Written for Living Natural First Magazine

This time of year when we have had months of winter weather, brown pastures, and knee deep mud, we find that laughter really is the best medicine.  As I write this, we are braving the “Winter Storm of 2011” as the newscasters are calling it.  Rather than spending our snow days vacationing from work, we are spending all day everyday trying to keep our animals warm, fed, and watered.   One of our biggest problems right now is that our ewes are lambing in the middle of this horrible weather.  Tiny lambs don’t do very well in cold weather and we try to avoid having any this time of year.  However, during the time when we needed to separate the young weanling rams from the flock, I was too pregnant to do it and Nathan was spending all of his time baling hay and keeping our business running mostly by himself.  So…lots of lambs at the wrong time of year!  Next year we will probably be remembering these experiences with laughter at the myriad of unexpected, frustrating, and sometimes funny events. Right now it is just hard and frustrating–so here’s to looking back and laughing, mostly at our own mistakes.  We have put together a series of anecdotes of previously interesting and humorous farm experiences, which weren’t really funny at the time but are now recalled with laughter.

Feeding in socks

I, Ellen, grew up on the sandy land of the East Texas Piney Woods.  Now, underneath this sand is red clay, but we rarely saw it unless digging fence posts in the summer and then it was basically a red rock.  Suffice it to say that the Blackland clay of North Texas was completely new to me when Nathan and I got married four years ago.  Any soil that can go from 6-inch wide and two feet or more deep cracks which can negatively impact your animals (Yes, we have lost piglets.) one day to knee deep suck your boots off mud right after a rain (Yes, there is at least one pair of boots buried in the pasture.) is just beyond my understanding.  So, my first winter here on the farm was an eye opening experience to say the least.  One day stands out especially vivid.  I was feeding the pigs (One of my very least favorite chores–ever tried to feed a group of 400 lb untrained hungry dogs?) after several inches of rain.  I stepped through the gate and sunk up over the tops of my mud boots into the mud of their wallow they had conveniently placed in the gate.  At the same time the entire group of pigs surrounded me trying to get in the feed bucket in my hand.  Now, I am only 5’3” and sunk up to my knees in mud I am considerably shorter.  This meant that keeping the bucket out of reach and trying to get myself out of the mud was impossible.  I guess I could have just thrown the bucket to the pigs, and then worked on getting myself out.  However, as this was about the 100th time I had gotten stuck that day I was rather frustrated and perhaps not thinking clearly.  The easiest thing at the time seemed to be abandoning my boots to the mud.  I stepped out in my socks and promptly sunk again into the 40 degree mud, but it was much easier to get out.  I fed the rest of the pigs in my socks to Nathan’s considerable amusement that day.

Rolling Hay

When we feed hay to our animals in the winter we unroll our round hay bales rather than setting them in round hay feeders or rings.  This is for several reasons: the hay helps cover bare ground thereby reducing erosion, reseeds our pastures, spreads organic matter, and prevents large dead spots which occurs many times where large round bales have been fed in hay rings due to pugging and trampling of the ground during wet winters around the hay feeder.  Round bales are baled sort of like a cinnamon roll is made.  There is a round middle and the hay is rolled in layers around that by belts inside a hay baler. Thus, they can unroll into a long thin sheet of hay.  Our round bales weigh about 1000 lbs.  If they are in a good spot (like the top of a hill) I can roll them out by myself and Nathan can almost always roll them out by himself.  However, some of the worst bare spots in our pastures are where the pigs have been pastured.  Again think about a 400 lb dog who is the absolute worst digger you could ever imagine. Pigs do their digging with their noses.  Our pig pastures end up looking like a mini version of a World War II battle field.  However, because they aerate the soil and incorporate their manure and other organic matter into the soil, the pasture grows back lush and healthy in the Spring it is just really rough many times.  A few weeks ago Nathan had the bright idea that we needed to feed some hay over one of our old pig pastures and then placed a bale right in front of a considerable crater (Might I add that this was about 11 p.m.)  Earlier that night Nathan had thrown his knee out rolling another bale of hay out, so I was called in to help as we knew it would take quite a bit of effort to roll this bale down into the crater and back out again.  We both got a good running start and were then thrown backwards with a surprising jolt when the bale hit the bottom of the crater and stopped suddenly.  We landed on our behinds and both just looked at each other and burst out laughing.  I don’t know why your own lack of foresight can be so incredibly funny sometimes, I think it has a lot to do with letting off steam of a day that hasn’t gone at all as planned (Thus the feeding cows at 11 p.m.)  After laughing hysterically for a few minutes we got up, brushed off what we could (thank goodness this wasn’t a muddy time) and carefully rolled the bale out of the crater proceeding on our way.  I think what was just as funny as us being thrown to the ground by a bale of hay was the cows’ reactions to us laying on the ground in their feed laughing.  They just stood and stared at us like “What has gotten into the people now?”

Cell phones and electric fences–bad combination.

We use a lot of electric fencing on our farm.  I have now been shocked more times than I can count.  It just goes with the territory of using and mending a lot of electric fences.  Our fences don’t give a bad shock, but definitely an unpleasant jolt.  I don’t like getting shocked.  So am usually fairly cautious around the fences, but occasionally I get distracted.   One summer night (we do a lot of work at night it seems) we were hauling hay out of the hay meadow in the creek bottom with the tractor.  Nathan drove, and I had gate duty.  On the way there I walked through knee high dew drenched prairie grasses in my shorts and sneakers.  By the time I got to the gate I was opening my shoes were dripping with dew.  As I was standing at the electric gate twiddling my thumbs, my mom called.  I proceeded to talk with her standing in my wet shoes holding the gate handle.  I have no recollection of what we were talking about, but I got distracted.  In the middle of the conversation without thinking I rested the metal electrified end of the gate on the bare skin of my hip between my t-shirt and shorts.  Let me just say, “I was no longer distracted!” The electrical current made a great connection through me and my wet shoes.  I didn’t scream, but came pretty darn close.  I did manage to continue my conversation without ever letting on to my mom that I had just about shocked myself off of my feet.  The spot where I had shocked myself continued to burn, and when I got back to the house I found an actual burn on my skin.  I think it takes great skill to set up circumstances to shock myself that strongly on our overstretched solar chargers.  Since then you would think that I no longer talk on the phone while around electric fences, but I have to admit I didn’t learn my lesson.  Although, when standing in a puddle of water or in soaking wet shoes I am much more cautious.

Controlled burning?

Controlled burning is an oxymoron to me.  How do you control fire anyway?  But that is what it is called when you set something on fire on purpose, either that or arson I guess, depending on your perspective.  Controlled burning is recommended by the USDA-NRCS (Natural Resource Conservation Service) and others to help control brush, and rejuvenate overgrown and neglected fields.  A few years back we bought 70 acres adjoining our original farm that had been neglected for 50 years.  We partnered with our local NRCS to do a controlled burn in order to clear some of the brush and weeds.  We consider ourselves cautious and careful people when it comes to truly dangerous activities like setting things on fire.  We waited until we had some rain to make sure everything wasn’t too dry, the wind was low, our fence lines had been recently bulldozed, and for good measure Nathan plowed the fence lines to ensure no fire left our designated area.  Nathan contacted the local fire department to let them know what we were doing and we were set to start.  Originally our NRCS agent was going to supervise, but he had to be at another burn that day and so we were on our own.  The entire area was split into small 10 to 15 acre areas so we could burn one at a time.  We also started backfires to help control the fire.  To make a long story short, despite all of our careful measures, the fire did not stay controlled.  It somehow managed to jump our bulldozed, plowed fence line into the property north of ours which is an abandoned, extensively overgrown dump ground.  Because of the lack of any care for numerous years, this dump ground had a huge amount of dry brush, leaves, etc and the fire took off like a freight train.  We of course tried to stop it but to no avail.  Pretty soon we were calling the fire department to inform them that our controlled burn had gotten loose.  The neighbors were also calling the fire department to inform them that the crazy people on the hill had set fire to half the county.  In the end nothing valuable was burnt and our controlled burn did a lot toward cleaning up the dump ground.  We also became the laughing stock of our neighbors and the entire NRCS office.  At the time it wasn’t funny to us at all, and was especially frustrating as we had done everything “right” in order to control our fire.  This fiasco did solidify in our neighbors minds that the people on the hill really were crazy.  Needless to say we donated some funds to the local Volunteer Fire Dept. and made sure that they could have a truck at our next controlled burn.

