Bridges or Walls

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis said when a reporter asked him about Mr. Trump on the papal airliner as he returned to Rome after his six-day visit to Mexico.”
The preceding quote was copied from an article from the New York Times. (Is it appropriate to refer to Pope Francis without his title, or is that meant to belittle his status? I don’t know.) I am not Catholic. I am not a Pope Francis apologist. I DO appreciate very many things about Pope Francis. My opinion is that Pope Francis speaks from a mindset of Jesus and in the vein of the New Testament frame of the recorded sayings of Jesus.
Jesus often responded in parable form when He was asked a question intended to lead into controversy. Pope Francis – as quoted – did not say “Mr. Donald Trump is not Christian”. He is quoted as speaking a New Testament inspired ( at least to me) teaching that Christians should seek to build bridges to our brothers and sisters instead of walls.
I had a two-hour drive this morning and listened to NPR and BBC radio. BOTH had commentators opining that Pope Francis should not have inserted himself into American Politics. Did Pope Francis step over the line? Did he , instead, speak as a Christian leader espousing Christian principles? When did it become a sin to insert Christian morality and ethics into the public arena? Should we not take our most basic Christian ethics and teachings into account when forming our beliefs and political preferences? I AM NOT referring to opinions based on conservative or liberal interpretations of the bible. I AM referring to basic Christian principles based on the New Testament direct quotes from the mouth of Jesus.
Public Media and Mr Trump immediately jumped on this as a direct attack. Isn’t that what people do when confronted with general statements that they take personally? Isn’t this what I DO when confronted with a difficult truth that forces me to confront my own statements with the reality of Jesus?
I do not have all of the facts. I do not claim to know the exact context of Pope Francis statements. I do see the Pope as a leader of Christian – True Christian – values, as seen through the lens of Catholicism, Franciscan teaching, and a deep spirituality. When did that become antithesis to American Politics?

The Farm Experience!

Growing up on a dairy farm in rural Southwest Missouri was a great experience. Could I go meet my friends at the shopping mall? Could I go to a movie at the drop of a hat? Did I get pizza or some other fast food several times a week? Did my family make lots of money so I could wear the most fashionable clothes? Did my family take week-long vacations? The answer to all of those questions is “no”. Small dairy farmers don’t get rich and the cows have to be milked twice a day every day. Did I ever feel underprivileged or disadvantaged because I lived an hour away from the nearest city? Never! I had the best life I could want. Here’s a few of the things I got to do.

The farm I grew up on had seven different ponds. My brothers and I named them the Moss pond, Chigger pond, Woods pond, Fence pond, New pond, Stacy pond, and Hog pond. Some of these ponds were little more than water holes. The Chigger , Moss, and Stacy pond were major fishing spots where my brothers and I caught uncountable bluegill and bass that supplied many a meal. Hours were spent digging worms, fishing, and cleaning fish.

There was the big bass that my brother caught that flopped out of his hands and back into the pond. There was the running back and forth to the hay barn 1/4 mile away one Memorial Day because of the rain showers. There was taking off your shoes, rolling up your pants and wading into the pond to unhook a favored crappie jig from a tree limb. There was the snapping turtle that tried to eat the fish off of the stringer. (A stringer is a line that you hook your caught fish on to keep them captured and alive in the water.)

We often rode in a small wagon behind the tractor to get to the ponds. My older brother would drive the tractor while my twin brother and I stood in the wagon; or should I say tried to stand in the wagon. This wagon had little to no springs and we would try to stay standing as it bumped up and down over the rough pastures. This was better than trying to sit in the wagon as it jarred your behind off.

There was walking through our patch of woods shooting our BB guns at whatever targets we could come up with. We also would find small dead trees and try to push them over to see how they fell. We would take long ropes of grape vines and twist and roll them into Christmas wreaths. We would hunt Morel mushrooms in the spring that my mom would fry up . DELICIOUS! We could watch the squirrels run and climb and chatter at us as we loaded the fire wood my Dad cut with his chainsaw. There was the mouse that ran up the inside of my brothers pants leg and the resultant screaming!

There was walking up and down the shallow little creek chasing minnows, small perch, and crawdads. We would put leaves and sticks in the creek and race our floats down the creek. We would build dams of little rocks and mud and try to create little pockets of water before the force of the water washed the rocks away.

