

We raised heritage bronze turkeys this year. We were pleased with them - they dressed out at 12 to 17 pounds and we sold out the 39 we raised to adulthood. The heritage breed was a better flier than last year's broad breasts. My saint of a wife had to go out every morning and catch miscreants who had flown over the electric poultry netting.

Jack was an excellent assistant at catching the turkeys to load them into the trailer.

Turkeys

2009-11-17T12:06:00.001-05:00

Edible Blue Ridge had an online teaser about free range turkeys. Unfortunately, they have our phone number wrong. Ah well.

I've got the turkeys moved for the last time into the side yard under the apple trees. They have done a good job cleaning up the weedy area where I'm going to plant a prizewinning pumpkin patch next year (Big Max not the washed out pale pink giants).

I'll post a few pics of the turkeys soon.

We have shifted processors for our poultry - Tom Silliman of Sweet Dog Farm is going to do our last batch after our usual processor left us in the lurch. He and his family have a small farm in Dyke Virginia and seem like good folks. I ended up spending two hours walking around with Tom when I dropped off the chickens. He's quite creative and has come up with chicken tractor modifications that were very interesting. Bonus: I was able to tell my wife that I'm not the only one who is continuously developing new chicken tractor versions.

Tom has a real MacGyver vibe going and I was very impressed with his version of the Wizbang poultry plucker.

On the subject of chicken tractors, I also need to do a post explaining why my PVC hoophouse is NOT the way to go. Not any time soon, mind you - the day job keeps me happily occupied most of the time. I'm hoping to do a lot of blogging and picture posting over the Christmas break.

In the meantime, you can check out Sweet Dog Farm's much more technologically savvy blog here.

Kathryn Russell

2009-10-28T15:23:00.000-04:00

The local farming community took a heavy blow last Thursday when Kathryn Russell was killed in a car accident at the intersection of Plank and 29.

Kathryn was a wonderful woman who left behind eight children. She was always ready to advise and help young farmers getting a start and gave me some great guidance towards becoming a marketer - the side of farming that I least enjoy. She and I had worked together several times and she was very kind when it came to selling my chickens and turkeys to her milk share customers.

I got to know her through the local eat local board when her barn burned down - I offered to house some of her cows through the winter. We were going to do that again this winter - I'm getting a thirty acre pasture this fall that my seven girls can't possibly eat down so we figured she would bring a few girls over - she'd get a couple months of free feed and I'd be able to graze down a sward that hasn't been touched since March. I was looking forward to it - when she'd stop by we end up leaning on her truck and talking about random stuff for an hour.

Hold a thought for her family or, if you are so inclined, offer a little prayer.

Cow Pics

2009-10-19T15:10:00.001-04:00

Apple Butter Day

2009-10-19T15:06:00.000-04:00

Weaning the Pigs

2009-09-22T16:51:00.000-04:00

After twelve weeks, it's time for the pigs to be on their own. I put my ball cap on one pig in order to show scale. Mom did a great job- they are healthy little beasts.

Piglets

2009-09-08T15:37:00.000-04:00

Bonnie's Calf

2009-08-20T14:21:00.000-04:00

Bonnie's Calf at two weeks.

Biodiversity: Rabbit Edition

2009-08-15T22:00:00.000-04:00

Emilie caught a wild rabbit in a side pasture. She named it Cloud, but the mean old parents told her she had to let it go back to its family. I'm a little shocked that she was able to catch it in the first place.

Emilie and Brownie Take Two

2009-08-15T21:55:00.000-04:00

Ben and Brownie

2009-08-15T21:48:00.000-04:00

Emilie and Brownie

2009-08-15T21:35:00.001-04:00

Emilie's work with the calf paid off in the show ring. I hovered around like a nervous parent but she just walked that 700 pound heifer around like it was no big deal.

Pregnant Bonnie

2009-08-15T21:32:00.000-04:00

Think the calf is ready to drop? The baby bulge has moved downwards. She calved the next day - a bouncing bull calf. I'll post a picture soon.

Albemarle County Fair

2009-08-15T21:07:00.000-04:00

Emilie and Jack did a great job at the 4-H tent at the Albemarle County fair. They helped kids pet the bottle calf, Emilie's heifer Brownie, and took turns manning the chick and duckling exhibit so that they could help other kids pet the wee poultry.

Ben loves Emilie's 4-H heifer too.

Grandpa Bill, Ben, Sally, wee Zach, Jack, and Grandma Mary waiting for the 4-H livestock show.

Emilie with her trophy for Brownie. All the cloverbuds (4-Hers under 8) got a trophy, but we'll credit it to Brownie's first place finish in the dairy heifer category. Of course, she was the only dairy heifer at the fair, so she was also last place.

Nervous butterflies before the show.

Ben lending moral support.

With Grandma and Grandpa before the show.

Piglet Rodeo

2009-08-15T20:57:00.000-04:00

I was so proud of my lightly constructed chicken tractor mark IV. Unfortunately, that lightness came at the cost of structural strength. The piglets discovered that they could break in and eat the chicken food. They didn't prey on the chickens, but it is only a matter of time before their predatory instincts kick in, so I finally broke down and closed all their escape hatches into the main pasture. They'll have to be content with the half acre they share with their mom.