Since we have several of these funny farm events we’re going to have to split this article  up into at least two parts.  The magazine publisher only allows us so much space, and we have a tendency to get long-in-the-word when we get on a roll.  So look for a continuation of laughter from Sloans Creek Farm in the April issue.  We hope that you enjoy reading about things that have happened in our multi-species farming career.  Hopefully some of it will inspire you.  Don’t forget to support your local farmers like us.  Stay tuned and Farm On!

Written for Living Natural First Magazine

The other day while we were having one of our 18 hour work days trying to get several farm tasks done.  As we were working we were thinking of the many things that the American Small Farmer does on a daily basis that most of the general public doesn’t even know or think about.  Now this article isn’t the typical article that we normally write.  So I’ll ask that you pause with us for just a moment as we list the many things a small farmer in modern day America may do at least once in their stint as a farmer and other things they may do on a very regular basis.  However, all of these things make an American Small Farmer extraordinary as a person in our view.  They are cited here as they came to mind in no particular order.

The American Small Farmer is a person who saves lambs from the cold or when something has happened to their mother due to predators or the elements and brings them into the house to warm them up in the bathtub while feeding them milk every 3 hours even in the middle of the night.

The American Small Farmer is a person who does his best to stomach tube and later bottle feed an orphaned calf for four months of its life day in and day at least twice a day.

The American Small Farmer is a person who gets out of bed most days at 6 AM or 7 AM to work 12 hour days or on many days longer plowing, planting, harvesting, or baling hay.

The American Small Farmer is a person who milks cows in the morning, feeds cattle hay in the afternoon, grinds feed for the hogs in the evening, and then puts his or her children to bed at night.

The American Small Farmer is a person who takes care of his or her animals like they are family, but can still draw a line of separation from them when he acknowledges that at some point most of them will be food for the family or someone else.  They are aware that this is just how the world operates.

The American Small Farmer is a person who is a shade tree mechanic, budget guru, veterinary technician, and is involved in their community and/or church.

The American Small Farmer is a person who will be there to help his or her neighbor in a pinch. If you need the shirt off their back they’ll probably let you borrow it.

The American Small Farmer is a patriot who believes in why this country was founded.

The American Small Farmer tries to never take for granted the cherished time in which he or she gets to rest or sleep.

The American Small Farmer is a person who believes that what he or she raises belongs on their dinner table and yours as well.

The American Small Farmer is a person who can castrate livestock, vaccinate livestock, and read the emotions of one of their animals.

The American Small Farmer is very close to the land, and the “salt of the earth.”

The American Small Farmer believes in a job done right, and tries to be a good hard working role model for future generations.

The American Small Farmer is a person who takes responsibility.

The American Small Farmer respects his fellow farmers from around the world.

The American Small Farmer helps keep this country fed and clothed on a daily basis.

The American Small Farmer tries to use resources in a sustainable manner.

Many American Small Farmers spend 4 AM to 7 AM milking cows and cleaning the barn, 8 AM to 5 PM working at another job, and then come home to the farm to feed livestock, plow fields, plant crops, or harvest a crop from 6 PM to 10 PM or later sometimes.

The American Small Farmer is a person who may be baling alfalfa hay at 2 AM because it is at the right moisture content or pulling a calf at 3 AM in a cold pouring rain because the momma cow is having a hard time.

The American Small Farmer believes that his investment is his or her farm, and therefore most of any extra money is put into the farm.

The American Small Farmer is a person who believes that what they do for a part time hobby or a full time living is necessary for the health of the nation and national security.

The American Small Farmer is a person who believes that they need to do their best to take care of their little corner of Creation.

The American Small Farmer is a person who many times gives a lot and tries to take very little.

The American Small Farmer is a person who is sometimes a jack of all trades, as we’ve mentioned before in a previous article.

The American Small Farmer is a person who may be your neighbor next door, or the person you buy your veggies, meat, or eggs from.

Some of these descriptions of the American Small Farmer are probably givens, but some of these are probably really surprising to you especially if you aren’t familiar with farm life.  The American Small Farmer and farmers in general are people who have to integrate their enjoyment in life with their work in life.  Most don’t get to have too much time away or regular vacations especially if they are livestock farmers.  Cows, pigs, goats, and the like have to have something to eat on daily basis.  In our summary of the small farmer we’re sure that we’ve left out some descriptions, but we’ve tried to give you a good feel of who the American Small Farmer is and some of the things they do on a day in, day out basis.  I hope that you’ve enjoyed getting to know the American Small Farmer.  Don’t forget to tell them how much you appreciate them the next time you see them at the farmers market and do your best not to take them for granted.  Farm On!!

Written for Living Natural First Magazine

By the time you read this article it will be almost 2.5 months since we welcomed our first child into our home, Ada Elizabeth.  I won’t say that becoming parents has drastically changed our perspective because this was something that we have planned on and discussed since we were married.  However, the reality of actually being parents, and not just planning on becoming parents has, I suppose, sharpened our perspective.  We feel like the beginning of a new year is a good time to cover a fundamental basic of the lifestyle and food system that “Living Natural First” magazine is all about.

If you were to search the word “sustainability” on the internet, you would find dozens of definitions.  In several of our previous articles you have read what we believe that definition should be, but in the end, what does sustainability really MEAN and why does it matter.  For us, it means being responsible for a treasure that has been entrusted to us, which includes the earth, our farm, and our animals.  This is vitally important simply for the intrinsic value of Creation itself, but also because we want to leave things better than we found them for our children.  We have all heard this hundreds of times before, that we must think of what we are leaving behind for future generations.  In fact, this was a significant teaching in many of the Native American’s historical tribal education.  Something us “white men” should probably have tried to have understood a lot earlier ourselves.  In modern times this can be such an abstract thought that includes perhaps using less plastic bags at the grocery store or investing in energy efficient appliances, and then we go on with our lives.  For our family this is very personal and far from abstract.  For us the focus starts at our planet, narrows to our continent, our country, our state, our county, and then to our farm.  This is where sustainability becomes personal.

For the past 50-plus years farmers have for the most part encouraged their children to get a college education and leave the countryside behind.  First and foremost, this was because they did not want to see their children invest their lives and resources into a hard life, which could possibly leave them broke.  In a word, unsustainable.  They encouraged the seeking of a better life in suburbia.  On our farm we work the land and raise our animals the way we do because we feel it is best for them, us, our land, our water, etc, but also because we want to be able to encourage our children to return to the farm and know that they will have a chance at sustaining themselves.  We have discussed in other articles the need to encourage and help young people return to the land, the true test of this idea is whether we would encourage our own children to return to the land.  Some bad days, we might say no, but one of our biggest dreams is to have something wonderful to hand to our children one day, something that can and will literally sustain them throughout their lives.  This is where sustainability becomes real.  This means that we must work to heal and protect our land from erosion, which improves water quality for ourselves and others.  We must maintain and increase the fertility of our soils, which encourages us to adopt practices like rotational grazing, which reduces runoff of manure, and on and on.  Even if we have a perfect “sustainable” farm (A perfect “sustainable” farm probably doesn’t exist.) to pass to our children, that doesn’t mean they will actually be able to sustain themselves from the farm.

In order for that to become a reality, we must pass on a means of financial sustainability.  For us this means continuing to grow and improve our direct-marketing grass-fed and pastured meat business.  Without the means to make a living from the land, we would be foolish to encourage our children to come back.

We also dream of handing our farm and business over to our children completely debt free.  We believe that this is a big part of financial sustainability for our farm.  Because of this we are trying to recycle and re-use everything we can, granted we still have some work to do here.  On our farm we are literally invested in the “stock market”, in cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, and horses.  While this can be just as risky as the Wall Street Stock Market (Wall Street was once the livestock market of New York City.) we believe our land is the best investment we can have to pass on.  The land itself (soil) doesn’t burn, if cared for it doesn’t wash away, rust, get stolen (unless the government decides to)–our land is permanent.  Once paid for our farm land is the closest thing to a secure investment we can hand to our children.