There was the hard work with my brothers and Dad hauling hay and the huge sense of accomplishment looking at the barns full of hay bales. One of my brothers would drive the tractor, one of us would “buck” bales, and one would stack the bales on the wagon. Bucking bales was picking up the bales off the ground and throwing them up onto the wagon. Sometimes this meant throwing 50 pound bales seven to ten feet in the air to get them on the top of the other bales on the wagon. We would ride on top of the load of hay 20 feet above the ground as the wagon swayed and bounced its way to the barn. Then we had to unstack the load of hay, throw the bales into the barn, and restack them up to 20 bales high.

There was the time the wagon axle broke and the hay fell off along with the brothers on top. There were the multiple times I would pick a hay bale up by the twine strings holding it together and try to throw it. That is when the strings would break. This ended with hay flying in a 15 foot arc and me putting all my weight into the throw only to unexpectedly have the bale explode and end up throwing myself into the ground. There was the most delicious taste ever; water from the gallon water thermos sliding down a parched,dry throat. There was the scratchy feel of lespedesa hay leaves cascading down the back of my shirt. (Lespedeza has very small leaves so it was a very “dirty” hay. Especially when bucking bales into the wind.) There was the feeling of soaked wet socks and feet when hauling hay all night long for three cents a bale. The dew would form at about 04:00 in the morning and walking in the field was like wading in a creek. There was the very last time I saw a jack rabbit in Southwest Missouri while hauling hay in the summer of about 1974. (Coyotes moved into the area and the jack rabbits disappeared never to return.) There was the one family we would haul hay for who felt obligated to feed us lunch at noon time. I still remember the taste of those fresh garden peas and fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy.

There was the time my brothers and I had to pull calf out of a cement cistern off of the side of the House pond. The time my twin brother tried to stop a five hundred pound calf and got run over for his trouble. The time the steers got out and I ran half a mile through the woods jumping about four barbed wire fences trying to get in front of them.The running through the cow lot outside the milk barn and having one barn boot come off. The problem with that is that you can’t stop in time so you take at least one step without the benefit of the boot on your foot. Now, your sock foot has gone eight inches deep in the mud, cow urine, and manure of the middle of the cow lot. Do you put that foot back in the boot? Do you walk out of the middle of the lot without the boot? No good answers exist to that question.

I could go on and on. I probably will relate more stories at various times and posts. The point of the story is that if I could go back and trade that life for another, I would do the same thing all rover again. There were bad times, too, but not worth talking about. I can only wish that my grandchildren can have the same experiences I had. Bucking bales has almost disappeared from Southwest Missouri because almost everyone uses big round bales. Jack rabbits have left the country. The creek I played in has become mostly a dry ditch due to the lowering water table. Most of those farm ponds have gradually filled in so the fish are mostly gone. “The times, they are a-changin’.” The times have been a-changing for the last 200 years. I just relish the experiences I had growing up as a farm kid.

Thank you!

I know everybody has to post something about the Holidays this time of year. Well, guess what? I’m going to be talking about Thanksgiving just like thousands of other people. Is my post going to be paradigm shifting? Am I going to inspire world changing  actions? That is not necessarily my goal. Sure, I’d love it if my words changed someone’s life for the better by inspiring them to get out there and love the many, many people so desperately in need this time of year.

My main goal today is just to make people think. I want people to actually take some time and THINK about their lives and the things that have and haven’t happened. Believe me! Making people think is not an easy thing to do. Many of us, and I include myself in “US”, go through our day putting out the next fire or going through the rote activities of daily life. We take all day trying to either catch up or not get caught up. Please, sit down for just a minute and take stock.

Thanksgiving is just another day on the farm. Farmers don’t get paid days off work. Livestock don’t take the day off from needing to eat or drink.  Cows need to be milked every day. They need to be milked two or three times a day, every day. Routine farm jobs that have to be done, have to be done whether the day is a Holiday or not. Critical machinery like water lines or feed augers break down and have to be fixed, now. The job is only made harder because all the stores are closed. The job is made harder because you are supposed to be at your Mother’s house by noon. The job is made harder because the weather is cold and frozen outside. The job still has to be done because livestock don’t care that you have places to be. They only know that they are hungry and needy and you are responsible to take care of them.