So thus will be the last marauding piglets video. Brownie seems bemused by the porcine perambulators.

Mark II Chicken Tractor: The Eggmobile

2009-07-27T01:18:00.000-04:00

The hoops on this tractor are made of cattle panels. It is very sturdy and durable, but too heavy for anyone else in the family to move. I fell victim to the typical Tueting habit of: "If a 2 x 4 is good, than a 2 x 8 is even better!"

Hay Pictures

2009-07-27T01:15:00.000-04:00

Dad and I are making hay with my tiny old equipment this year. It is brutal work, but we are outside and can actually see a physical representation of what our labor has wrought.

Besides, how many guys can say they spend the summer working with their fathers?We filled the barn at the rental place, then our own barn, and then had to resort to making large piles and then covering them with tarps.
A second pile on the side of the barn. You can see the last pile to the right, now tarp covered.
Dad admiring the fruits of our labor.
Not only do I work him hard, I make him drink with the animals.

I'm a monster.
Bonnie won't give Dad a break: "I don't care if you are tired. These ears aren't going to scratch themselves."

More Mark IV Chicken Tractor

2009-07-27T01:10:00.000-04:00

Covered Bridge Art

2009-07-27T01:08:00.000-04:00

I think this picture is gorgeous. Of course, the farmer ought to fence his cows out of the water, but who am I to let that little quibble get in the way of aesthetic appreciation?

Bonnie: Internet Star

2009-07-27T00:54:00.000-04:00

While working on the fair poster, I was looking for an illustration of dairy breeds and stumbled across a very familiar picture.

Oregon State University is using a picture from this blog to illustrate multi-species sustainable grazing.

Here is the page.

Cool.

More Pig Vids

2009-07-27T00:49:00.000-04:00

Hay wagon piglets.

This video is sideways. I'm not technically proficient enough to turn it right side up.

Image Frenzy

2009-07-27T00:04:00.001-04:00

I'm creating a poster demonstrating dairy breeds for the Albemarle County Fair. Google image searching can be addictive - you never know what will turn up.

Who needs Grey's Anatomy?

Graze Anatomy is much better:

Image found at T-Shirt Rater.

The Cow Wall

2009-07-26T22:58:00.000-04:00

Here is a site with hundreds of cattle breed pictures.

Chicken Tractor Mark IV

2009-07-21T11:16:00.000-04:00

This is the fourth chicken tractor I've built and so far I'm pretty pleased. In the early spring, I'll use a clear plastic covering and have a greenhouse to start plants. When the chickens are ready to go out on pasture, I'll just put the shade cloth back on.

Piglets In Action

2009-07-21T11:14:00.000-04:00

Vickie Gresge and L'Etoile's Pig

2009-07-21T11:08:00.000-04:00

I finally got these rotated.

Patrons of L'Etoile know Vicki as the impeccably classy hostess. She may be a lady, but she knows how to hold a pig.

Cats

2009-07-19T11:38:00.001-04:00

I'm not a big fan of cats, but these are kind of cute.

Marauding Piglet Bands

2009-07-19T11:26:00.000-04:00

The piglets are now big enough to explore. They are still small enough to work their way through the pasture gates, so they end up in the front yard and all over the place. We haven't worried too much about it because we are several hundred feet from the road and we figure they won't go very far from mom. They seem to have made friends with the bottle calf and hang out with him during the day.

But occasionally they can get into trouble. Two worked their way under the chicken net and had to be rescued.

Click on the video to start it.

Pig Colors

2009-07-19T11:23:00.000-04:00

Over at Scientific Blogging.

Thanks to Walter Jeffries for the link. He runs a great pastured pig operation in Vermont.

Another Albemarle Farm

2009-07-19T10:21:00.000-04:00

Edenbrook Farm in Keswick, owned and operated by Vicky Velicky, runs a therapy service using Norwiegen Fjord horses, llamas, and goats. A brief perusal of their website leads me to believe that they're like us - farming for the shear joy of it.

The Glories of Google Image

2009-07-19T10:10:00.000-04:00

I was searching for a picture of Spotted Poland China pigs on Google Image and randomly came across this picture. Chicken tractors aren't just for chickens anymore. But I don't think this rabbit is going to be very happy for very long.

Image from Gledwood.

Elizabeth Wiegand

2009-07-19T08:15:00.000-04:00

Doing research for her next project, a book about Blue Ridge Locavorism, food writer/foodie Elizabeth Wiegand stopped by the farm for a tour. We were happy to host her and her husband. I'm always happy to walk people around the farm but really have to put a leash on myself.

I get a bit excited about what we do.

And I'm very aware that people who don't know me might think that I sound like a used car salesman. It's probably the reason I dislike the process of selling - I hate those insincere hucksters and worry that people won't believe that I really am that excited about moving chickens around as a way to improve the pasture.

So I try to stay mellow, but the exuberance leaks through. Keeping me low key is like Metternich putting the lid on the boiling cauldron of European nationalism.

