Spring’s A Coming, (someday)
March 8th, 2008 by Northern FarmerSaturday evening in central Minnesota, it’s snowing out a bit and that means its not so durn cold out tonight although the east wind makes this basement chilly, brr. Its warm upstairs of course because heat rises but it ain’t that great down here. But this is a good place to be when its a hundred degrees outside in July let me tell you! But any snow is welcome here, we’re pretty short in that department this winter, nothing a good spring rain or two couldn’t fix though. I went and visited the family farmer friendly co-op yesterday and got all my fertilizer needs taken care of. Didn’t pre buy anything just gave my word and that’s good enough. My main concern was all the hay grounds. And it doesn’t look all to bad fertilizing those whole works this year with their fertilizers that they sell. Its all bio dynamic, in other words not petroleum based like the main stream fertilizers. And farm after farm around here is switching to it. Much of it even qualifies for organic, but I ain’t worried about official certifications or anything like that. I just want to do the best job I can for the land. In reality we’re not truly fertilizing for the crop, we’re fertilizing to make the land blossom, to come alive, to be reborn. And this approach does it. Instead of the land just being a holding agent for the crop, it becomes alive and healthy with a balanced ecosystem thriving in the soil. Now it don’t get much better than that! And the manager will come out and do the soil testings for us and if some of the lands need a bit more sweetening that the base fertilizers can provide we’ll add some beet pulp lime to the fields, although the price for that has sky rocketed from being free last year to having to pay one dollar a semi load this year, (inflation eh). All we pay for is trucking which is a given.
Alfalfa seed is up a little this year, not to much though. I get some older varieties that are less than half the price of seed company alfalfas and they do better than the expensive seed. Just a fact of life that I can accept around here. So everything is falling into place as time marches on towards spring planting time. Things are getting set up. Now to haul out a few hundred loads of manure if it ever decides to unthaw. Pretty hard to spread granite! But as these years progress manure is getting to be a very valuable commodity here on the farm, very valuable! Plus the corn lands do so well with a good coating of solid manure from the loafing shed. Takes care of purchasing nitrogen fertilizers which are sky rocketing every day. Don’t know how them industrial farmers can swallow such bills for all that stuff. I just heard on ag radio this week that even with the high corn prices the inputs have outpaced the prices. How’s that for fine and dandy. The oldtimers around here always say that the worst enemy farmers have is themselves, they can’t stand prosperity. They’ll drive up land rent prices, they’ll go out and spend like drunken sailors on new equipment, there’s no limit to what they’ll borrow when the prices go up a little. And then the prices crash, (and they ALWAYS do), and there they sit, crying, help, help me. Egad, you’d think people would learn, but no, they don’t.
Glad I’m out of that rat race of modern agriculture. I’ll just do what I have to do and when I cross that River Jordan I’ll be knowing that this land is in better shape than anytime since folks have farmed it. You know, it ain’t that tough to do when a person just finally decides to do it. The benefits far out weigh the bad. And just to end here tonight there’s a little thing that has me dwelling. Over in the city of St Cloud, 35 miles to our SE is a big cancer center that a local business family put up, bless their souls, and one thing has caught my attention. They have a very detailed map of central Minnesota there that shows where the most cases of cancers originate in this region. And one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is the hot spots. And not surprisingly they are where industrial agriculture is king. mostly on the commercial potato fields in the region. The planes never stop spraying there from spring thru fall and the people around there have the highest rates of cancer, by a long shot, than any where else in central MN. I even heard that there’s abandoned nice homes in those areas, people fleeing for their lives! Oh what a tangled web we weave! But there’s money in them potato fields for those farming corporations and that’s what’s important, people be d…..
March 12th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Tom,
Does that map showing cancer rates in various areas include southern Minnesota? I often wonder if the cancer rate is elevated in my area given that industrial agriculture is big in my area. In the last couple of years I have seen some farm auctions that happen because a farmer in his 40’s died from cancer. We do weave a twisted web.
Lately I am seeing a lot of new, big John Deere farm equipment headed north on I-35. I suppose that the high grain prices are encouraging the purchase of new equipment.
Jim V
March 12th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Jim,
I believe the map is probably the central Mn area. I’d like to get one or find out if there’s anything like it on the internet. That would be interesting. I do know that at the cancer center they will tell a person right out that the majority of the case they believe come from farm chemical, whether direct exposer or in the foods.
I haven’t been 15 miles south for a while to check out the I-94 traffic, bet there’s allot of green heading into the Northwest. Oh well, somebody’s gotta buy it eh. Trouble is I can’t imagine how a small farmer will be able to find smaller used equipment in years to come. But then again with energy prices just beginning to get into the stage of forever skyrocketing maybe a couple strong mules wouldn’t be all that bad around the place. I tell you, this is going to be interesting in the future, between you and me, (cause I know nobody else will read this), there’s gonna be some drastic changes coming for everyone.
March 12th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Tom,
You are right about smaller farmers not being able to find used equipment. On I-35 I passed a flatbed semi hauling some sort of planter that folded back on itself, but it still took the entire length of the flatbed. Most of the new equipment I see being hauled on the freeway is awfully big.
