Farm in Winter

How’s the farm in the winter?
To the question I frequently get:
The farm is fine.  The farm is cold and windy right now.   If snow is on the ground, it is eerily quiet save for the buzz of our electric lines and the chickens.
Right now, on the sunflower farm north of us, they are harvesting seeds with a gigantic moving machine.
I make lots of lists during every season.  Apart from our off-farm work, here is a list of what is happening in the winter months:


Marketing
Finding interns
Farm workshops
Grant proposal(s)
Setting deadlines for plant starts (started inside on light tables)
Seed shopping
Truck shoppingOngoing:
Manure pickup and composting
Chickens
Tractor repair
Truck repair
Body repair
Mind repair
-Julia

Scary Rooster

The rooster has me scared.
Just minutes ago, Puff Daddy defended his hens with an extra hardy thump and several charges at me in a very small and enclosed space.
Todd is usually the one interacting with the chickens and asserts his calm and masculine energy over Puff by picking him up and moving around and around in a circle to make him dizzy.  In a way Cesar Milan might swing a bird.  But tonight it was I who was assigned to collect eggs and shut the chickens in their coop.  


Let me set the stage:

5:30 pm, cold and snowing with gusting winds  
When I first entered the coop, I did a count to make sure everyone made it inside.  Everything was calm and cool.  The wind howled.  I felt decidedly content.
I checked their food, grabbed some eggs.
sound of feathers rustling
I turn slowly.
His scary eyes!!!!  His scary beak!!!!  His scary prehistoric feet!!!!!

If you were the pizza delivery guy from Mr. Giggles and had arrived only 15 minutes earlier than you actually did, you would have seen a sliver of light coming from the coop as it bounced a little side to side.  You would have heard screaming and kicking and the muffled sound of someone falling down in layers of chicken “bedding” followed by more screaming and thrashing.   Just when you thought it was over, more screaming and thrashing.  And, as the pizza delivery guy, you would have been even less likely the next time to deliver pizza to this lonely looking property in rural Manteno. Puff Daddy didn’t react at all to my air kicking but thankfully I emerged unscathed. I guess I’m embarrassed by the whole spastic incident, but not embarrassed enough to keep me from telling my story.  Let all be witness.
Runny yolks in my pocket,
-Julia

Winding down

Well, the soybeans are out of the ground.  Merle and I took a walk around the bare ground (trespassing, yes) and found our way behind a small plot of corn.  The soybean field makes an L, with the short end between corn and sunflowers.  Sunflowers!  What an eery thing to stumble upon:  a ten-acre army of sunflowers, heads down, drying.  I wonder what will happen to them…

Our own ground is a confusing mix of dried up fox millet (awaiting the flame weeder), still-green pasture, frostburnt vegetation, and stubborn lettuce seedlings.  Garlic went in yesterday.  Too wet to do anything else.
Went to a workshop on Food Safety and Defense last week to learn how to arm against fecal matter and disgruntled employees, not necessarily mutually exclusive.  Learned, again, how to wash hands properly: 20 seconds and don’t forget between the index finger and thumb.  Lock your empty barns so that a crystal meth lab doesn’t inadvertently sprout up in the night.
Todd and I are both missing the markets and the smiling faces of all our sharecroppers.  Thanks to all,
Julia

Exploited Farmers

Rereading my entry about the Farm Bureau rebuttal to Time’s article, I am struck by one huge irony:  the commodity farmers “at the heart of the quantity-over-quality” food system are among the ones being exploited.  Why would the Farm Bureau defend the current system?
And: What the heck is the Farm Bureau again????
I have tried to get this answer from my Country Insurance guy (not CountryWide) since they are backed by the Farm Bureau.  His answer involved a historical set up:  “back in the day,” “farmers helping farmers...”
By joining, I do know I get a 30% discount on eyeglasses.
I think that commodity farmers, many of them having been in the biz for all of their adult lives (40-60 years), are committed to the system largely due to the size of their investment.  The investment in machinery and land as a commodity farmer is gargantuan.  Legacy is really the only way to get in the game today.   For the committed commodity farmer, asking him to change his style of farming might be like asking Todd to stop skateboarding.  Or something like that.  There ARE organizations out there trying to persuade farmers to grow organic commodities, one being a certifying agency in Wisconsin called MOSA.   They help the farmer see marketing opportunities outside of the status quo.  Way outside.  Like Europe.
AS FOR NEWS ON THE FARM
Chickens are doing fine, by the way, as long as the dog is accompanied by a watchful human.  They are giving us about 9 eggs a day.
Frost last week took out our bed of chard.  If we don’t see some sun, we may not have more lettuce for market.  Come out sun!