Yeah, if I haven't mentioned it, I'm also a history teacher. Passion is good in the classroom - the kid's aren't bored and I'm not worried that they think I'm being a huckster: I'm not selling anything - just encouraging a good score on the Advanced Placement exam.

Mark, giving farm tours:

Mark in the classroom:

I had a great student who shared my philosophy and boiled it down to very simple terms:

"Embrace your inner goober!"

Elizabeth Wiegand's home page is here. She also writes a blog called "Carolina Foodie." We shared a laugh about how hard it was to keep blogs updated when you spend so much time away from the computer.

Farrowing

2009-07-19T00:09:00.000-04:00

Farrowing is the term for when a mother pig (a sow) gives birth. Our sow finally gave birth (of course) right as I was leaving for a conference in Williamsburg.
The pile to her left is a grass nest she made herself. It must have taken her forever to gather mouthfuls of plants from all over the pasture and then build up the mound. Below her is the afterbirth. The piglets are just minutes old.

Click on the video above to start it. The piglets may be doing that newborn stumble gait, but they know who Momma is.

The mud on her is not manure. Despite public perception, pigs are very fastidious about their waste. They only end up covered in their own waste when we force them to live in ridiculously small confines. A pig on pasture like our girl will make her own bathroom in a corner of the pasture (not the best for avoiding manure spreading labor, but kind of good because it is easy to get a few shovelfuls to put down groundhog holes). They will make a wallow so they can build up mud to use as a cooling mechanism and a natural type of suntan lotion. I prefer darker colored pigs because they don't sunburn - as you can see with the mother. Some of her piglets are pink, so here's hoping she teaches them the suntan lotion trick quickly. Most modern American pigs are pink Yorkshires - agribusiness isn't concerned about sunburns because their pigs never see daylight.

If you look at her piglets, you can see that our girl is a true mutt. She is colored like a Hampshire, but we can see she also has Poland China (Oklahoma University's pig doesn't show the spots I'm used to seeing on the Poland China. In Wisconsin we called them Spotted Poland China) and Duroc in her background. I've never seen pigs marked like one of the girls - brown with the Hampshire's characteristic white stripe down the middle and spots. Cool.

Here are the kids watching the babies from the safety of the far side of the fence. She's been a very calm pig, but she, as I discovered quickly when I went into the pasture to put a lethargic piglet closer to her, has a fiercely protective instinct.

A couple of farmers warned me not to let her farrow out on the pasture - they warned that mother pigs would crush and eat their own babies and wouldn't have a mothering instinct.

Well, considering how we normally raise them in agribusiness, no wonder. If you locked me in a crate like this, I'd go crazy too:

The sows (mother pigs) are penned in so all they can do it eat, drink, and nurse. The lamps are used to provide heat so that the babies don't get cold. Our sow taught her babies to regulate their temperatures by snuggling if too cold or burrowing into the tall grass if they were too warm.

Now, I was a bit nervous about letting her do her own thing - the books and those farmers ought to know their business, no? In fact, my dear wife was wondering whether we ought to at least bring them into the barn, as this video demonstrates (Click to start):

You can tell by my voice that I'm really trying to convince myself. She has ended up doing a great job with the little guys.

Sally re-emphasized the pig safety lesson. The kids know never to put any part of their body through the fence. The sow may seem nice, but she's an omnivore - Babe is not a documentary - and she will eat you if she can.

Life is good. A houseful of kids, a good woman, and baby piglets: color me happy.

I considered deleting the farrowing crate pictures. They are horrible. But I decided to go ahead to show the contrast between the reality of industrial farm pigs and pastured pigs. At least some animals have the bucolic life that we idealize (pastoral scene below from Brunet's Custom Signs)

Batesville Store

2009-07-19T00:03:00.001-04:00

Here are a couple of links for the Batesville Store. Throw some business to Cid and Liza.

A review at CVillain.

Yank in Dixie likes the store too:

Natalie Krovetz posted a pic on flickr:

Buddha Zach

2009-07-18T23:59:00.000-04:00

"I have found inner peace amongst the hens."

Meat Chicks

2009-07-18T23:52:00.000-04:00

The boys and I picking up the meat chicks at the post office. Batesville is a great little town to call home. You are seeing half of downtown. The other half of this building is the Batesville Store. We joke that Batesville is a one horse town - but the horse died.

Jack is a great helper with the meat chicks. He is really into the birds and has a nice gentle touch with them. Here he is unloading the day old chicks into the brooder, where they will stay for a couple of weeks.

Zach's Christening

2009-07-18T23:45:00.001-04:00

We Christened my youngest recently and had the church and our friends over for a pig roast. My buddy Rob flew in from Tokyo and my buddy Mike came in as well. We stayed up most of the night roasting the pig for Sunday afternoon.

Life is good. Old friends, a grill, and beer.

These are some pictures from the weekend.

Mark Gresge and His Pig

2009-07-18T23:42:00.000-04:00

As I noted before, we are raising a pig for L'Etoile restaurant. Mark Gresge, the owner/chef of Charlottesville's coolest eatery, stopped by with his lovely wife to see his girl. I have a few more pictures, but the in-laws' computer doesn't want to rotate them, so they'll have to wait for another day.