For us, every decision we make with the goal of leaving a sustaining farm to our children automatically leads us to choices which improve our farm, community, county, state, and so on for everyone.  This dream of ours even pushes us into politics.  We call our senators, visit our state capitol, write letters, and organize meetings to insure our children will have access to clean country air, they will have the right to continue farming and direct marketing as we do today, and so that our farm will not be taken away from us for needless eminent domain projects.   We want to improve and sustain our rural community so that our children and others will still have a small rural school to attend.  Part of this sustainment of our community includes sharing our knowledge and teaching others that it is possible to make a living from the land.

Whether you have children or not, try to imagine what you want to pass on to the younger generation–children, nieces and nephews, young friends, etc.  Not in an abstract “I want to pass on a better world” although we all want that, but in a vivid and personal way.  What does sustainability mean to you when you think of these younger people in your life?  I think we all want to pass on a legacy and perhaps to make things easier for our children.  How many times have we seen people who spent their lives working their way up from almost nothing, and then turn around to raise children who don’t know how to work?  That is not sustainability.  While we want to hand our children the fruit of our hard work, we must also teach them to work themselves.  If they do not know how to continue improving on our efforts, to protect them by being active in their community and politics, there is no sustainability.  If something is sustainable it is able to continue on indefinitely.  This requires education, formal and informal, dedication, and an ability to ignore distractions.

We plan to encourage our children to pursue a college education and/or whatever dreams they choose, but we hope they will one day choose to come back to the farm and farm business and we are trying to take steps to make sure they can.  For us, this is the real meaning of sustainability.  Buy Fresh, Buy Local, Buy American, and Farm On!

Written for Living Natural First Magazine

I don’t know about you, but Ellen and I tend to notice all the farm images, names, and themes that are strategically placed in our lives as Americans for marketing purposes, and frankly this irritates us.  You see this on everything from housing developments in the suburbs to food in the grocery store.  In fact, just before the recent elections when we were being bombarded with campaign advertisements (Where we live here in North Texas we get the Texas and the Oklahoma ads.) we noticed several of the ads featured the candidates talking with a farm scene behind them, most likely green-screened in, or talking to a person that was supposed to be a farmer/rancher.  This sort of irritated Ellen and myself because these candidates were trying to play the part of being “salt-of-the-earth” and connected to rural America, and it also got us to thinking about where family farm images are used to market products and ambiance every day by folks who aren’t necessarily family farmers or family farm supporters.  We think that it is high time that somebody tell the truth in marketing.  Have you thought about this yourself, and do you agree?  Small farmers and ranchers need to take their image back for themselves, so let us explain why.

Originally, many of the farm images used for marketing were utilized by the small companies, several that started as small town businesses, that have since been bought up by the major food conglomerates.  Today they have basically no connection to their roots, with the exception of possibly a remnant in the recipe or something.  These large companies have now made it a point to exploit this image banking on the average Americans fascination with rural life and longing for nostalgia.  This is not a practice that we approve of as small farmers, and it still seems to be fooling many Americans today.  Apparently the marketing companies have realized something that we have discussed in past articles before, the average American has a longing to have some level of association with farms and living a life that is “viewed” as simpler (Remember our article on Farmville.)  From our standpoint this is capitalizing on a purer, artisanal, more sustainable way of practicing agriculture to sell products that many times are no longer produced in a sustainable way.  Everything from brand name cheese to brand name snack chips, crackers, bread, and frozen dinners try to capitalize on the small farm image.  Just go and pull out one of the bags of the “Green Giant” veggie entrees setting in your freezer.  I can almost guarantee that in the background of the packaging you’ll see of course the trademarked “Green Giant”, but you’ll also see a pristine farm field.  These products were probably produced on a several thousand acre vegetable farm, not necessarily a small family farm.  The same thing can be seen on many meat products with a picture of the happy pig or cow in a green pasture with an idyllic red barn in the background.  Sadly the pigs in most meat products have NEVER been outside for one day of their lives, while the cows spend their last months in small dirt lots standing in their own manure next to thousands of other cows.  Again, not the image anyone wants to see when picking up a package of bacon or a steak.

Another example, that aggravates the Melson clan is something we see each day.  In the DFW Metroplex have you noticed that numerous subdivisions are named after farms or rural settings?  Again, marketers in America know folks want a connection to the land, so they bestow names on housing developments and gated communities names such as “Oak Farms”, “Montgomery Farm”, “Stonebriar Ranch”, “Wilson Farms”, “Watters Creek”, “Hunters Ridge”, “Prairie Crossing”, and so on.  We think you probably get what we’re saying here.  Some of these subdivisions are actually named after the farms and families who used to work the ground now covered by houses. In our opinion a sad reminder of fertile farmland that will never be worked again–unless of course people living their find ways to grow some of their own food in small garden plots. Not only have marketers co-opted the rural feel of food, they’ve done their best to put a small farm/rural twist on places where almost the only thing growing is houses seeded in rows 3 feet apart almost as if they were corn.  Again, we know companies have to market, but they need to find a different approach that reflects reality rather than trying to conjure up  images of small farms that they in no way resemble.  Now, don’t get us wrong, more than likely many of these subdivisions have developed a strong sense of community and are wonderful places to live–but they are no longer farms or representations of real rural America.  If you do live in one of these communities, we encourage you to be creative in growing some of your own food, or even having a tiny flock of chickens for your own eggs, then you will really have a small taste of the joys of rural, farming life.  If these types of activities are not allowed then maybe you can encourage your home owners association or city council to reconsider the small, reasonable ways that people can be self sustainable even in a subdivision.  Don’t forget that no matter where you live buying from farmers and ranchers who actually have a farm, with or without the red barn, is not only better for you but shows that you are not fooled by the big companies advertising schemes.

As many of you readers know by now after almost two years of writing for “Living Natural First” we use these articles as a sort of “soapbox” of issues and ideas that wonder through our farming minds.  This is no different.  We’ve been trying to figure out how to approach this particular issue of “Co-opting the small farm and rural America” for months.  We hope that we’ve initiated a thought process that you will go through in your daily life as you look for products and services.  If you like the idea of small farms and rural America seek out those products that are truly from there, and where possible, grow your own.  This will of course take more time and effort than wondering through your local Tom Thumb or HEB and grabbing up the first name brand item that you see with the pretty packaging showing a red barn and farm house or a pristine field.  You’ll have to spend quality time with your family and friends purchasing products directly from the farmer, farm, or farmers market for example.  No the packaging may not be all shiny with a 256-color farm scene on the front, but you’ll have a really good idea of where your food is coming from while supporting small farms and a local economy instead of most of your dollar leaving the community and ending up at the headquarters of some food conglomerate 1000 miles from your home and family.  You’ll also have a good chance at an excellent food experience for your mind, body, and soul.  Farm On!

Written for Living Natural First Magazine

This week, Ellen and I were looking through a publication of the Noble Foundation (An organization in Oklahoma whose purpose is agricultural research and education.) and saw a picture of an agricultural field day in the 1950‘s.  The majority of the people attending were young men and women who where in there 40‘s or younger.  In contrast, we recently attended an agricultural extension service event where other than one large ranch that required the attendance of all of their hands we were 2 of maybe 4 people under the age of 60 attending.  We see this same trend on a regular basis with any agricultural event we attend, we are in the minority.  Even walking into the USDA Farm Service Agency in our county, we very rarely see any farmer other than us who is younger than 50.  These aren’t the first times that we’ve noticed this trend.  We’ve seen it numerous times over the past 10 years at funerals, family reunions, and agricultural events such as AgriLife Extension Field Days and work shops.  This kind of worries farmers like ourselves who are young 30-somethings.  The aging of rural America and particularly farmers and ranchers worries us.  It should worry you too!

Now you ask, “Why should an aging farm population worry me, the normal every day American?”  In one summarized answer, “This should worry you because without a youthful farm and rural American population to grow and process our food, fiber, and fuel, how can we as a growing American population sustain ourselves with food, clothing, shelter, and energy?  We won’t be able to, and this is a matter of sustaining a nation and national security.”

