Northern Farmer

So I found out today I’m a radical. Old mind my own business me.

Rachel and I were doing some light fence tune ups this afternoon that involves riding around in my rusty but trusty old Chevy pickup. On the way out to the first pasture we stopped at the mailbox and picked up the normal pile of free, whether you want em or not, farm publications. At least they could make them out of softer paper so they could be used in an outhouse. We then took off for the pasture to plug a low spot under the fence where some calves were getting out all the time. It’s not much problem really with calves getting out. They don’t go anywhere because when they want milk they’re right back in, one way or another. But sometimes I have visions of them nice black angus calves standing in the middle of the road at night causing an accident, so we try to make the fences as good as possible.

As we drove down the road Rachel was paging through a free beef magazine that I don’t want and reading a few things out load.Then she read, “Advocates for banning the farmer’s use of antibiotics argue their interests lie only in guarding human drugs’ effectiveness. Food consumers who buy that theory may not realize they’re also indirectly supporting a long list of more radical causes.”

We got to the pasture gate and Rachels job is gate opener as I drive through, so as she went out I had to take a look at that article. I’ve been noticing this trend the last few years in the ag publications, where if your not towing the line with corporate ag your being branded a radical.Back to the article, it goes on how all these radical groups, such as family farming organizations, are trying to scare consumers, and how good it is to feed antibiotics and hormones so we can feed a hungry world, etc. Sometimes I can’t believe what I read anymore!

One of my own rules in life is that I would never raise anything to sell that wasn’t good enough for myself or my family to eat. We’ve never used antibiotics in the feed or water and have never used any type of hormones….ever! Most of our cattle are still sold on the open market with it known how they’ve been raised and the premiums are large. And as it said further down in the article, I’m a radical.

I hardly watch any TV anymore, but once in a great while I watch a movie on tape. It costs a dollar for five days rental. One of my favorites was “The Patriot”. It’s getting to where this is starting to remind me of that movie. A family farmer can mind his own business, be loyal to his country, cause no trouble with anything and be branded “Radical”. Just because we don’t march in step with corporate ag. But with the way things are going, being branded as such makes me proud.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 22nd, 2005 at 9:48 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.