Moving the Layer Tractor

2009-07-18T23:38:00.000-04:00

Turkeys On Pasture

2009-07-18T23:36:00.001-04:00

Last November.

This year we didn't go with the Whites; enough customers expressed interest in the heritage bronzes that we decided to give them a try.

Dad On The Tractor

2009-07-18T23:21:00.000-04:00

When the guy I was making hay with a couple of years ago changed the deal after the hay was on the ground, I resolved not to just be the manual labor at the mercy of someone else's equipment. I farm with almost no capital, so I scrounged around and found a basic hay making set within my budget. The tractor is a 1972 Ford 2600 - only a year younger than me. Dad and I have been doing all the work ourselves and I am finally learning all those mechanical ideas that he tried to teach me when I was a kid. You can see my New Hollans Super 68 Hayliner in the barn behind Dad.

Here's a picture of Dad as we repaired the ancient sickle bar mower.I bought three of my four pieces of equipment from individuals. The only piece I bought from a dealer - the sickle bar - is the one that has had the most trouble. I think it is hard for an individual to look you in the eye and cheat you. But a dealer sees you as a sale and not as a person so it is probably easier to make the psychological adjustment necessary to giving someone the shaft. By the time we fixed all the bad welds and hidden problems, I could have bought a brand new piece of equipment - but I did learn a lot in the process. Call it the idiot tax or the acquired wisdom tax. I knew I had reached a breakthrough when it broke for the umpteenth time and instead of swearing, my first thought was, "Okay, how do I fix it?"

Progress.

Picture and Video Dumping

2009-07-18T23:19:00.000-04:00

I've been away from a decent internet connection, but am spending the night with the in-laws so thought I'd put up some images. There won't be much in the way of reflection or philosophy, but media will follow.

L'Etoile's Pig

2009-06-13T19:44:00.000-04:00

L'Etoile, the finest restaurant in Charlottesville, is going to have a pig party this winter. Mark Gresge, the owner and head chef, has asked us to raise a pastured pig for the occasion. Since my sow has yet to deliver her batch, time has been a'wastin' and finding piglets has been difficult this year. But I was able to buy two piglets yesterday. Here are some pics:

And video:

Of course, right after the video stops, the little bugger managed to nose his way under the fence and escape into the general pasture. We spent three long hours trying to find a way to keep him and his brother contained. Temporarily, they are in the barn, but I'm planning to redo the electric fence and lay board along the ground outside of it so that they won't have the ability to make a break for it again.

2009 Brochure

2009-06-12T09:55:00.001-04:00

The better-resolution powerpoint file is here.

The order form (excel) is here.

Family Pics

2009-06-10T15:38:00.000-04:00

Batesville Day

2009-06-10T15:03:00.000-04:00

Batesville is a one-horse town.

But the horse died.

Nonetheless, we are a fun little community and the local Ruritan group puts together neighborhood festivities throughout the year.

My favorite is the Batesville Day parade.

We may not have big name parade marshals but we do have the junior high school band, fire trucks, local businesses, protest groups, among others, who make up the motley parade participants. My kids' playgroup decorates bikes and waves their way down the parade route and then we put on a petting zoo for the local kids.
Two years ago, we had a hundred people watch Martha the sheep give birth to twins. I'll never top that, but now that I have a trailer, I brought Bonnie and Brownie down along with the usual lambs and chickens.

The last page of the June 2009 Crozet Gazette mentions Bonnie, but not by name.

My Wee Photographer

2009-06-10T14:53:00.001-04:00

Digital cameras are awesome inventions.

When I was a kid, my parents rarely let me take pictures - film was too expensive. The new digital cameras make the cost of picture taking zero - if a kid takes an odd picture, you don't have to print it and simply press delete. Emilie borrowed the camera and started taking pictures around the farm. I think some of them came out very well.

Cool Local Farm

2009-06-10T14:04:00.000-04:00

Working as an election volunteer, I met a neighbor who farms butterflies.

This is exactly the kind of creative thinking that will keep small farming alive in the future.

Go check out Linda Marchman's "Social Butterflies."

Here is a Washington Post article from a couple of years ago.

Call Me Fan Boy

2009-06-03T14:02:00.000-04:00

I love me my Gene Logsdon.

He has two good posts over on his blog.

Glorious Shit

and

Chore Time

Logsdon on the coming value of manure:

"I half-jokingly suggested about a year ago that animal manure— used livestock, horse, and chicken bedding— was going to be the hottest commodity on the Chicago Board of Trade. There are indications now that such a seemingly absurd prediction might not be so absurd after all. Last year the prices of some farm fertilizers shot up to over a thousand dollars a ton. Ammonium polyphosphate is still nearly that high. Deposits of potash in Canada, a main source of our potassium fertilizers, are declining. Natural gas, from which commercial nitrogen fertilizer is manufactured, is rising in cost as other uses compete for it. Long term, there are reasons to believe that the era of abundant manufactured fertilizers is passing...
It is however difficult to suppress a smile at the irony of the situation. For years shit has been seen as something so repugnant that the word itself was scrubbed from polite conversation...
Cheap, plentiful manufactured fertilizers and a seeming infinity of farmland allowed the United States over the last two centuries to become the champion wastrel of agriculture (and everything else). One can only imagine the famine and chaos that would result if we continued that kind of extravagance for forty centuries, even if we could. As sources of cheaper chemical fertilizers decline, manure will either once more become the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or population levels will dramatically decline."