I think you are right about drastic changes. An older neighbor was complaining that her son, who is primarily a crop farmer, was going to have trouble making a go of it even with the high grain prices due to the higher input costs - exactly what you heard on the radio. Making animals do more of the work is probably the way to go. I see Good Farmer John is gearing up to feed milk to hogs rather than depend on so much grain.
Jim V
March 12th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Howdy Fellers
Drastic changes, you ain’t kiddin’. Man, oh, man, I don’t know how I’m going to pay for fuel to get the hay done this next season. Wost of all, we ran short on hay already and had buy some (cert organic) and paid through the nose. Trucking cost a fortune, darn near as much as the hay! Trucker said he just filled up with $4.05 diesel. IBA man said he saw $4.15 yesterday. Some oil expert on the radio said crude was going to hit $150 before its done. Draft animals are the future!!! Sounds radical but I really think they will make a come back on small farms someday. I can’t wait for the green grass and lush pastures. This winter was terrible, the worst…..sorry about crying the blues, but it has been awful. I ought to move somewhere that I can graze year round, naw…….I’d probably complain there too
March 12th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Draft animals? Can’t say I’ve ever seen in person anyone actually using such a thing but once in all my life. It was in Kentucky, some guy plowing a field with one mule. Imagine that, the new tool of the American farmer, a mule. I’ll bet you will still get people asking if such a thing could actually work on a farm.
March 13th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Jim,
We see that around here once in a while, those big planters that they haul around on full sized flatbeds. Heck, on half the fields in this area you could hardly turn that rig around!!
Lettin the critters do some of their own work is the way to go. Most years its like that here till winter, but I won’t go into this life of drought today on tis blog. I’ve been feeding since July and darn sick of it.
Scott,
I know you feel those changes starting as much as I do here. I tell you, there’s gonna be some big changes around here as the years progress. It ain’t an over night thing but its happening the same as you folks are doing step by step. I almost hate to say it, but let er come! A person can make an incredible amount of hay doing things the old ways. Plus farming without the heavy input costs would leave allot of room to make a comfortable living in comparison to the heavy money spending that farming will rapidly become for the “modern farmer”.
Don,
I tell you, around here there are a few that use draft animals. I just wonder what it’ll take till things finally snap. I wonder when the summer will come around here when traffic on our county road will taper down. These last few years I’ve never seen anything like it. You name the toys, they were being pulled behind “big” pickups and SUVs heading for the rural play ground. Sometimes the traffic noise is deafening in summer. I think the best thing that can happen is energy becoming to expensive for pleasure. And to expensive for many agriculture jobs. Then people might be forced to rejoin the human race and be with their families and neighbors again. You know, I never done it, but I know that I’d enjoy spending the whole day in the fields behind a good pair of draft mules or horses in comparison to paying through the nose to keep the tractors operating. Someday, eh!
March 16th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Hello Tom
I know I am backing up on your blog, but I remembered I wanted to ask a little more about the fertilizer you were talking about. Is this Growers fertilizer or something else. The Amish use this kind in our area but mainly for market gardens. My education from my family was two basic types the kind that energized by the cow and comes out the backside. The other is petroleum based. I am trying to stay away from this one. But, to get the tonnage per acre on hay needed, it seems might nigh impossible to do.
Thanks
March 17th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Hey Allen,
Don’t matter if your backing up around here cause I’ll find you. I wished I could upgrade this blog so other folks could see when someone goes back and comments, oh well eh.
The fertilizer is from
http://www.midwesternbioag.com
and I can’t find on their site the proper description of the hay field fertilizer. The stuff we’ll use is called Bio-Cal and is 75% Calcium Carbonate. Here’s a little info I copied and pasted for this comment from there:
—————————————————————————-
Bio-Ag Soil and Crops Program
A soil fertility program involves two components:
The soil balance or corrective program: If a soil nutrient is in short supply, add it. If it is in the high range, don’t add more.
Crop fertilizer program: a balanced diet of nutrients fed to a specific crop, at a specific time, to meet that crops’ specific need.
What you should expect:
Good crops are grown on healthy, mineralized soils. A healthy soil is one which has a balance of all the minerals, is biologically active, and has good soil structure. Crops grown on a Midwestern Bio-Ag fertility program should have better plant health, larger roots, greater nutrient efficiency, increased mineral uptake, improved water efficiency, better seed quality and higher yields.
Midwestern BioAg fertilizers:
Nutrient balanced: Our fertilizer blends use a variety of high quality materials with a combination of all major nutrients: N, P, K, Ca, Mg, S, Zn, Mn, Fe, Cu, B. We also use materials such as Rock Phosphate, Humic Substances, Corn and Sugar Beet Fermentation byproducts, Ammonium Sulfate, Fish Meal and Kelp. These provide major minerals, hormones, vitamins, enzymes and many trace elements.
We select materials that are non-harmful to crop roots and soil life; watch excesses as well as deficiencies; balance the soluble (readily available) and also provide the slow release to provide a continuous supply of nutrients over time; control pH, keeping fertilizers for most situations on the acid side to avoid the microbiological tie-up and maintain availability to the plant over a long period of time; and, use homogenized trace mineral blends, granulated with a controlled pH.
A major component in our soils program is calcium as a nutrient, not just a buffer, for improved soil and plant health, increased nutrient uptake and increased livestock performance.