Thanksgiving is, however, not just another day on the farm. Thanksgiving’s very roots are as a harvest festival celebrating the probability of actually having a chance to live throughout the coming winter. This was a big deal. The first settlements of Europeans in the Americas either starved to death or starved almost to death many times before establishing an Agricultural base that could reliably support life over winter. This is a fact. I am not talking about a harvest making the difference between eating well or eating poorly. This harvest meant the difference between life and death for many of these settlers.

“Yeah, yeah, I know all that” you say. Stop and think. Many of my neighbors (i.e. people living within several miles of my house) do not have enough to eat this winter. Hopefully, they won’t starve like the first Jamestown colony but not enough food is not enough food. Food banks are doing booming business and that business “booms” more pretty well every year. People still worry about having enough resources to last through the winter just like they did 300 to 400 years ago.

Where does that food come from? “Captain Obvious” says that the food this country eats is produced by America’s farmers. Each farmer out there is proud of her or his part in the food chain that supplies this country with a reliable supply of turkey’s, potatoes, pumpkins and cranberries. Each farmer out there is proud that the milk, lettuce, tomatoes, wheat, or pecans that they produce ends up celebrated on this most Agricultural of America’s Holidays.

I am very thankful this year. I have been blessed in my family. I have a job to go to every day. I have a roof over my head. I recently had a co-worker who was involved in a serious accident that could easily have been fatal and she walked away with a few scratches. Thank You, God!

I know that many other people live hard lives. Many people around me are struggling and I realize that I can always do more to help them in this season of Holiday and throughout the year. We can all be thankful that we live in a country that produces enough food. Our economic system may struggle to get that food where it is needed most. That is not the fault of the Farmers who struggle every day, even on Thanksgiving day, to produce safe and nutritious food in reliable ways for the world to eat. Take a few minutes, or a minute, even a few seconds next Thursday and give some thanks to everybody who has labored to give you the opportunity to be Thankful in the first place. I will be including America’s Farmers.

A Typical Wisconsin Dairy Farmer

I’m going to introduce you to someone today. A typical Wisconsin Dairy Farmer; not to be confused with an “atypical” Wisconsin Dairy Farmer. This typical farmer is “Dairy Carrie”.

Dairy Carrie is a dairy farmer on a family owned farm in Wisconsin. She didn’t start out that way. Carrie started out just like the overwhelming majority of people start out. She started as a non-farmer. Then, she became the first young woman to take an Ag class at her High School! I think that is a great part of her story. Apparently, she had a great experience because she eventually married into a multi-generational farm family. I am not going to go on at length about family working together but I will say that it is great when it works. It doesn’t always work. That is a topic for another day.

Carrie blogs about her experience as a dairy farmer at “The Adventures of Dairy Carrie…I think I Need a Drink!“. She farms with her husband and his parents on a typical Wisconsin dairy of about 300 acres and about 100 cows. She has been posting a lot of new-born calf pictures lately because it is calving season. I was raised on a dairy so I personally think calves are very appealing. (I’d call them cute and adorable but that is not a very manly thing to say.) She covers a lot of different topics on her blog about life in Wisconsin but she became Nationally recognized through her Agvocacy. “Agvocacy” means that when Carrie sees an issue relating to Agriculture that needs to be addressed, she takes action!

Her first big action was in response to the historic drought conditions a few years ago. She started an on-line hay drive to donate hay from farmers in Wisconsin to farmers trying to feed their cattle in the extreme dry areas of Texas and Oklahoma. She originally intended to get one semi-trailer of hay. The drive achieved “viral” status on-line and she ended up sending 7 truck loads of hay! That is making a difference!

Carrie attended an AgChat conference a couple of years ago and that just spurred her interest in Agvocacy to a higher level.  Panera Bread Company put out an Ad campaign in-accurately portraying Poultry producers using antibiotics in a lazy attempt to raise un-healthy chicken a few years ago and Carrie spoke out. Her promotion of the truth about Poultry producers caught Panera’s attention and they ended up retracting their whole Ad campaign!

Carrie speaks genuinely and from the heart. She blogs. She uses Twitter. She has a Facebook page. She was picked up by the Huffington Post when she talked about being a Farmer and not a “Farm Wife”. She tells the story of her family and her farm and her life in Wisconsin and her Agvocacy in a transparent fashion that reaches people. All kinds of people are following Carrie. That is the way to tell the story of Agriculture. A thousand farmers may read her but that is “singing to the choir”. The “overwhelming majority of people” who are just like Carrie before she took that first Ag class in High School are hearing and experiencing parts of her life. They are becoming engaged in farming and experiencing the truth about farming as told by someone living the life, not a Restaurant chain bashing modern Agriculture practices to sell burritos. People are being inspired out there right now to start something like a hay drive because they now know it can be done and it has been done. I recommend taking a look at Dairy Carrie and trying some of her brand of inspiration on for size. It might change your life!