From Chore Time:

"Many people are once again expressing interest in “going back to the land”, as we say rather euphemistically. (Why not forward to the land?) If you intend to keep animals you are making a commitment to a home-centered life. You have to take time for chore time. My sister, Jenny, says that to enjoy husbandry, one must have farmer genes. Not everyone does.
I have a hunch from my mail that many more people would enjoy husbandry however. On a soft early spring night, doing chores in the twilight, I throw hay down to the sheep and then sit up in the loft listening to them crunching away and making contented little snuffles of pleasure as they eat. Otherwise, all is quiet and utterly peaceful. I am aware that far away sirens are blaring, bombs are exploding, traffic is roaring, and people are screaming in fear and rage. I am so lucky, so happy to be where I am. I have to believe that millions of other people would also be happy to be where I am, if only they knew. If only they knew they could."

Bad News For Organic Dairymen

2009-06-02T12:43:00.000-04:00

I (not-so) secretly dream of having a grass-based dairy farm that sells directly to the consumer.

Unfortunately, the regulatory process makes it economically impossible to pasteurize and bottle milk for sale on a small-scale basis. These regulations don't make the consumer safer. They are simply barriers to entry to assure that the big milk processors don't have to face small competitors.

The New York Times has an article about the woes that organic dairymen are facing right now - many families are cutting back on organic milk purchases, so the processors are cutting producers - and the producers can't sell their milk directly.

Here in New England, where dairy farms are as much a part of the landscape as whitewashed churches and rocky beaches, organic dairy farmers are bearing the brunt of the nationwide slowdown, in part because of the cost of transporting feed from the Midwest. The contracts of 10 of Maine’s 65 organic dairies will not be renewed by HP Hood, one of the region’s three large processors. In Vermont, 32 dairy farms have closed since Dec. 1, significantly altering the face of New England’s dairy industry.
“We expect to lose a lot more farms this year,” said Roger Allbee, Vermont’s secretary of agriculture.
Hood and the two other big processors, Horizon Organic and Organic Valley, say cutting contracts, pay and production are necessary to absorb overproduction and offset softening demand.

Bold emphasis is mine. There are three processors that control all the organic milk produced in Vermont. The conventional system is similarly structured.

The current regulatory system leaves farmers utterly dependent on the big processing conglomerates (an oligopoly) - and the conglomerates know that they have disproportionate power. They use that power to squeeze the little guys.

I don't mind regulations that protect the consumer. Require that farmers wishing to bottle their own milk have sterile pasteurization and bottling facilities. Have random testing of their products. Safe processing facilities could be built for 20-30 thousand dollars. But when you start adding things like a separate bathroom and office for the milk inspector, the costs reach into the hundreds of thousands.

De-regulate. Sanely - we don't need and shouldn't want the wild, wild west. But we should allow the competitive nature of the market to thrive.

Backyard Chickens At The Washington Post

2009-05-14T14:59:00.000-04:00

Backyard chickens Rock!

The Washington Post has two introductions to the idea:

Audiovisual presentation here.

Article here.

An older, more local take is here at Edible Blue Ridge.
Spread the word!

UPDATE:

Northern Virginia laws about chickens can be found here.

It's heartening to know that chickens are permitted, but the standard "100 foot from a dwelling" is devastating in practice when you consider the size of suburban lots.

Watching a Girl's Weight

2009-05-13T14:59:00.000-04:00

No, this isn't about the dieting travails of Kirstie Alley.

It's about my girl Bonnie. You can see her on the blog masthead.

Most animal mothers balance their own nutritional needs with the production of milk for their babies. If the mother does not get enough nutrition, she'll cut back on the milk production so that she doesn't starve to death.

Modern milk cows have been bred to MILK. Many Holsteins cannot take in enough forage to support their milk production and must be fed high-protein grain mixes. Even then, they will "milk off their backs" - utilize their own fat reserves to make more milk than their diet can provide. This is also called "will to milk."

In buying an Ayrshire, I was hoping to get away from the high-production "will to milk" genetics. The selection pressures of modern dairying have been narrowly focused on Holsteins, and to some extent on Jerseys.

Nonetheless, Bonnie still has a will to milk. She raised three seven hundred pound calves for me without any grain input at all. Instead of trailing off on her milk production, she milked the fat right off her back.

Dairy cows are scored in their body condition on a scale of 1 to 5. 1 is very thin, 5 is fat, and the ideal range is considered to be 2.5 to 3. Thinner than 2.5 and they can have trouble conceiving their next calf.

A good dairy cow should have prominent hip bones and you should be able to see the outlines of three ribs. As you can see, Bonnie was much less than that - I'd say she was down to a 2.25 or so when we pulled her calves off.

She has had a few months off now - Dairy cows generally milk for 305 days and then have sixty days off to rebuild their body score with grain before calving again. Bonnie doesn't get the grain but does get a longer dry period. Since drying off, Bonnie has rebounded nicely and now, if anything, she is a bit fat.

