Northern Farmer

Busy around this place the last few days. The weather has switched from blue skies and beautiful to a kind of a pea soup. Cloudy with warm air that makes fog and mist. But work has to be done and this weather is giving us an opportunity to clean the calf barns. The manure pack is about two and a half feet thick and it’s getting a little difficult trying to open and close gates. The fields are froze and it’s easy driving on them and the manure in the barns is unthawed so we have the perfect combination to do some midwinter cleaning before we go into another deep freeze. We should be done tomorrow and that should hold us till a March thaw.

The Christmas weekend was wonderful in every way, at home, at church, and last night we even took in a movie in town. That’s the first one in over two years that I went to and we had a dandy time. Even hauled some of our girl’s friends to it. By the time we got home it was past ten and it was a little rough getting up this morning at the regular time. With luck we can hit the hay at our normal time this evening.

This is the last week a neighborhood co-op will be independent. I was reading their flyer that they sent a few days ago all written by the big boys that took it over. I had a good belly laugh when I read that every farm is going to be assigned an expert that’s going to manage every acre and every animal on the farms he is assigned to. Now to me this is truly funny. Oh yeh! They’re going to come and “show” us how to run this place. Get back in lockstep with corporate ag. You bet! I figure the first thing they’d say is the way we’re doing it now is impossible to make a living with. They’ll take us down the golden path into the corporate promised land alright. In this area I, was looking in the paper the other day, they have an ad for some farm expert who’ll help with all the day to day decisions on your farm. We’ll heck, I know the guy. He went belly up on his farm and now he wants to share his expertise with all. You do gotta admire some of these folks for being persistence. They could have chosen some job other than being a farming guru. But I’ll be a heretic and not follow these jokers. I’ve seen em come and go, I’ve seen their followers come and go. And we’re still here as are many others that laugh these folks off the farm.

Now at another co-op, the independent one that I mentioned a while back things are totally the opposite. They provide what we need. They don’t push anything. Out here in the country the talk is that the big ag co-op won’t last three years before they have to close their doors. Fine with me and I wish them well when they leave. And don’t hurry back. It would be nice to see a vibrant countryside again, it’s just like keeping an animal healthy, you gotta get rid of the parasites. I’m sure not going to feed them bloodsuckers.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 27th, 2005 at 8:29 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.