Denial

Today’s post is a hard one. That is actually a large part of what this post is about. I am going to be talking about loss; very personal loss. I’m talking worse than your alma mater losing a football game or losing your wallet. I want to talk about death loss. This is something EVERY farmer knows personally.

I just watched an episode of “The Blacklist” on NBC. There was a scene where the main character is talking to her father on the phone. She has just found out her father is in the hospital having some tests because he has a history of cancer and is concerned about relapse. She tells her father “I know you will be OK!”. That phrase is the point. Sometimes, your loved ones will NOT be ok.

Before you get upset with me, take a deep breath and read on. I fully understand that saying “I know you will be OK!” is what everyone does. That phrase is a statement of hope and love and faith. That phrase is often the best possible encouragement in times when people are desperately in need of just ANY kind of moral and emotional boost. It can be the prayer that brings emotional support right when and where it is needed. The problem is blind, un-reasoning, and un-ending belief in that statement in total denial of facts. That only leads to a train wreck where the express train of denial runs headlong into the road block of reality.

Farmers, all farmers, have personal knowledge of loss and death. I have mentioned the biological nature of Agriculture in other posts. “Biologic” literally means LIFE science. “Life” implies death in it’s very essence. What lives, eventually dies. Crops must be harvested before they die in whatever length of growth cycle they may have. The “harvesting” of live animals eventually requires death for the most part. Live animals can be productive without dying by laying eggs or giving milk among other things. Trees and some other plants can produce fruit and nuts for years without dying. Eventually those egg layers, milk givers, and perennial crops will die out. If they can be productive by supplying meat, or leather, or lumber, that death is also productive and a part of the production cycle. But sometimes crops die out of season. Sometimes livestock die from natural disaster or disease or lightning strikes or just plain stupidity.

THIS IS A FACT OF FARMING! Death happens! It happens all the time. We are generally pretty much isolated from the reality of death in our culture. Funeral homes take care of the messy part of the death of loved ones. It often, though certainly not always, occurs at a ripe old age in the antiseptic environment of a hospital or other type of care facility. We can often, but certainly not always, distance ourselves from some of the harsh reality of the ugliness of death. This can allow us to use phrases like “I know you will be OK!” without having to be slapped in the face with the reality that it will not be ok. Again, I want to be VERY clear here. I am NOT comparing the death of a loved one to the death of livestock. I am just saying that farmers have a more frequent and closer relationship to death and loss than many others in our culture.

Farmers see death and loss right up close and personal. ANY farmer that raises livestock of any type will have death loss. “You can only lose ’em if you have ’em.” is a phrase that farmers have to live with. I am going to spell out what that phrase means because it is a vital point. The only way to lose assets like livestock to death is if you have that asset in the first place. Owning livestock carries an implicit understanding that death loss is possible and very probable but the only way to make a living farming is to have that asset in the first place! Farmers CANNOT be in denial of this because IT IS A FACT. Farmers can and do utilize every management technique possible to minimize that loss but it will happen. Livestock get hit by lightning all the time. There is NO AVOIDING THIS. Animals get sick and die whether or not they have received all of the appropriate anti-biotics. My dad had a steer wedge it’s head in a fork in a tree and strangle itself. My wife’s Uncles had a BEAUTIFUL field of river bottom corn that got flooded and totally ruined. That field was a total loss and there was nothing they could do about it. Crops get ruined somewhere every year due to drought or disease or insects. Some of this can be avoided but some of it cannot! Death loss of livestock and ruined crops is a huge financial, personal, and emotional loss that farmers face as a fact of daily life. Farmers are no less prone to trying to deny this fact than anyone else but they are directly faced by it.

“I know you will be ok” is a beautiful phrase. I believe personally in God and I believe that death is not neccessarily a terrible thing. I have worked in health care for over twenty years. Death can be a blessing. Death happens.  My prayers go out to anyone out there experiencing the pain of death and loss. Denying death and the pain and loss that goes with it is pointless. Sometimes you have to be a grown-up and just Farm on. It doesn’t make the pain less. But the only way through is forward.