I'm not quite sure what to do about the excessive weight gain. She is pregnant and due in August and I expect that she will put on more weight on our lush pastures. It's not like I can tell her to graze less.

Benefits of Good Grazing Management

2009-05-13T14:43:00.000-04:00

I don't use chemical fertilizers on the farm. I also don't bring in the traditional pasture fertilizer - poultry manure for fear that the disease-ridden commercial flocks' waste would infect my chickens. Commercial flocks can survive with endemic diseases because they receive a daily dose of antibiotics in their water and feed. But give those same germs to my free range, antibiotic free birds and we'd have a total wipe-out.

I do spread my own animals' manure through the pastures.

But the single greatest source of my soil improvement is managed rotational grazing. My animals move through paddocks for periods of intense grazing followed by long periods of rest and regrowth. This allows the grass to send down deeper roots and store energy. The pictures below, taken April 3, show visually the difference between managed rotation and continual grazing.
A paddock behind the house.

In this picture you can see the pasture grasses making a good start in the spring.
Shifting the camera up, you can actually see the yellow line behind my wildlife break trees. That yellow swatch is the neighboring farm which is badly overgrazed. The color difference is amazing.
This picture was taken over the dividing fence. Note the difference in grass color and length.

Management matters.

Happy Toads

2009-05-13T14:36:00.001-04:00

I posted a discussion of toad sexing last year. After a heavy rainstorm, I found this pair out by the barn. I guess it was so wet that they thought anyplace was a good place to lay eggs. They were so intent on their current activity that they didn't stop even when the kids were passing them around.

We have a fair number of amphibians on the property - one of the benefits of not spraying chemicals everywhere.

Ben and the Bottle Lamb

2009-05-13T14:22:00.000-04:00

America's Odd Relationship With Food

2009-05-11T14:44:00.000-04:00

Sally and I first bought our land with the intention of growing grapes. We have a nice South-facing slope and deep soil that would support a small little winery.

However, as I went to classes to find out about how to manage a small winery, it became apparent that modern grape growing requires spraying an ungodly amount of pesticide, herbicide, fungicide, heck - omnicide. I decided that I did not want to spend my working hours wearing a chemical mask, so shifted towards grass farming. I did put in fifty vines as a test plot - the agents told me that you couldn't grow grapes organically - and they were right. Only the row of Concords did well.

While the organic wine-grape experiment lasted, my biggest challenge was the infestation of dear. Dad and I spent a lot of money and many hours putting up a dear slant fence - but then they learned to walk around the slant fence and jump the gate.

Eventually, the county agent recommended that I get a kill permit for the deer.

I have no problem with hunting deer - they are overpopulated and very destructive to the environment. But I'm generally opposed to wasting an animals life. I found a local food pantry that took several deer, but wanted to find new avenues of distribution.

I work at Harrisonburg High School and sent out an e-mail to my colleagues to see if anyone was interested in a deer if I brought one in. One of my fellow teachers cornered me in the hallway between classes and began berating me - in front of students - for grossing her out. I had, you see, ruined her whole day when she got such a horrifying e-mail. Sharing venison was immoral. Hunting was murder.

Now, I'm not a person who revels in confrontation, so I stammered out an apology - "I'm sorry, I was just trying to share some excess meat and I guess I just didn't stop to think how vegetarians would react.

"I'm not a vegetarian - I just like to picture my meat coming in nice plastic packages from the meat factory."

Nonplussed, I just walked away.

Evidently, there is no ethical quandry about eating meat - as long as someone else does the killing.

I do believe that our diet choices have an ethical dimension, but not because of a moral equivalence between and humans and animals. Although animals aren't our moral equivalents, we should not cause them to live lives of misery like one sees in the confined animal feeding operations. I want to know that my dinner had a good life - and a life that ended without pain or fear. Another ethical element is the way our food culture effects the environment.

But dude, objecting to discussions of food because it shakes your fantasy world that the meat you eat was never alive? Bizarre.

Multi-Generational Farming

2009-05-11T14:11:00.000-04:00

Picking grapes with Grandma and Grandpa Tueting.

Sally: City girl in the country.

Lambing

2009-05-11T13:57:00.001-04:00

An old pic, but it still makes me smile.

Recommending Links

2009-05-09T22:54:00.000-04:00

My friend Dave has a blog that (among other things) relates his experience with having a small backyard flock.

I'm a terrible businessman. Our customers adore our pastured eggs - so much so that we can't keep up with demand. So, instead of expanding or raising prices to balance supply and demand, I always end up trying to talk people into getting their own small flock.

If you want to start your own flock, contact me - I'd be excited to be the St. Paul of chicken keeping in Albemarle. You can come over and learn how to raise your own little guys and I can walk you through the dos and don'ts of making a chicken tractor.

O-Man

2009-05-09T22:24:00.000-04:00

In the previous post I bemoaned the "get big or get out" nature of the dairy business.

One thing I do enjoy about modern farming is the incredible choice I have when I'm picking my calves' baby-daddies. You can order semen from around the world and rapidly improve you herd's genetics.

