Northern Farmer

It has rained here all day non stop, and we’ll take it. Changed clothes three times already today, soaked to the skin and all mudded up. But so far so good with the calving, no disasters. Almost feels strange not working full bore outside today, but when that sun comes out someday soon, the grass is going to explode with growth. Even the crop of quack grass in the expanded garden looks really healthy, not that I’m bragging about that! As soon as it dries up a bit we’ll have to get out there quick. Now, I suppose I could have sprayed it earlier with roundup herbicide like a good modern person should, we’re told, but naw, couldn’t do that. I want to eat out of the garden.

That’s like them GMO soybean, I read they’re pretty good at killing second generation rats in tests around the world. Of course in this country it’s different. Here they’re safe, it’s only hazardous in the rest of the world. Them thinkers have that all figured out for us so we can be happy and content, knowing we’re helping the corporation make enough profits to keep our lawmakers on the payroll. I hear the cost of living is pretty high in the D.C. area, so a little padding in the pocket books of our lawmakers is sure to help them and their families at least live above poverty levels. It’s the least we can do for them. Remember, they are giving up everything to represent us and help us. You can be sure of that.

But the trouble with them GMO beans as far as my rat killing plans go is that when given a choice the rats won’t touch them. I figured it would be a cheaper poison. Now, they’ll scarf up regular soybeans and thrive, but won’t touch GMO beans unless absolutely forced to. I must admit, my respect for the common sense in a rat just jumped a notch or two. That’s like about ten years ago around here when we were still farming “modern”. The seed corn salesman convinced us to plant BT corn. That’s the kind that kills the insect pests around it, you know, kinda a built in pesticide, neat huh. A death plant. We were raising a lot of pigs then, and we had it down to an art. It took about three months to get them from forty pounds to two hundred forty pounds. Everything was working like clockwork until we hit the BT corn. Everything stalled out as far as growth. It would take an average of four to six weeks longer to get them to two forty. An absolute disaster, screwed everything up around here. We were lucky enough to be able to sell the rest of it to get rid of it off the farm. Never will I forget that. That was one of the many key things that caught my attention as far as the all out lies of big ag.

When a person gets hit with things like that it goes in deep. You wake up fast. Something’s wrong! What are they telling us? Then a person starts to dig deeper into the deception and more and more comes to light. The modern system is plump full of deception. I don’t know if anyone remembers the talk of how the American farmer feeds the world. Well, setting the record straight, we’re a net importer of food now. Another is how ethanol is going to relieve the gas crunch, propaganda if I ever heard it. It takes more energy to make modern ethanol then the energy received when you consider the fossil fuels to raise and fertilize the dead lands that can’t hardly produce a weed anymore because they’re mined out.

What big ag doesn’t like to talk about is independent farmers that raise healthy food. Remember, big ag is also big pharmaceutical, interesting how that all works. Don’t worry about eating our poison; we’ll sell you a pill! That should take care of it. Got a person coming or going, and in today’s society few give a rip. It’s just society looking in the mirror saying me, me, me. I wonder what the average person would think if they even had the slightest idea how their food supply is so vulnerable to crisis. I wonder if they realize the tremendous amount of energy wasted producing it, transporting it, all vulnerable to the slightest disaster. But many say, they’ll figure it out, I’m not worried, they’ll figure it out. Just like energy, they’ll figure it out. I wonder if people would be more interested in having a small garden if they knew reality. Too often I’ve heard people say, “who cares, I’ll be dead by then”. Now that’s a fine way to look at your children’s future. And unless you figure on dying pretty darn quick I wouldn’t be too confident.

It’s sometimes hard to write these things because more than likely I’ll just be classified as some sort of nut. I’m not talking about gloom and doom when I write this. I’m talking about making some common sense changes in lifestyle so a person and their family can adjust to change, a change that will come sooner or later. One thing that I’ve been studying is how Cuba has changed in the last fifteen years or so. When the Soviet Union collapsed Cuba was left high and dry without any source of energy. Experts in this country were predicting that countries collapse. What Cuba did was something else. They reinstituted private land ownership so that small farmers could take a hold of their own destiny. They sponsored government education, educating the private farmers in organic production methods, and they turned to animal power to till the organically farmed land. They merged the modern organic knowledge with renewable animal power and now have a thriving agriculture sector. Cuba never fell as many were predicting it would. They realized that food production was the number one goal and they achieved it. And with it they returned to private farms and farmers, families farming raising healthy foods. The old hard line communists had to concede and the people achieved more freedom. It’s funny how this works with any form of government, when food production is a priority, freedom strengthens. This country is no different, the founding fathers knew agriculture was and is the key to freedom. The free farmers have a set of standards that’s much different than what the industrial world wants to program society with. They knew it over two hundred years ago and it still stands. Someday it will turn back to that here, because there will be no other choice. Without the free farmers there will be no society.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 29th, 2006 at 5:50 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.