LOVE!

Let’s talk some business. Agri-business.

Today’s topic is Agriculture business. I am an Ag Economist by way of College Education and Ag Business is near and dear to my heart. We are not, however, going to be talking about buying and selling (well not much), or prices, or modeling the economic forecast for the next beef cycle.The topic ‘du jour” is Pinterest! I know, Pinterest sounds about as far from a guy’s Ag Business topic as I could get. Just read on and maybe I will change your mind.

First, some discussion on the Economic environment pertaining to Ag businesses. I am talking about people with a differentiated product to sell. That cuts out Farmers who raise beef cattle just like the beef cattle down the road or Dairy Farmers or Corn/ Soybean Growers. Their products are GREAT products! But, they are homogeneous to everybody else’s corn, beans, milk, or steers. I am talking about companies or individuals who profit from setting their products and/ or services above others of the same type by quality or uniqueness or location. “My Blueberry farm is closer and I stay connected to you during the year.” “My horseshoeing business is high quality and timely.” “The livestock I sell for show purposes are higher quality with better genetics.” These entities profit from differentiating their “product” as being more desirable than competing products. That is where Pinterest can come in.

Pinterest is a Social Medium. It has grown very quickly from it’s start in 2010 to become a worldwide platform enjoyed by millions of people as this Wikipedia site states. Pinterest is all about images only. The platform is based on storing images of things you like on your own “board/ boards”.  These images can be of anything relating to your product; what it is, how its used, and what your customer can do with it. You can add recipes, descriptions, prices, and any other information pertinent to your audience to enrich their experience. You can come back to these boards later and see these images and follow up on the ideas they represent. Other people can also “follow” you and see your boards (only if you allow this). This makes for fast, easy, and very efficient sharing of information. I see it as a “collective” kind of media where everyone is filing and sharing information in a very visual and interactive style. I benefit from other people who have identified information I like and have already filed that information where I can easily visualize and access it.

Anything you Pin maintains it’s link back to the website it has been Pinned from.  The Pinners I have talked to mostly Pin directly from the Pinterest site. HERE IS A HUGE FACT FOR BUSINESS PINTEREST SITES!  The people I have talked to are HUGELY turned off by self promotion and commercialism. Make your site interesting by pinning more than just your product itself. Think beyond selling your “stuff”. Add Value! Solve Problems! Be an Information Source, not a sales brochure! You can add a “Pin it button” to your website to make it extremely easy for site users to Pin your content. The more others Re-Pin your stuff, the more your stuff gets shared around the web! For businesses, there is a new and different kind of Pin called a “Rich Pin” that businesses can particularly use. Rich Pins update their contained information in real time. Article Pins include story information to entice people to become more engaged in your product. Product Pins include Real Time pricing and availability information that changes on their home board when you update it on your website. Recipe Pins include all the information to  prepare the beautiful food you showcase with your product. There are even more Rich Pins that may pertain to your business site depending on what you do. You can find out this information on the Pinterest site just like I did. These can do wonders for creating interest and engagement with your customers.

How does this relate to Ag Business? Pinterest has Business accounts.These are different from personal accounts. One way they are different is that business accounts have access to analytics. Your business can track how many people Pin from your website, see your own Pins, and click on your content. You can set a particular time frame and graph all of these numbers for easy visual interpretation. You can also find out which Pins people like the most, who else interacts with these Pinners and what these Pinners Pin alongside your images. All of this can be used to tailor your website to appeal more to what your users like on both your business website and your business Pinterest boards.

“Boards” are the basic way information is stored and organized on your Pinterest site. Evaluate what your customers want and who your customers are and create multiple boards that appeal to these categories. It is very easy to add boards. There is literally a panel that says “Create New Board”! My Pinterest site has Boards for Rural Beauty, Home Gardening, Farm Equipment, and Farming. The more ways you can appeal directly to different tastes, the more ways you will attract and engage more customers. Be specific and direct to multiple people at the same time with multiple boards. This is the Great benefit of the internet. You can multi-task with one site that directly appeals to multiple people.