Now, it's not like I have a big herd - Bonnie, her daughter Connie, Connie's daughter Brownie, Cleo, her daughtera Princess Mel and Charlotte , and Cookie.

Connie and Mel are daughters of the great Angus bull Bextor whose semen is distributed by Select Sires. Connie's daughter Brownie is the daughter of Oyama, whose semen I imported from France.

Charlotte's dad is O-Man. She's the third calf I've had out of O-Man but the first heifer. O-Man is an incredible bull - he has been the best in the world in combined merit for years.

One of the drawbacks of artificial insemination is that it can rapidly narrow the gene pool. O-Man has over 33,000 daughters. Read that again - 33,000 daughters.

I avoid the inbreeding and narrow genetic base issue by choosing different breeds for each generation.

Bonnie and Mel are both currently bred to a polled Red Holstein bull - Aggravation Lawn Boy.
"Polled" means hornless. Many beef breeds have been genetically selected to be hornless - Angus and Charlais both lack horns. Most dairy breeds have horns - the selection pressure has been for milk production, milk production, and milk production. I'm going to try to alternate polled dairy cows with the polled beef breeds and eventually end up with an all naturally-polled herd. You can de-horn cows - we did with Bonnie - but it is painful and for small guys like me, requires an expensive vet visit. Of course, when we did Bonnie, I'm sure that the vet thought I was a weirdo when I wanted to pay extra for pain killer.

If cattle genetics interest you, I recommend the cattle genetics blog.

Horse Manure Rocks!

2009-05-08T14:32:00.001-04:00

Well, all manure does.

Take a deep breath - it's the smell of soil fertility.

Of course, I can't stand the smell of confined animal operations - they are truly repugnant. As Joel Salatin once wrote, if you can smell a farm from the road, they're doing something wrong.

But our post topic is horse manure. I've been quoted as calling it an unmitigated blessing.

But failblog shows us that even glorious horse manure can have its drawbacks:

1946 Auction Ad

2009-05-08T13:07:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted in months and months.

I'm going to try to ease back into things - put up a little short post here and there.

The picture above is a scan of my Grandfather's dispersal sale. As you can see, he was small time.

Grandpa Carl made a living and raised a family with about 20-odd cows.

Wow.

My uncle, who took up dairy farming when he got back from the U.S. Marine Corps World Tour '45, had forty milking cows throughout most of his career and was able to raise a family on the milk checks (and some commodity crop sales).

Outside the Mennonite-dominated Shenandoah Valley, farms with less than eighty cows just aren't seen any more. Even Wisconsin, the land of the family dairy farmer, has seen a big trend upward (pdf file).

His grandson is a partner in a dairy that runs 1400 cows.

Grandpa Carl was proud that his cows had produced 189,000 pounds of milk in a year. A little quick math says that this high-producing herd averaged 8,590 pounds of milk. Over a typical 305 day lactation, that comes to 28 pounds a day - about 3 1/2 gallons.

Today, "good" supercharged, grain-doused cows will produce in excess of a hundred pounds per day.

Grandpa Carl had kept back 4 bred heifers to enter the herd in '46, and 3 heifers to enter the heard in '47. He was replacing about one sixth of his herd per year - which means that the average life expectancy of each cow was eight to nine years.

Today, those grain-doused cows are lucky to make it to their fourth birthday. The average dairy cow life expectancy is 44 months in Virginia.

Things sure have changed.

I'm pretty sure that they haven't changed for the better.

Picture me as an old man waving my cane at the horizon: "Progress! Bah!"

NPR's Tragic Farmer

2008-12-09T16:04:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's NPR feature on Illinois farmer Dave Burt was quite interesting. The link takes you to NPR's text summary, but you can click on the "listen" icon to hear the longer version.

Now, I'm normally excited when farmers get favorable mentions in the media. I'm also sympathetic to farmers who are attached to the well-being of their animals. Dave Burt seems to fit that bill.

And yet...

I'm not sympathetic to Dave Burt.

Burt bemoans the fact that it is too expensive to farm and is upset that the numbers are forcing him to sell his herd. In the auditory portion of the story, he explains that it cost him $500,000 to plant and grow his crops on the 1000 acre farm he inherited from his uncle. He worried about whether he can support his family.

Dude, if you can't make a living on 1000 mortgage free acres in the fertile midwest, you are doing something wrong. Perhaps Burt shouldn't have bought the expensive combines and chased the 200 bushel corn crops with petroleum-based fertilizers. His cows would probably do very well - without the $500,000 annual investment and the expensive fertilizer and combines if he just put his whole farm to rotational grazing.

These corn-based farm subsidies don't really help the "small" farmer - he has been pushed out by mega-farms who go deeply into debt for large-scale machinery and still cling to solvency by their fingernails.

A quick trip to the farm subsidy database reveals that Burt has also received $102,000 in welfare - er, subsidy - payments. Great google-moogly.

In case the imp of the perverse is inspiring you to check out whether your humble smallholder host is a hypocrite, I'll save you the trouble.

Small Farmers and Owner Operators: Sorry, Dave

2008-12-02T17:17:00.000-05:00

I have started adding links to other local farms on the sidebar.