For the past 60 years or so, as farmers and ranchers worked the land, they encouraged their children to seek higher educations and leave the farm for work in the cities and suburbs because “farm work is just too hard” and “You don’t want to farm all your life and barely scrape by.” So many of the good minds left the land.  When this was coupled with the industrialists of the nation pushing for commercialized and mechanized agriculture, so that fewer folks were needed to raise food and fiber, it resulted in more people leaving the countryside.  Those displaced by heavy mechanization weren’t needed anymore and ended up going to the factories to build goods for companies.  Most of this began in the 1950s, and by the time the farm economic crisis of the 1980s rolled around, businesses, schools, and towns were withering all over rural America.  The result was a highly efficient depopulation of America’s countryside and the steady loss of highly productive farmlands, surrounding major metropolitan areas, for suburban expansion.  Next in this story we can factor in the loss of jobs that were sent overseas for cheap labor, which I believe in part contributed to the high unemployment rate that we are experiencing at this time in our nations history.  Hopefully this illustrates the problem that we are facing.

Simply put, America needs more young, smart, educated, industrious folks on the land now, and even more will be needed in the very near future.  These young folks need access to land so that they can start the new sustainable farms of America while repopulating the countryside.  These farms, varying in size from 10 acres to 1000 acres, could focus on feeding America in local systems and sending the surplus out of the country for trade.  The 20,000 acre crop farms or ranches of today tend to put too much land in one persons control for the most part, in our opinion.  We don’t have to feed the entire world on GMO corn and GMO soybeans.  Instead we need to be able to feed ourselves good wholesome foods like grass-fed beef, local honey, sustainably raised peaches, apples, spinach, lettuce, and potatoes – not overly processed foods from corn and soy, or preservative filled ammoniated meat.  We can then sell the excess on the world market, and teach others how to sustainably farm using multi-species systems in their own countries and environments.  Why are we trading American corn to China to in turn import Chinese broccoli?  Can we not grow enough broccoli here for our own consumption?  Don’t the Chinese need all the food they can raise to feed their very large population?   These are the questions that we should be asking every day.

To turn the tide in rural America and in our food, fiber, and fuel systems, we are going to have to start down a road that has several lanes like I-635 in Dallas, TX.  One, attracting young people back to the land is key.  Every Spring and Fall semester we give tours to college age Environmental Science majors from Austin College in Sherman, TX.  We try to emphasize during these tours the importance of sustainable farming and give a brief overview of what we are doing on our farm while covering the interesting aspects of our farm to see who might be interested.  Granted our farming system isn’t perfect, but we are trying to set a good example.  I can speak from experience, if you show young people how interesting and complex sustainable farming can be they truly show an interest in what we’re doing.  If in just these few hours we can generate genuine interest from college age students, imagine what could be done with hours of exposure or perhaps internships.  We’ve got to get young people interested and involved in the true real work of sustainable farming.  Education via farm tours, social media, publications, direct marketing, internships, and the like will be very important in getting young people interested.

Once we have them interested we’ll have to come up with ways to make land accessible to young folks.  This is key.  From our own personal experience, land access is a major problem.  Much of the land in our rural county is owned by aging folks who have come back to retire in the home county of their childhood.  Many are getting to the age that they no longer want to farm due to age or health or they have the land as a retirement investment and haven’t been farming to begin with.  Many of these land-owners would rather lease this property.  Somehow we have to get these folks to trust younger people today and believe in sustainable farming, soil rebuilding, and a local food system.  In our county we have found that many of these people are simply not interested in allowing young farmers and ranchers like ourselves to try something “different” with their land.  They would rather lease to someone who they now will spray, plow, plant, spray, and harvest their crop within certain times and with fairly predictable results using chemical fertilizers and pesticides.  Or, they would rather buy a small tractor and shred good grass down to keep pastures within the 2 inch length they have grown accustomed to on their former city lawns.  All of this is fine and every person has the right to do as they want with their own property, but if small farms and local foods are to be viable, we must find a way to open doors and fields (literally) of opportunity to other young people.  We’ve got to open the minds of landowners.

Showing younger people that you can and have the right to make a living from the land is key.  Niche farming that focuses on local markets like much of the growing organic, grass-fed, and holistic approaches allows farmers to make a living on much less than 20,000 acres.  Besides, when you invest much of your life’s earnings and time in land, equipment, and livestock, there is no legitimate reason an industrious person should not be able to make a living with that kind of investment.  A young (or old) person with an entreprenuing mindset should have the opportunity to start a successful sustainable farming enterprise.  Opportunity means having access to education, land, and/or capital.  Internships are growing in popularity which is great, but once those internships are completed, if there is no land or capital available then that education and experience is virtually useless.  In contrast, a person who has the necessary land, whether leased, shared, or purchased and who is invested in sustainable farming can do fairly well in the organic, grass-fed, and/or pastured agriculture if they can develop a customer base and get to markets.  The demand for this kind of food throughout Texas and the nation far exceeds the supply at this point in time. In order for this local food movement to become  a long lasting and successful part of our food system, young people must become involved.  If this is to happen then the mindset of those in rural and even urban America must change to be willing to trust and support young people with new ideas for agriculture and its products.

Young farmers and ranchers, a rarity today, are going to be absolutely necessary for food, fiber, and fuel security in America’s near future.  Hopefully, we have laid out here what will help start us down this road.  Getting a younger population back on the land and in the countryside will determine the future of our nation.  What do y’all plan to do about it?  We’ve demonstrated what we want to try to do in this article.  We’d love to hear comments, suggestions and ideas on this topic from you, our readers.  The more you support our kind of farming with your food and fiber dollars, the more you can make this type of agriculture a reality in our nations future.  Farm On!

For those of you who follow our monthly articles in Living Natural First, you already know about the first part of this article series.  For those of you who don’t we’d encourage you to find a back copy of the magazine from one of your friends or neighbors and catch up, plus you will find tons of other great information from all the other magazine contributors.  As for this month, we are picking up where we left off to finish discussing who Farmer John and Jane have to be on a daily basis.

7) Mechanic:  In any type of farming there is equipment, whether that is tractors, hay balers, or a simple wheelbarrow.  Guess what, it all breaks down and usually when it is needed the most.  When there is hay laying in a field with a storm coming up, or a crop that has to be planted while the soil is just right, broken down equipment can be a nightmare.  The bad part is that everyone in the area is usually doing the same thing we are at the same time.  This means that we are never the only ones with a broken baler that needs a part or a mechanic, half of the county needs parts and mechanics the same day.  This means learning to fix most things on our own–after we drive all over the surrounding 4 counties to gather the parts that no one store keeps in stock at the same place.  That alone is an article unto itself.  Once again this is where the patience comes in along with skill.  Large pieces of metal don’t seem to care much when you hit them or yell at them.  Although, it can make us feel better sometimes.  We have to know how to do all of the regular maintenance to prevent as many break downs as possible and then how to fix them when they break down anyway.  I think we have more parts manuals in our house than we do on grasses, forages, and pastures which is saying a lot since we have many on each topic.

8) Computer Tech and Marketing Guru:  In this day and age running a business requires knowing how to run a computer, having a website, and even being connected via social media.  This is one of our very least favorite parts of the business.  Most of us in farming would rather herd the sheep past the gate 300 times than be sitting in the house writing e-mails or reading the latest Facebook post.  This has become a very important part of our business, however.  Along with marketing which includes keeping up a web-site, our time on the computer and phone continues to grow.  Some people are better at this than others, but if we are going to direct market our products we have to spend time on these areas and make an effort to become proficient if not experts.  Good customer service is always a must in any good business.  Marketing has been a big learning experience for us and has become very important for our business.  Trying to run a farm and then write e-mails, update a website, contact customers, return phone calls, write articles, etc. etc. etc. takes a lot of our time and expertise.

9)Sanitation Manager: Unlike large confined animal operations, we don’t have huge piles of manure or waste on our farm.  This is wonderful for us, especially since we live right here on the farm with our animals.  We don’t have bad odors, massive fly populations, or huge dead zones.  We do have manure though that has to be managed just like everything else for the best results.  Our sheep and goats conveniently deposit their manure in perfect slow release fertilizer pellets, if only all animals were so obliging.  The cattle and horse leave their waste in piles that can encourage fly and parasite growth as well as create spots in the pastures that the animals won’t eat for a while.  The hogs are basically like a 300-500 pound dog so you can use your own imagination there.  In order to keep our pastures as sanitary and useful as possible we try to run a harrow over our fields periodically, which breaks up the large piles and spreads them more evenly across the pastures.  This aids in the fly and parasite larva control as well as spreading the fertilizer so that it can be efficiently used by the grasses and soil.  Pasture rotation also helps with this distribution issue.  We encourage high dung beetle and earthworm populations by minimizing our use of chemicals which can be damaging to these critters, allowing further integration of this manure into the soil profile for future use by the plant community on our farm.  Making sure that the barns are kept as clean as possible during the winter months when animals spend more time inside is also a sanitation task.  Even mucking out a trailer has its benefits for our farm’s soil.  On our farm manure isn’t waste, just another useful byproduct that has to be managed like everything else.

