Northern Farmer

It’s been a while since I’ve been on here but the results are all the spring work is pretty well done and over with and there was plenty of it. Dry here with all the upper Midwest rains missing us entirely, sometimes it gets a person a little down but that’s the way it is in this life. Some rains got fairly close but just went every way possible except here. Grass is already turning brown here and there so we’ll see what kind of a year this ends up to being.

I’ve been also gathering information on a subject that’s dear to my heart and that’s the subject of revival in the church. A truly awesome subject and I have just posted a video I found about the revivals around a hundred years ago. I don’t care what side of the fence a person is riding denominational wise, this should hit deep.

Last week or so I received a letter from Brent R, a regular reader and commenter here with a copy of some publications on rotational grazing and the like from way back in the 1930s. From the looks of things they already had a lot of it all figured out back then. Thanks Brent! I do want to tell you that when I have time I “will” try and do something with what you sent here.

There, that should catch me up a bit here on this Sunday evening. I will apologize about not having hardly anything to say this evening, drought mode you know. Will it ever end? Year after year this thing wants to hang on. Just this past Thursday was the first time since last July I didn’t feed cows and I’m wondering how long that’ll last. Sure is nice though just having some chicken chores, slop the hogs, feed the bulls and that’s about it. All done with morning chores around 8 in the morning. It’s a strange feeling not feeding all them bovines! But the latest news around here is that all of our product has sold out for the season. All the steers gone, done got bought, every last one of them! I was really wondering when I kept all those things instead of selling them as 600 pound calves. It really worked out! One thing I learned, it’s not hard to sell quality beef! But the new crop will start being ready this coming fall. The chickens will go outside later this week and they’re already sold out as far as I can tell. So much for difficulties in marketing!

And from the looks of things this farm has a good future coming up, despite the years of dryness, with customers coming to us, no advertising at all. Near as I can figure, that’s almost against the rules! I figure the Lord must have a big part of this. Cause any farmer can raise stuff one way or another, but they always say that direct selling can be a challenge. Had me a bit nervous I can tell you, but was sure proven wrong. But my daddy always said I could talk to a rock and in a while I’d have the rock talking back! Just a gift I guess! As time goes by I keep hearing all the propaganda from big ag and barely notice anymore. Every step of the way gets us farther from their system. For example, if we’d have a wipe out drought, I mean a real bad one, we won’t be anywhere near wiped out. Oh, there’d be a setback for sure, but there’s no laying awake at night wondering how we’d make it. Just a setback is all. Now if we were farming like 15 years ago there’d be some worrying let me tell you! But other than expensive fuel for the tractors the input hasn’t been much compared to years ago. And if fuel ever gets so high that we can’t afford it or can’t get it I ain’t all that worried how we’d keep going because there won’t be nothing going anywhere! The important thing is to have a base system going, enough to take care of without large tractor power, have enough to feed us and a bunch of other folks. And if it gets that bad I don’t think there’d be any shortage of help around here like there is now. First there’d be family and church folk needing…well…life. There’d be plenty of places for folks to live close by because the suburban culture would come to a screeching halt in that event. And I mean a screeching halt! What would folks do with these monster houses that could comfortably fit around five to ten families when a scenario like that happens. And if we can’t afford or get gas and fuel, who would? The family farm of today would become a thing of the past because of the lack of tractor power and the switch over to human land tending. Either the family farm would collapse or it would truly become a “family” farm. With a lot of family too! Horses or oxen, whatever works. There’d be no shortage of folks to work with them once the dust settled. There’d be very little grass farming as we know it now, with beef and sheep there’d be somewhat, but the raising of chickens in the chicken tractor model would be out and gone. Why, because the system can’t work when there’s no cheap and available energy to provide the feed for them. Poultry would go back to birds that could produce generation after generation on the farms in the area. And they wouldn’t be cheap if there’d be any to be had. Goats would be popular and not as pets. Their importance would make them a very valuable critter to have around.

Hmm, I did write something eh! But I’ve been thinking about that recently. You know, about they skyrocketing energy costs. The what will we do. But we got to take into account that the whole society will be affected bigtime, not just farmers. Life as we know it now will not exist anymore. I’m not preaching gloom and doom at all here, just dwelling on the fact that a farm will not be expected to function as they have over the last fifty or sixty years with the availability of cheap inputs. Big ag will try to hype the farmer as they are doing now, promising a great future, high prices and the like, but never mention the doubling and tripling of inputs constantly. No matter what reality will come though, might be sooner than we think too!

The main thing is to get secure on the land, pay down any debts, have an “inner” farm. By that I mean besides the regular farm that depends so much on the current system, have a “inner” family operation. This is what’s been developing here over the last few years and I kinda enjoy it. It can be past off as a hobby or something to folks that don’t understand, but the time will come when its importance might over shadow the current farm operation.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 27th, 2007 at 7:57 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.