This multi-tasking is hugely increased by linking your Business Pinterest site to your OTHER Social Media and Internet sites. Link your website, your Pinterest site, your Facebook page, and your Twitter feed together! When you post to any one of these sites, make that become an item of interest on all of these other sites! Create more news! This gets all of your sites out there more often and gives that many more opportunities for your customers to see your information and get into your information stream! A huge bonus is that more traffic and more links makes your information appear higher on Search Engine results. The higher you show up on these search engines, the more likely customers are to find your product!

Business Pinterest sites have “Best Practices” just like any other business tool. 25 Mistakes businesses make on Pinterest is a great article about the right and wrong things your business should do on your website. Danielle Cormier has done a fantastic job of putting together basic things like including your business information (i.e. name and clear logo in your Profile) to following other businesses (a rising tide lifts all ships, shared links leads to shared customers) to advanced ideas (allowing collaborators to Pin to my boards again spreads the wealth). Anyone with a business Pinterest site should immediately check out this link and save it. This is priceless information gathered together in one place.

Some of the things great Pinners do is laid out here. Be picky about who you follow on your Pinterest site, “drill down” on the things you Pin to find out more about who you are Pinning and what they like, and add more information to your Pins. This will make your site more useful both to you and to your followers. Quality control is always a good thing. Make your business site the best it can be and keep it that way every day! Finding out more information by drilling down on your Pins and using the available Business Analytics will allow you to find out what your customers like best and how to change your website and Pinterest Boards to become more appealing.

The bottom line is that Pinterest can be a great tool to market your product. Your product has to be something that benefits from marketing by being differentiated and unique in some way. Create great content and customers will do the job of spreading the word for you. Make the Internet work for you and your business. Hey, even if you don’t have a business, Pinterest is great fun! It is not “just for girls” either! Anyone who has an interest or hobby can benefit from the collaboration and collective organization Pinterest offers. Get out there and give it a try. I think you’ll love it.

Water

It has been a rainy morning today. I had about 1 3/4 inches of rain in my rain gauge this morning. I realize that many people might think that statement almost bereft of any important meaning. Those who are not engaged in Agriculture, do not have a garden, and have no yard to mow, may very well find rain nothing but an inconvenience or even a hated problem. We’re going back to the basics for this post.

Farm ponds and creeks are very important water sources for plants and animals. They are also great for fishing and playing! I have spent Many an hour fishing in farm ponds and enjoyed many a meal of bluegill and bass that I caught and cleaned myself. A historic drought in the early 1950’s was the incentive for many ponds being built across Southwest Missouri. Most of the elm trees on my boyhood farm were cut down so the cattle could eat the leaves since there was no grass. Ponds don’t help the pasture that much but they at least are places for livestock to drink.

Livestock drinking brings up another aspect of water availability. Winter cold means that water sources can freeze over unless it is a sufficiently large creek or other moving body of water. Cows and calves can’t break the ice by themselves if it is thick. I remember many times taking an old axe out to the pond and chopping through the ice to create a hole where the cattle could get a drink of water. That is cold, wet, hard work. There has to be Enough water underneath that ice for the cattle to get a drink. That is one place where that 1 3/4 inches of rain I got today becomes VERY important.

Rain this morning!

Rain is very important to Agriculture. Water availability may very well be THE MOST IMPORTANT factor across all of Agriculture. Crops need rain, livestock need water. Animals depend on crops to eat that depend on water to grow. Water is the basis for cleaning pretty well everything relating to farm production. The biologic nature of Agriculture means that everything has a time limit. Everything either goes bad after a certain amount of time (think of rot, mold, and decay), or starts off bad as in manure, contaminants like ag chemicals, and waste  animal parts in meat processing.

I grew up on a dairy farm where the equipment had to be carefully cleaned and dis-infected after every milking twice a day every day. Think about how quickly milk goes bad when left out. My brother had a gallon of milk spill in his car once and it stank that car up for the rest of its life! Water is the basis for cleaning in almost every part of life. Guess what? Animals poop! (Poop is such a silly sounding word. It makes 6 year olds out of everybody. I always want to giggle when I hear “poop….. poop, poop, poop”.) Manure is a much more civilized term. Milk cows produce manure and they really don’t care where they let it fly. You haven’t lived until you have had a cow swish a manure filled tail around while you are attaching the milker and it wraps around the back of your head and slaps you in the face and mouth! Take my dad’s word for it! Milk barns have to be cleaned of all that manure during and after every milking. Manure is right there at the production point of milk. The two have to be separated. Water is the key.