10) Self-taught Chef:  We don’t claim to actually be chefs (We do know several chefs, though.), more like really experienced grass fed and pastured meat cooks.  In order to teach our customers how to best cook our meat we have had to learn how to cook it ourselves.  This experience has taken a lot of trial and error including some ruined steaks and burnt roasts, but we have both learned a lot about cooking.  This allows us to help keep our customers from making as many mistakes as we have.  Also, this is very important for our business.  When people don’t know how to cook the meats we sell and end up with a tough steak or dry roast, they automatically think that it was bad meat.  By giving tips and suggestions when they make their purchase we hope to have a satisfied customer with an exceptional cooking and eating experience.  In addition to cooking our meats, we have to learn how to cook all of the vegetables we grow and how to save the excess for later.  There are a lot of good recipes and instructions on the internet and in cook books, but we have found that just like anything else, putting up food is a big learning process.  Luckily for us we have the perfect disposal system for our vegetable mistakes, hogs!  They don’t seem to care if the greens were blanched too long, the squash is a little burnt, or the okra is freezer burnt.  Our many dogs also appreciate our colossal meat cooking failures, happily for us this is now a very rare occurrence, something the dogs do miss.

11) Market Manager:  Being in the meat business along with our farming has required us to learn a great deal about cuts of meat.  I can’t say we ever cared much about the differences between a chuck and arm roast before we got into all of this, but we can now discuss most of the finer points if you care to listen.  Your perspective on an animal can certainly be changed when you begin to look at them and see so many steaks, x amount of roasts, and so many pounds of hamburger.  I guess we now have the perspective of Wylie Coyote when every time he looked at the Road Runner he saw a roasted piece of meat on a stick.  Not to say that we don’t care about our animals or see them only as a piece of meat, you would only have to come by and see our pet sheep, goat, and pig in the yard to realize that.  We’ve just had to develop an extensive amount of education on what our animals turn into in order to answer questions and sell our products. There is still a lot we have to learn, but we know one thing, our children will know exactly where that steak or roast came from, and it won’t be out of a grocery store meat case.

12) Accountant:  Much of the life of a farmer or rancher can boil down to this profession.  Whether it is determining an approximation of how much nutrients were taken off of a field or pasture by a particular crop or set of livestock and then calculating the approximate amount of lime, compost, compost tea, manure, or mineral or chemical fertilizer that needs to be re-applied; or determining the budget for next months living and farm expenses farmers have to be well versed in mathematical accounting.  Everything from determining seeding rates, calculating compost application rates, establishing pounds of gain for a group of calves, estimating expenses on a beef carcass for retail sales pricing, to income taxes takes lots of calculations.  Your math teacher was right, you will use math everyday, especially when farming or ranching.  We also like to think of ourselves in another sense of the word accountant.  As farmers we are all accountable to creation and how we manage our small piece that we are supposed to be stewarding.  As direct marketing meat producers who see many of our customers face to face on a weekly basis we are directly accountable to those customers in that they are purchasing a meat cut that has been raised and processed in a humane, respectful, responsible, healthful, and sustainable manner.

We hope that you have enjoyed our in-depth look at the roles a farmer or rancher may assume everyday.  We felt like the time was ripe to explain to our customers and readers what many folks around our great nation have to do in running their farms and ranches on a daily basis.  I’m sure some folks have never thought of the people that work the land in this way, but it isn’t very much of an exaggeration.  Although, all of these roles may not require a college degree they do require an extensive amount self education and continuing education.  This knowledge has to be gathered through years of listening and learning from others, possibly college courses, and lots of personal experience and mistakes.   Thus, the reason we are big fans of on-farm internships.  We’re trying to figure out how to put one of these together for our own farm so that we can get some extra help while passing on our knowledge base to a potential up-and-coming sustainable farmer.  If you know of anyone who has an interest in sustainable farming or ranching as a potential career, encourage them to contact us or a farm like ours and see what kinds of internships are available.   Heaven knows that we will need more young people involved in agriculture for the sake of good food and national security as currently over 40% of US farmers are over 55 years of age (see http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/demographics.html).  Personally, we know several fellows that are well above 65 near our hometown.  We are 33 and 26 respectively, so you can see the minority that we are currently in.  Ellen and I hope that we’ve been able to justly describe the roles of your local farmers and ranchers in an entertaining yet educational way.  So, the next time you see a local farmer or rancher let them know that you do respect their profession, recognizing they’re more than just a body in overalls.  Also, if you agree with sustainable farming ask if they would consider using sustainable and organic techniques if they aren’t already doing so.  Then finally, explain how you appreciate the job they do for you and our country.  I guarantee they’ll appreciate the complement.  Until next month, Farm On!

Many people view farming and ranching as a simplistic life that requires very little education.  Simply a menial job that requires a lot of labor and not a lot of brain power.  Those of you who live in a rural area or farm and ranch yourselves know that this is far from the truth.  Those of us who live on the land are far from simple country bumpkins who only know how to dig in the dirt.  Living on the land successfully takes education, determination, appreciation, patience, resources, and a lot of skills. Farmer John or Jane has to wear a lot of hats to get through the typical day, month, and year while operating a farming operation.  This is probably an incomplete list of the hats that we have come up with to wear, as farmers ourselves.  In the concern of space we are splitting this article into two parts.  As you will see farming requires a long list of educated skills.