New Friends

COOPERATING WITH DEER CREEK FARM
We were contacted earlier this season by a woman named Lorene.   She said she had met our neighbor, the one with the horses and more importantly the horse manure, at jury duty.  She said she and her brother-in-law had their own organic farm and we should stop by the Manteno market someday to say hello. 

When Todd and I got the chance we did stop by.  Deer Creek looked beautiful at market, everything carefully and prettily presented.  We liked them immediately. 

Todd decided to visit the farm and meet Jeff, the Head Grower, the “Todd” of the farm. He learned that Deer Creek was also in its third year, like us, and organic, like us, struggling with the same issue shared by all small business owners:  how to make it work.  Turns out, Deer Creek has distribution issues this year, NOT production issues.  Jeff set up his operation with a full infrastructure from the get-go, including many paid laborers, an irrigation system with organic fertilizer and weeding implements for the tractor.  But, as Lorene lamented, many of the plants were waiting in the ground with nowhere to go.
In the final days of market, as Peasants’ Plot faces its own issues (production-related instead of distribution-related), please welcome Jeff’s carrots, beets, and kohlrabi to market.  Be assured of the same quality as always:  harvested within 48 hours, held in coolers, no synthetic chemicals anywhere.  

Cheap Food

The Farm Bureau’s rebuttal to Time Magazines “The Real Cost of Cheap Food” can be found at FarmWeekNow.com.  It was distsributed Monday, August 31st issue, volume 37.  Search “”frontal ag attack.”
This Farm Bureau is comprised of mostly commodity farmers who are at the heart of our quantity-over-quality food system.  “The Real Cost of Cheap Food” examines consequences ranging from an obesity epidemic to environmental effects of chemical fertilizer.  The Farm Bureau scoffs at the use of the word “epidemic” and argues that larger farms are not necessarily worse for the environment.  Also, that family farms are actually still prevalent.
Todd and I believe and agree with the Farm Bureau on one thing:   U.S. corn is grown by mostly family farms, not necessarily “faceless, uncaring entities” as the Time article claims. They choose to own or rent their land and make decisions independently of any employer.
These corn-growing families, however, have no control when it comes to pricing their product.  Their corn (or soy) go into the same big bins as all the farmers in the area and is valued according to that weird and mysterious market called Futures.   The buyers ARE faceless.  And those are the corporations.
The average family farm today is not the picturesque Fischer Price image of cows and pigs and chickens.  Very few family farms still integrate livestock on their land.   Their land could mean one thousand acres all corn and soy.  With a square of it for the farmhouse and machine shed.  Corn and soy and corn and soy for the faceless buyers and the cows and pigs and chickens.  Where are the cows and the pigs and the chickens?  That’s also part of the Time article.

You can read the whole Time Magazine artical:  http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1917458,00.html

Farm Week Now rebuttal http://www.farmweeknow.com/story.aspx?s=31108

-Julia

LDHD Recap

Last weekend was the epic Low Down Hoe Down, a fun party far away from the vegetable beds with bands, skateboarding and antics.
Todd’s favorite moment: “Mike Owen pulls a 5-foot back side air; preceded by 8 moves you’ll never pull.  Witnesses come close to spontaneously combusting.” 
Julia’s favorite moment: “Fire dancers show up and ask to borrow a small glass jar.”   

One of my predictably enjoyable parts of the Low Down is usually the next morning as we all drag ourselves out of tents, trailers, motor home.  This year, a few of us watched with bleary eyes as an energetic Harley Davidson sped up the drive.  Two people we’ve never encountered before call out “We’re here for the Low Down!!!”  Sorry, Chopper and Patty.  Next year.  The Saturday (not Sunday) of Labor Day weekend.  Thin Man plays at 9:00.
-Julia