Water is used for mechanical advantage in processing a lot of produce. Apples,  cucumbers, and many other types of fruits and vegetables are examples where sluices are used to convey produce from one place to another without bruising it.  The product gets washed and safely moved at the same time. Water is safer, cheaper, easier, and more energy efficient at moving things than belts or rollers.

The next time the weather forecast calls for rain, think about all the benefits that water brings with it. I happen to enjoy water quite a bit. I enjoy drinking it alot. Here is a link to an article discussing the value of water as a vital commodity to be invested in for the 21st century. Just a head’s – up, water availability is going to become very critical to everyone in the next 50 years. That rain may be a nuisance, but you better keep praying for it.

Cute Calves turn into hamburgers

Farming is an exercise in dualism. Farmers live in two worlds at the same time. They work in one of the oldest professions in the world using the most modern of high technology like GPS guided combines worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Growers utilize state of the art genetic modification to change plant characteristics while searching the far corners of the world for ancient “Heirloom” plants with valuable forgotten properties of taste or color. They take millions of dollars  in investment and literally bury it in the ground like “Jack and the Beanstalk” hoping it will “magically” turn into more millions of dollars. I fully understand that this “magic” involves more millions of dollars of experience/ expertise, years of genetic manipulation and/or modification, chemical/ fertilizer application, and mechanical investment.

Some of the more literal “magic ” is the dependence on the biological nature of Agriculture.   Biology is the basis on which all of Agriculture production rests. Plants and animals have to GROW. They have to survive disease. They have to withstand adverse weather. They have to take in food and water and, through the act of metabolism, turn that food into valuable end products like, meat, milk, eggs, plant growth, and plant production of fruit and seeds. The plan is that you start with something small and grow it into something more over the course of time. Grow the plants, grow the animals, grow the farm, grow the investment. This investment is NOT just money. The investment is also the Farmer’s land, labor, time, emotions, blood, sweat, tears, heart, and very Soul!

Baby farm animals are very cute. They are easy to love.  There is nothing like having a curly-headed little calf licking and sucking on your fingers when you are bucket feeding. (Their tongues are very rough and raspy.) I mean exactly what I said. Farmers actually “love” their livestock. We care about them. We care what happens to them. They are not just numbers in a ledger.The Horrendous  Atlas Blizzard in South Dakota two weeks ago left ranchers devastated over the financial and emotional loss of up to 100,000 head of livestock. News stories spoke of the pain of ranchers losing animals they had invested their lives in, not just their money.

The dualism comes in the fact that these animals were not destined to live out their lives on a pasture and die of old age surrounded by their “GrandCalves” like a Disney movie. Don’t get me wrong, I love Disney movies. Livestock are not pets. We love them and we care for them knowing the whole time that their purpose is to end up being consumed in some fashion. Most cute curly-headed little calves are destined to end up in someone’s hamburger or taco or on a plate in a steakhouse. Livestock are to be treated “humanely” NOT “humanly”. Calves, lambs, chicks, and piglets etc., etc. are not people. We treat them well and we care for them physically and often emotionally but they are produce.  Nor are they pets. Pets reward us with emotional benefits beyond what stock does. Pets are not human, either. I would not marry a pet. I would not bequeath my inheritance to a pet. I would not place the welfare of a pet above the welfare of a human.

A field full of 10 foot tall corn waving in the breeze is an awe-inspiring sight.  Six months later that same crop would be nothing but a field of tangled worthless stalks and weeds if not harvested. Apply that same thinking to a field full of livestock. That is wastage. This is a Judeo-Christian outlook but I also consider it to be the practical outlook. Mankind has the moral imperative to husband the resources of this world in such a way as to promote the welfare of humankind. That welfare comes above the welfare of livestock and crops. Our welfare is best served by the best possible care and nurturing of the resources placed within our purview. The better we treat them, within reason, the better we are rewarded.

I understand that other life philosophies feel that all life is sacred and should be treated the same. Man has to eat to survive. Man has the capacity to alter his environment in such a way to better utilize the plants and animals placed on this Earth with us to increase our welfare. Curly-headed calves are beautiful in their way. They are also hamburger. Keep it in mind.

 

I’m Sick of this!