1. Forage Specialist:  Before an animal ever sets foot on pasture we have to be able to determine if the grasses and other forages will be benefited or harmed by grazing.  This depends on the weather, the amount of forage growth, the amount of weed growth, and the overall health of the pasture.  We also need at least a rudimentary knowledge of plant identification as some plants can be poisonous at certain stages of growth and some plants are indicators of lacking nutrients or poor soil health.
2. Soil Specialist:  This goes hand in hand with the above.  We must know how to read the signs of the soil to determine soil health, potential erosion problems, and the presence or absence of important soil creatures.  We also have to know how and when to pull soil samples to find out specific nutrient deficiencies and how to best correct them without chemicals using the tools like manure, compost, or fish fertilizer that we have in our sustainable farming tool box.  I spend most of my time when walking looking at the ground for signs of dung beetles and earthworms.
3. Crop or Horticulture Specialist:  If your business is farming crops like wheat, oats, cotton, or planting a commercial garden, or even just a kitchen garden you’ve got to know the rhythms of the seasons.  You have to be skilled in how to prep the soil, what and when you need to plant, how to control pests, when and what to fertilize with, when a crop needs irrigated, how much to irrigate with, and you have to be good at selecting varieties of plants that are known to produce well in your soil type and climate.  These skills are necessary for every crop, fruit, and/or vegetable producer.  There have been times when we have spent hours researching forage varieties and vegetable varieties trying to select the ones that we thought would be the best for our farms growing conditions.  Sometimes we get it right, and sometimes it was just a bad experiment.  Some folks even lump forage, soil, and crop knowledge all together, and although we believe they are very closely related fields we think each deserves its own level of distinctions because of the complexities of each.
4. Animal Husbandry Expert:  In order to raise healthy animals with minimal use of chemicals and antibiotics we have to have an extensive knowledge of animal health in every species we raise.  This includes quickly noticing when something is beginning to go wrong with an animal rather than when it is too advanced to easily treat.  This also includes knowing when to call a vet, and when an animal is too injured to heal and should be humanely put out of their misery–that is the hardest part.  We have to know the signs of animals in heat (cows, ewes, does, sows, and mares.)  The signs of impending birth, and what to do in the rare case that the animal has problems giving birth.  One of the most important skills is knowing when to step in with a birthing animal or their young and when to leave them alone.  When we do have to step in this is where determination can come into play.  This year we had one calf who was born with a deformed leg that prevented him from being able to stand and nurse on his own.  We decided to try and save him which led to several days of fighting to teach him to eat out of a bottle.  This also included knowing how to tube feed him since that was what kept him going in those first few days.  Every day we would try to bottle feed him then eventually tube feed him what we couldn’t get him to take by mouth.  Finally we’d have to get him up and try to teach him how to stand and walk on three legs.  After the 4th or 5th day he learned how to stand and nurse on his own and has been getting along fine ever since, but it took a lot of time, patience, and determination to get him there.  Since we are in the business of preventing illness we also must know how to give vaccinations and other shots to all of our animals.
5. Fecal Matter Specialist  or Manure Reader:  That is right we said “Manure Reader”.  You can tell a lot by looking at what comes out the backend of an animal.  We are often surprised when we realize how much time we spend looking at poop.  The manure of the animals is one of the best indicators of their health and the quality of food they are receiving.  We won’t go into all of the details, but reading the signs of manure is a science in itself.  This is one of those things that many new visitors don’t seem to really appreciate as they are being given a tour through the pasture.  Hearing an excited “Ooh look at this cow patty!” from one of us or watching us dig around in a pile with a stick to find the dung beetles is somehow not the most exciting part of the farm visit for them. How fast the manure is incorporated into the soil is also an indicator of soil health and activity.
6. Animal Behavior Expert:  This one is especially important.  You can probably understand this if you have ever tried to determine the attitude of a sow with new piglets or had to move a flock of sheep to the barn.  Being able to use your psychic abilities to determine what they are thinking can mean the difference between a pleasant experience, a bite on the leg from a protective sow, or 300 trips around the pasture after the disappearing sheep flock.  This is something that many people under appreciate.  Of course, we aren’t actually suggesting that we have psychic powers, although sometimes it might look that way.  We just have experience and we pay attention.  For instance, pigs don’t really herd at all.  Just try to corral a group of pigs by “herding” them and watch them scatter to the four winds and then go their merry way.  Not a lot of herding instinct in the pig brain.  BUT, there is a lot of “I’m hungry and will go anywhere for food” in the pig brain.  Pigs can be the easiest animals in the world to move if they are slightly hungry, you are holding a feed bucket, and you can walk really fast.  Also, our sows aren’t aggressive unless they feel their piglets are threatened, at that point you can feel like you are in a bear’s cave, and they have teeth like one too.  When moving any of our animals, we have to make them think it was their idea to go where we want them.  Usually this means food, most of our animals will go to the moon and back for a bite of alfalfa or in the pigs’ case a watermelon or bucket of feed.  Sometimes food fails, usually with the sheep when they are full of grass and just not interested in coming to the barn.  When this happens if they have to be moved, then it becomes herding time.  Herding sheep I think requires the most finesse of any of the farm animals.  They have a wonderful herding instinct which is great when they get headed in the right direction, but also means that if one breaks off in the wrong direction they are just as likely to follow that way too.  Sheep also don’t like to be crowded.  They really like to think it was their idea, which means knowing how close to get to keep them moving but not make them think they are being moved.  It can be lots of fun sometimes when they decide to turn in the gate on the first pass, but it can also be one of the most frustrating and maddening experiences ever when they run past it 10 times.  If you think you might want to raise animals come out to our farm on a day in August, and get the herd of sheep up by yourself.  You will find out really quick if you have the patience to work with animals every day or not.

As you are no doubt noticing, farming takes a lot of biological, chemical, and as you will see in Part 2 of this article mechanical and sociological know-how.  Sustainable farming is a very ornate orchestra of life and death.  We’re not just feeble minded country bumpkins.  Farming and ranching requires a very complicated set of knowledge and skills to do it right.  So respect your farmer or rancher, yourself if you are a farmer or rancher, your neighbor, and/or your local food producer for what you or they are doing.  Stay tuned for Part 2 of this article and remember to “Farm On”.

As I continue my series on “Going Local”, I’ve come to one of the questions many of us in the local food and economy movement get asked by skeptics a lot. The question is, “Is going local expensive”? This question cannot necessarily easily be answered in a short response, but the general consensus from the few studies that have been done so far is, “Not necessarily.” I will attempt to explain a reasoning over the next several paragraphs so that you can have an educated argument with the skeptics in your life about “Going Local”.

I’m sure many folks have heard the argument being made that “Going Local”, as in supporting a local food and local economy system, is just too expensive and the benefits just don’t outweigh the costs. However, most folks don’t realize that the current system is actually more expensive than a local system could be because of all the hidden costs, and the money just doesn’t stay local. We just don’t factor in all of the subsidies (provided by our taxes), fuel costs, environmental issues/costs, and quality costs in our current system when we’re at the grocery store buying a bag of 99 cent potato chips. Many folks want to argue with how expensive living locally is instead of realizing all of the benefits that it can provide for a local economy, while allowing for folks to have more control over their lives and environment. My current philosophy on “Going Local” is that all of our population should have access to good healthy food and responsibly produced energy that is marketed at a producer sustaining, yet fair price. “Going Local” should also create local jobs that pay a living wage for those who aren’t afraid of hard rewarding work, and put more people back to working on and producing from the land.

Since we are personally in the grass-fed and pastured meats business, I have folks from time to time that want to argue about the price of our products such as ground beef. We sell our ground beef, which is 90% lean and 10% fat with nothing else added and sourced from grass-fed cattle that we know where they have been and how they’ve been treated since birth, for $3.99 per pound. For the most part our demand exceeds our supply, but I still have people that tell me this is too expensive for ground beef. I’ve decided to quit arguing with these folks, because even if I tell them what I just divulged to you while explaining that there isn’t a huge distribution system between my beef and their hands, that their purchase is helping keep a sustainable farmer in business, that our livestock are processed in small batches by low volume processors, and that I can just about tell them exactly which steer or heifer that they are consuming, they still don’t believe our product is worth this small premium. There are some people who have a long way to go in understanding living locally, and some folks may not ever.

In a recent study finished by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Iowa in December 2009, they found that when only market cost was looked at for local vs. non-local fresh vegetables, non-local fresh vegetables were more expensive than local fresh vegetables. The local veggies averaged $1.25 per pound while non-local veggies averaged $1.39 per pound. That is a difference of $0.14 per pound. So this study basically says that “Going Local” with vegetables can be cheaper than non-local vegetables. So the argument that China can grow vegetables cheaper than can be done here begins to not hold as much water. I still can’t visuallize how this could be when just looking at market cost only, but certainly not with all the other hidden costs such as fuel, cheap labor, etc. that should be factored in. This study can be accessed online at http;//www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/prices.html if you would like to look into it more.

To complete a good argument outside of just money on “Going Local”, I think you have to mention the logical other benefits. Many of these are becoming more and more desired by the general public. Connecting people directly with the land and their food is a good thing. It helps them earn respect for their food, fiber, and fuel, and respect for the people who were involved in producing it. Also, who can argue against the need and desire to have clean air, clean water, and healthy living soil. Regardless of where you stand on “Climate Change” how can you consciously argue against having these three things for yourself, your kids, your friends, and your grandkids. Having access to good, nutritious, un-adulterated food is a choice, but it can’t be a choice if it isn’t given a fair playing field or isn’t available. I personally think that having this access should be a right, whether you choose to exercise that right is your decision or choice, just like voting. Allowing folks to have access to the ability to achieve good health is necessary, and has the potential to save Americans millions of dollars each year. I believe that several of the ailments that we are currently facing as a problem nation-wide have been caused by an unhealthy food system, but I’ll save that for another argument and another time.

As we look at the task before us, and what it will take to go local, not everything today is stacked against us. We actually have many things working towards our favor. All around us, Creation is trying to tell us that taking care of It and “Going Local” is the right thing to do. It isn’t about being a recluse, it is about the local environment taking care of a majority of peoples local needs. This applies whether you live in Texas, Maine, Brazil, or China for that matter. More and more producers and consumers are coming together in organizations like Slow Food (see www.slowfoodusa.org), Local Harvest (see www.localharvest.org), Texoma Core and their Texoma Grown Directory (see www.texomacore.org/Texoma-Grown-Directory.html), and the Organic Consumers Association (see www.organicconsumers.org) to network and promote the idea of “Going Local”. If you are a producer like me, local, quality products speak for themselves. “Going Local” is catching on in mainstream media and film as many people begin to see the value of this concept instead of worrying about how Greece’s Treasury woes are going to affect our economy in Texas. When we start discussing such a situation we’ve become too dependent and inter-connected. The internet has exploded with volumes of websites that include farmer’s markets, online books, articles, recipes, directories, on-line farm tours, how-to’s on gardening, how-to’s on converting your diesel truck to veggie oil, and the like. Never in our nations history has the time been so primed for a grass-roots movement like “Going Local”.

