Change Isn’t Easy
June 27th, 2005 by Northern FarmerChange is hard sometimes, more so after decades of doing it a certain way. After the better part of a lifetime farming conventional, getting away from industrial agriculture is not quite as easy as imagined.First the land, it’s mined out a long time ago. The only things making the plants grow are petroleum based products from big industry. The crops look good but you’d better keep feeding them their drugs. Take away the drugs and you have very little or nothing. And second, the farmers mind. Total brainwashing from every angle imaginable.Ag newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, universities, government, and the list goes on.Have that pounded into your mind for years and years. The farmer reads little bits about different ways of farming but it’s scoffed off by the ag media.The promises made over the last few decades that someday we would feed the world and farming would be great, we just would need more trade agreements.Today I received 3 different ag magazines that I don’t want. And they keep on coming. To take a farm and make it sustainable and still make a living is not the fastest and simplist thing in the world to do. But it’s being done despite all the brainwashing. It’s safe to say that on this farm we’re around 90% free of agribusiness compared to ten years ago. The land is coming alive, I’m happier, and we’re starting to make a living again like years ago in farming. And the most important part, trust in the LORD.
June 27th, 2005 at 11:33 pm
Like your blog. I grew up near Milaca and now homestead in Central Indiana…
Thanks for adding to the web!
JM
June 28th, 2005 at 4:34 am
Thanks so much for stopping by! I can call Milaca local because it’s within an hours drive or so. We live around 35 miles NW of St Cloud.
Tom
June 29th, 2005 at 7:56 am
Tom
Just noticed the Small Farm Journal link! I didn’t know they had a website. My hoof trimmer gave me some old copies of it last year and I’m still reading them. Great stuff.