When I was pulling CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) out of a guide to eating local, one of the farms mentioned was Dave Matthews' "Best of What's Around" farm.

I struggled with whether to add a link to their site. Matthews' farm does follow sustainable practices and serves the local community. His decision to set up the farm on an old dairy farm kept a fair amount of land in agricultural use, safe from developers' bulldozers.

And yet... Some part of me wants to support agriculture that is owner operated. One of the problems of the farming community is the prevalence of contract labor and relationships that can come to resemble lord/serf dominance.

I want to support family farming. I don't have anything against Matthews - he makes some darn fine music. I also love that he and his bandmates are active in the local philanthropy scene (they're our version of Staunton's Statler Brothers). But I'd rather direct people to small family farms who are actually trying to make (or supplement) a living for their families. I suspect that Dave Matthews won't be deeply harmed financially if you buy your vegetables from Michael and Kathryn Bertoni at Appalachia Star Farm, or Rob and Megan Weary at Roundabout Farm or support meaningful work for the developmentally disabled at Innisfree Village.

Random Cartoon

2008-12-01T08:20:00.001-05:00

Consider this a supplement to my earlier feedlot post.

Michael Pollan for AgSec!

2008-12-01T07:51:00.001-05:00

Not that it will happen.

But if you want to send a message to the new administration that it ought to stop counterproductive and environmentally destructive corn subsidies, go and sign the petition.

My signature comment:

How has Butz-style "Get big or get out!" been working for America's farming communities? Let's get government out of subsidizing big agribusiness so that small sustainable farms have a level playing field. We small farmers will smoke the big guys if we stop them from sucking on the teat of government.

Don't know who Earl Butz is?

An excerpt from Wikipedia:

In 1971, President Richard Nixon appointed Butz as Secretary of Agriculture, a position in which he continued to serve after Nixon resigned as the result of the Watergate scandal in 1974. In his time heading the USDA, Butz revolutionized federal agricultural policy and reengineered many New Deal era farm support programs. His mantra to farmers was "get big or get out," and he urged farmers to plant commodity crops like corn "from fencerow to fencerow." These policy shifts coincided with the rise of major agribusiness corporations, and the declining financial stability of the small family farm.

He's probably more famous outside of the agricultural community for his obscene racist comments to John Dean and the ensuing Nixon-era scandal. To balance the rosy charts of increasing grain exports, here is a contemporaneous graph showing the impact of "get big or get out" on dairy farms:

Thanks, Earl*.

Heck, If i had been around at the turn of the last century, I'd have supported Mary Elizabeth Lease for AgSec (if such a thing had existed).

* I know that Butz isn't the sole cause of this; increased mechanization, the increased affordability of college offering different opportunities to farm kids, and, most importantly, the continuation of New Deal farm subsidies all contributed. But Earl Butz certainly didn't help.

Boy, Do I Feel Foolish!

2008-11-21T12:24:00.001-05:00

God bless 'em for getting it.

Albemarle Farmer

Rent Seeking

Saint Joseph Abbey, et al. v. Castille, et al.Challenging Louisiana's Casket Cartel

I Am The Rainmaker

I Beg To Disagree (Though Perhaps I'm Biased)

I'm An Unapologetic Carnivore

Lamb

Box Turtles

Studio Farm

Harvard Cow

Fishing With Ben

Hatched Eggs

Family Labor

Bonnie is Famous!

Batesville Day

Milk Monopsony Followup

Spring Babies

Grass, Glorious Grass

Raw Milk

Thin to Fat

The Cows Move Out On Grass In April

New Farm Dog

Easter on the Farm

Spring is Here!

Local Slaughterhouse in the Washington Post

True Love

Winter Storm

Emilie's Birthday

Zach in the Leaves

Halloween

Carving Pumpkins

Making Cider

Turkeys

Turkeys

Kathryn Russell

Cow Pics

Apple Butter Day

Weaning the Pigs

Piglets

Bonnie's Calf

Biodiversity: Rabbit Edition

Emilie and Brownie Take Two

Ben and Brownie

Emilie and Brownie

Pregnant Bonnie

Albemarle County Fair

Piglet Rodeo

Mark II Chicken Tractor: The Eggmobile

Hay Pictures

More Mark IV Chicken Tractor

Covered Bridge Art

Bonnie: Internet Star

More Pig Vids

Image Frenzy

The Cow Wall

Chicken Tractor Mark IV

Piglets In Action

Vickie Gresge and L'Etoile's Pig

Cats

Marauding Piglet Bands

Pig Colors

Another Albemarle Farm

The Glories of Google Image

Elizabeth Wiegand

Farrowing

Batesville Store

Buddha Zach

Meat Chicks

Zach's Christening

Mark Gresge and His Pig

Moving the Layer Tractor

Turkeys On Pasture

Dad On The Tractor

Picture and Video Dumping

L'Etoile's Pig

2009 Brochure

Family Pics

Batesville Day

My Wee Photographer

Cool Local Farm

Saint Joseph Abbey, et al. v. Castille, et al.
Challenging Louisiana's Casket Cartel