This article is the last in my series on “Going Local”. I will return to my regular information filled soapbox style articles in July. I’m glad that the publisher of this magazine has given me the opportunity to express myself in words and thought over the last year-and-a-half. I look forward to writing for this audience for many more months and years to come. I hope that you, the reader, get as much out of reading my thoughts as I do generating them. Please don’t hesitate to let me know what you think.

I want to close this article series with a few summarizing comments from a practical over-educated farm boy. If we are serious about taking the high road and changing our region, state, and country to a beneficial more locally based system, I think the following statements will be key. We should stand up for our farms, consumer choice, and “Going Local”, while being tactful, fact based, organized, and firm. We have to promote an environment that encourages thinking outside the box, house, yard, or pasture. We must encourage opportunities for folks to have choices and opportunities. We have to be mindful of defining local and how it is self-regulated and/or government regulated. Remember “local” has varying definitions, and it depends on the product. We must support like-minded groups and individuals, while encouraging networks. We should listen with an open mind to all thoughts and comments, whether good or bad. We should promote the harvest and gleaning of all relevant and useful information and apply it in our lives and businesses. We live in a time where access to information is the most free and easy to access as any other time in history. We should never loose site of actual costs and actual affordability. We should always try to be in some state of education, whether that is educating ourselves or teaching others. Finally, one of the things that I think will be most important in this movement is getting young people involved early, now, and often. Farmers aren’t getting any younger.

Until July, Farm On and Get Local!

By now many of you are following along with my series of articles about “Going Local”. If you haven’t been, try to find a back issue of LNF, or e-mail me and I’ll shoot you a copy of my previous writings. So far we’ve discussed the definitions in the “Going Local” movement, and we’ve talked about the importance of food-sheds. (No, not the place where you keep your pickles.). Now we’re going to move into discussing the problems that we will run into, and ways that I see of approaching these problems on the way to “Going Local”. I gleaned these problems from discussions and observations at the Texas Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association (TOFGA) annual Conference back in January in San Marcos, Texas.

Time after time as we turn on the nightly, or in this internet age, the minute-by-minute news we keep hearing about climate change, those on the left saying how much of the environment is doomed by this phenomena, and those on the right saying that it is all a bunch of bull. Regardless of which camp you are in my view is that one of the safest ways to argue organic, sustainable, and local food production is to point out the fact that we all want clean air, clean water, clean lively soil, and clean food. Honestly, who can argue with that. I mean come on, is someone who just likes to argue for the sake of arguing going to say, “No to clean stuff. I love to breath tainted air that I can see, drink water the color of molasses, let my kids play on arsenic laced soil, and eat E. coli contaminated meat.” I don’t really think so. Hopefully this statement makes my point, you basically can’t argue against these four cleans, and this is the message sustainable, organic agriculture has got to put forth to win the battle of concepts and words.

At the TOFGA meeting I noted that several folks mentioned that we as a population need to accept that we do have a limited supply of most resources and that we need to be stewards of these resources. The only resources that aren’t necessarily limited are the sun, wind, and in some cases nuclear (Limited by how it is used and the potential risks such as meltdowns and waste disposal. When handled and recycled correctly, such as some Western European countries like France do, there is minimal waste produced for disposal. Much of it is refined back to a usable less harmful form.) along with several other elements that are abundantly available in our surroundings. Thus, resource stewardship is a must, and the only way that we can achieve the proper level of stewardship is to promote common sense and science-based organic, sustainable, and local agriculture. We have to learn to be stewards of our finite resources, while learning how to responsibly use the more available energy sources. Organic may not be the complete entire answer,, but it is part of the answer. Diversifying our energy use from mainly fossil fuel to a mixed resource base is probably going to be key to our modern society over the next 25 to 50 years, regardless of your stance on climate change. Wind and solar power will definitely be key players in this effort. Much like food production, it just makes sense for national security and economic reasons to produce much if not all of your own energy if you have the ways and/or means to do it in a sustainable manner.

From regulations to mandates sometimes our government bureaucracy seems to get out of control. Case in point, the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), the system proposed by USDA to identify and track all livestock including poultry, exotics, and perhaps someday dogs throughout their lives in a supposed effort to get a handle on currently “rampant” animal diseases. This personal rights invasive, very costly proposed system has been defeated in its current proposed from, but that isn’t the end of this proposed rediculous set of regulations that could have impacted the US’s entire food and agricultural economic system. This is just one of the sets of bad law and regulation proposed by our elected government that has come down the pike in recent years. We as farmers and food consumers are going to have to be on our toes. No longer can we just setback and let Washington or Austin do their things, because lobby groups and special interests who don’t have our interests in mind are going to be influencing law and policy for the forseeable future. If we aren’t involved to let our voices be heard and to keep things in check, we could be left in some very tight corners. We’ve got to be proactive like the folks at FARFA, Center for Rural Affairs, the Organic Trade Association, and R-Calf are doing. Go ahead and look up these organizations on the web, get involved, and become a member if you can. This will help, in most cases, our advance towards a sustainable food system.

Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs, are causing and will cause issues and problems with farming and ranching organically/sustainably. Most of these crops are developed for a specific companies interests, and these companies have had the laws written completely in their favor. Thus, these GMO crops are going to make it harder and harder to farm organically and sustainably unless the laws get changed. Right now farmers are completely responsible for keeping GMO crops out of their non-GMO crops regardless of where the potential contamination comes from. Why aren’t the companies responsible for this? They are the ones who released their GMO for planting, and why is it that they can own the gene and thereby the crop wherever it shows up? This kind of insane, in my opinion, lack of regulation has to be saddled. Also, grass-fed livestock producers aren’t going to be left out of this mess. Alfalfa, an open pollinated plant species, is a key source of non-GMO feed and protein supplementation for many grass-fed livestock producers in times of poor quality forage or low availability of forage. Certain companies have GMO alfalfa lines ready to go into commercial production if the courts, where the argument/case is now, allow it. If this gets OK’d, grass-fed livestock producers along with non-GMO and organic alfalfa producers will be pushed into a corner, with little alternative. GMOs deserve heavy regulation, at the least, to minimize contamination of farmers fields who don’t use GMOs and to minimize contamination of our food supply. Let your voices be heard on this issue.

It was noted several times at TOFGA that it seems like too many of the organizations out their working towards sustainability and a responsible food system/economy each have their own direction. It seems they have a hard time cooperating and having a unified voice in food, farm, and environmental policy. In other words disorganization is a problem. Also, as farmers have always tended to be an independent bunch, it is hard to get us organized and cohesively working together. For a sustainable food system and economy to develop we’ve got to work to cooperate, eliminate overlap and disorganization, and pool our resources as sustainable farmers and consumers. Unifying our voice through networking and some dependence would probably benefit our cause and produce a louder voice for sustainability that can’t just be ignored anymore. We also must be presenting the consuming public with factual and unified answers to their questions. One group of folks saying one thing to the public that may not be factual can hurt our entire movement. The organizations out there that are working the hardest to be organic nay-sayers aren’t disorganized with their voice or finances, and we can’t afford to be any longer.

Many of us in the sustainable farming and food movement are very passionate about what we believe, which most of the time is wonderful! However, we also have to reallize that this is a new concept for a lot of folks. Sometimes being over-zealous or extreme and backing up arguments with rumor or here-say instead of facts can get our people and our cause mislabeled as junk and in-turn we become ignored because we’re considered the fringe. This is not a good position to be in, and I would caution everyone who believes in sustainable food and farming to be passionate yet tempered, especially when reaching out to newbies, conventional agricultural advisors, and the mainstream system. Develop less offensive and preferably data backed ways to tell folks about why what we’re trying to do is better for clean air, clean water, productive, alive soil, and clean food.