This government shutdown has gone way too far. I started thinking about this post a week ago and, unfortunately, it is still a valid topic. A week may not seem like much but try not having a paycheck for a week with no idea of when your next one will arrive. How about my friend who went on her HONEYMOON planning to visit a few National Parks only to have this once on a lifetime experience run into a literal road block. Sure, she can go back with her husband at a later date but it won’t be her HONEYMOON! Another friend is trying to get her passport renewed to go on a trip to Ireland. She has a short timeline because this came up unexpectedly. I’ve been praying for her passport to get renewed.

These are personal issues affecting individuals. There are larger issues at stake. The Foster Farms chicken debacle combined with a lack of USDA inspectors should worry all Americans. This article from the news agency Reuters talks about how USDA meat inspectors are considered “essential personnel” because Meat Packers CANNOT, by law, function without inspectors.

The same article brings up the huge issue of the vast amount of USDA publications like crop reports that affect farmers, traders, bankers, and eventually all of us. try this very scary quote on for size: “If the shutdown lasts more than two or three days, USDA may be forced to delay the release of its monthly crop estimates, due on October 11, which often cause swings worth billions of dollars in the price of corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton.”  That is a quote worthy of the Halloween season. I don’t know about you, but it scares me. Let’s not even THINK about what happens if Washington doesn’t up the debt limit in the next day! That is beyond scary!

Here is another little fact that few people know but could have vast implications. Medical researchers use mice for testing and researching an enormous amount of topics ranging from genetic diseases to new pharmaceutical products. These mice might have to be destroyed due to the lack of funding to feed and care for them. This article from NPR tells about the effect the shutdown could have on decades  of continuing research at the National Institute of Health! It has happened before! “Shutdowns in the 1980s typically lasted no more than a few days. The current one promises to go on for weeks. And that could be disastrous for researchers, says Carol Greider, a researcher at Hopkins, and a 2009 Nobel Prize winner. “Not being able to breed mice for several weeks could really shut down years’ worth of experiments,” she says.  That is YEARS worth of ongoing information and trending. Ongoing experiments are, by definition, ruined if they cannot be “ongoing”! Some of these mice have unique genetic traits that may never be replicated.

These are examples of just a minuscule facet of what the Government shutdown is costing all Americans. Is it worth it? Is it really worth the cost to try and de-fund something that has ALREADY been funded and approved by the Federal Government. This is outrageous! This is terrorism! The American economy is being held hostage for partisan politics. COME ON WASHINGTON! Stop playing brinksmanship! Find another way to play! You are acting like three year olds! You should all be spanked and sent to bed without any TV! You should all be sent to prison like the terrorists you are imitating and forced to work together until you finish this. Find another way to settle your difference! NOW!

Seasonality

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 says “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,

A Time to Dance

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.”

Evening light

All you have to do is look out the window in the evening and you can tell that this season’s change is coming faster every day. The sun is setting much earlier than it was a month ago. The work is no less hard and, with harvest upon us, it may be harder for a while. Farm life is very affected by seasonality. Cows and sheep calve in the spring (generally, this is not a given), crops are planted in the spring, hay is cut in the summer, harvesting can occur at various time based on the type of crop in mind, and winter is the time to catch up on other things.

The biological nature of Farming leads to great seasonality. I work in a hospital. I see a little bit of seasonality in my work because people are more active in the summer and allergies are more active in spring and fall but for the most part illness is  an “equal opportunity employer”.  My work varies day to day but I do the same type of things regardless of the time of year. Farmers don’t cut the ice on the pond for the cattle to drink in the summer because the water isn’t frozen! (Captain Obvious.) They don’t plant corn in the fall but they may plant cover crops like winter wheat or rye. Livestock have to be milked year round but they generally get fed a lot more and a lot differently in the winter due to no available pasture. I could go on and on.

I know these things are very obvious to people who grew up with them. Not everybody has. Most people these days get up and go to work Monday through Friday exactly the same way all year long. A lot of people get in the car in the garage and get out of it in a parking garage and never get out in the rain, sleet, or snow. They don’t even necessarily put on a coat or hat. Try feeding the cows for an hour and a half in a minus 20 degree wind chill without a coat. Farmers are much more tied to these biological life factors then most people.

Fall is a great time for cookie baking and football games, feeding wildlife and enjoying the last rose of summer. Fall trips to check out the foliage and visit the relatives are a great idea. Enjoy it while you can. Winter is coming. Spring will be on the way in a few months after that.