The above scenario falls right into my next discussion on our current agricultural/food education system. The current system in place, is that man knows best for everything and that we must constantly fight against nature. The organic/sustainable mindset is that we must read the natural systems and figure out ways to work with them to achieve our goals, not against them. Many professionals in the agricultural/food education and research system have labeled farmers like myself as being a little cooky and on the fringe. This may be because of the way they have been approached in the past, their personal experiences, and the ingrained teachings of the industrial system. If we want our agricultural/food education and research system to take organics and sustainability seriously, we are going to have to approach them in a unified yet non-offensive manner and immerse them in our farms and our economics so that they can see the consumer side of our farming while seeing the benefits on our farms. They need to be politely pulled out of their industrial cocoon, and shown what is happening outside those four walls that they’ve been cooped up in while performing industrial agriculture funded research and teaching our children to questionably make a living. In other words, let’s quit faulting these guys and gals for making a living for themselves, and instead show them ground zero and see if that gets their attention. Getting our agricultural/food education and research system to view our system of food and agriculture as a viable system will go a long way in our cause for sustainable and organic agriculture and family farming.

I guess at some point I’ve got to shut this article down. I could probably write about some these issues in much more detail, but for the interest of time and for the sake of avoiding boredom I think summaries work best. The final cluster of problems facing the organic/sustainable food system ties in with many of these that I’ve just mentioned. Having the funding to support research on this kind of system will eventually produce data based results that will probably support many of the things we are seeing, while not supporting some practices. We need this to happen. This is where public funding for research instead of funding from companies could be a real benefit. As I’ve already discussed moving farmers, researchers, teachers, and consumers towards a different mindset will do wonders for our cause. It is going to take time, effort, and tactfulness. Unifying ourselves as organic/sustainable farmers and consumers with voices based on facts and good data are key to standing up to the tug-of-war with the mainstream farm and food lobby for our lawmakers and the general consumers ear. Come on all of you farmers and consumers! Let’s face it, this is about taking care of Creation, making a responsible living, and providing the consumer with a healthy alternative food/health/economic system. I’m fired up, are you? Farm On!

As many of you know, and some of you may not, our family farm is located in the DFW Metroplex Food Shed. As I mentioned in the March article a food shed can be defined as a geographic zone around a particular population center that has the potential to or does supply a percentage of that populations’ food. The DFW area is currently estimated to contain around 6.3 million people, and I can’t think of a one of them that doesn’t eat and require food for nourishment. I have yet to meet a photosynthetic person. My point is that many counties surrounding the DFW Metroplex are rural, agricultural counties. In my home county, Fannin County, the 2006 Agricultural income according to the Agricultural Statistics Service was $67.5 million dollars making it the largest industry in the county. However, currently very few of the farms within the counties surrounding the DFW Metropolitan Area provide food directly to the consumers in their counties or to DFW. This is probably true for all of the more than 20 areas classified as metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) by the US Census Bureau in the State of Texas. This is something that has the potential to change, and probably will change as America and Texas decide that “Going Local” is important. Bare with me as I try to explain the concept of food sheds and food miles as it pertains to producers and consumers here in Texas.

The average every-day American currently eats food on a daily basis that has traveled around 1500 miles, aka food miles. This kind of shipping is probably not good for long-term sustainability. Shipping will become more and more expensive as fossil fuel prices continue to rise unless a practical and good yielding energy substitute comes into play. Cutting fuel consumption in the entire food chain, will help in making our society and economy more sustainable. The whole concept of a food shed for a particular metro area hinges on these facts, and encourages local food production and marketing to provide quality, and hopefully affordable locally grown and made food products for a particular population. Development of farmer-direct-to-consumer infrastructure will play a huge role in how this new style (actually old style) of food system will play out as more and more folks become concerned about food, where it is coming from, how it is raised, how sustainable is its production and consumption, and how healthy it is for them. To get a better visualization of food miles see an example calculation for Canadian food miles at http://www.fallsbrookcentre.ca/cgi-bin/calculate.pl or for calculating your meal’s carbon foot-print see http://www.eatlowcarbon.org/.

The Dallas/Fort-Worth (DFW) metropolitan area consists of 12 counties in North Central Texas. They are in no particular order Johnston, Ellis, Wise, Parker, Tarrant, Denton, Dallas, Collin, Hunt, Rockwall, Kaufman, and Delta Counties. Some locations in these counties could actually be considered food deserts, which means minimal nutritious food is produced locally or is available in grocery stores. Grocery stores are virtually non-existent in some inner city and rural areas. Many of these counties would also be included as part of the DFW Food Shed because they do have the capability due to soil type and some available land to produce food. However, the main focus that I’m trying to relay here is the ring of counties just outside of the ones mentioned above which, like my home county of Fannin, are rural, heavy agriculturally based, and have land potential to produce copious amounts of health, local, and organic food for the DFW area.

These statements can probably be made for the 24 other metropolitan areas of Texas including the 5 county region in and around Austin, the 8 county region in and around San Antonio, the 10 county region in and around Houston, the 3 county region in and around Corpus Christi, the 1 county region in and around Tyler, the 4 county region in and around Amarillo, and all the other regions that I’m leaving out. All of this information can be found at www.wikipedia.org or with the US Census Bureau. These areas have huge potential for producers and consumers. I think Texas is about 5 years behind the East and West coasts in the local food movement. So hold on to those 10-gallon hats, because we’re just getting started. I see so much untapped potential in all of our communities, if we can just continue to keep people interested and motivated.

As an example, 5 years ago there were probably no more than 5 Farmers’ Markets in the DFW Metro area, today I have been able to reference over 15. This just shows the demand and how communities are clamoring to “Go Local” for a variety of reasons including revitalization, economic, social, health. I know if you are a direct-marketing farmer like me you might not want everyone knowing about the availability of business within the market. However, the more young folks like myself, or old folks for that matter, that are out there making a living from the land by producing good food, fiber, and fuel, the better off our country will be. So I welcome competition. The market is growing and I don’t think that it will be saturated for some time. If you are a consumer wanting access to locally grown food, support the farmers, the farmers’ markets, and other marketing venues like buyers clubs or CSAs, while encouraging your families, friends, and neighbors to to do the same.

Just think of how much impact developing local food, fiber, and fuel systems to assist in feeding, clothing, and fueling their respective food sheds could have, especially in this economic climate. More farmers and ranchers could actually make a living from the land. Sustainability could permeate society, and small towns could return to being hubs of commerce, good jobs, and activity. Many of our rural areas could retain younger generations due to the positive impact on the local economy in relation to money and jobs. Suburban and urban populations could become reconnected to the land, grow in respect for their rural neighbors and have access to local, healthy sources for food, fiber, and fuel. According to the 2007 USDA Ag Census US Data, farm numbers increased by 3.6% farmed acres decreased slightly by 1.7%, market value of products increased dramatically by 47.8% probably due to corn-based ethanol and possibly organics, and alarmingly the number of full time farmers declined by 13% nationwide. Some of the full time farmer decline can probably be attributed to several things including farm consolidation, financing, retirement, and old age attrition. If we have this kind of farmer decline in the face close to record market value it concerns me. Who is going to raise our food in the future if we don’t get younger generations interested in farming? We need to be able to show them that a living can probably be made in farming if your mind is open to doing the alternative things that are desired by a growing public demand, and that you don’t have to be a mega-farmer or a gentlemen farmer with another high-paying professional day job to make a living on the land.

Did you know that for every dollar spent in a local business it turns over three times in that community before it leaves town? So for every $1000 spent in the local economy, it actually ends up being $3000. What a concept and an impact. Developing food sheds are just another grassroots example of a way to help solve our countries economic woes from the farm up not Washington D.C. down.

As is being noted in my series of articles, America must change it’s mindset towards food, embrace the ideas of local and sustainable, support local farmers and ranchers, and encourage young folks to seek out one of the most noble professions I can think of “working with the land and stewarding Creation.” With documentaries like “Food Inc.” and Oprah’s praise of a changing food system, I think that the cart has begun to swiftly roll down the right track. One of the greatest things a farmer can do in this current day and age to make a positive impact on America is to start using organic and sustainable practices, and make an effort to direct market products in some way either directly or through a co-op or business. One of the greatest things a food consumer can do in this day and age to make a positive impact on America is to support those farmers and ranchers. Truly “Going Green” will require “Going Local”. Besides it is just the responsible and patriotic thing to do whether you are American, Canadian, Argentinian, Indian, or English. Farm on!