The Beginning Farmer

Okay, let me preface everything that I’m going to write by saying this, “I love Iowa and would never ever in a million years want to live anywhere else but in this state. I love the people, I love the land, and I even love the weather! But…”

I am tired of cold and snow and doing the chores in said weather! I guess it isn’t so much that I’m tired of the weather (it is supposed to be in the – teens this week) and doing the chores outside as much as it is that there is so much I want to get done and I can’t get things done. Add to that the fact that we don’t have everything set up yet and we have been dealing with a couple sick Dexters.

You can see from the picture above that we have a little dun calf and our red heifer Jasmine hanging out in the storage part of our house right now … just on the other side of the kid’s closet. The little bull calf was having a tough time and we brought him in to help keep him warm and put some energy back in that little body. Jasmine came in for moral support and extra body heat.

One thing that I was able to get done today (even though it only reached a high of 3º) was to build a bale windbreak on the edge of the pasture. Last night I broke down and bought a three-point bale stabber for the tractor and was finally able to move the big round bales with ease. Now we have some permanent windbreaks that won’t blow down when the wind changes directions. Also, I am able to wire the portable ones in place and we are set for cold winds out of any direction.

Hmm… must be nice farming down in Texas right about now. Of course I don’t think I would like it so much when it is over 100º. In fact I know I would hate it! So, I’ll just keep trucking along and get done what I can get done because I wouldn’t trade this place or this life for anything.

One of the most interesting presentations I went to at the Practical Farmers of Iowa Annual Conference was the workshop by Will Winter called, “The Art of Raising Drug-Free and Healthy Livestock”. Mr. Winters had about three hours with us on Friday afternoon, but I’m thinking thirty hours would have been better for me! He had lots of great information … some of which I caught and lots that flew over my head while I was digesting other information. I took lots of notes about things to look up later though, and I’m beginning to work my way through them. Here are some of the homeopathic/holistic medicines (I’m not sure what they call them) and other things that he spoke about:

• Rescue Remedy: If you go to this website you will find that Rescue Remedy is like “yoga in a bottle”. I’m not sure what exactly that means, but Mr. Winter uses it when he is shipping or working livestock, trying to calm livestock, and even to help lower stress in people. Sometimes these things sound too good to be true, but there was a lot of positive feedback about this one … maybe I’ll check it out.
• Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide: This is one that he recommended for livestock suffering from shipping fever. He said it needs to be the strong stuff (35%), but that you only add 8 ounces to every 1,000 gallons of water. Should be interesting to look into this one a little more.
• Apple Cider Vinegar: I know a lot of different people that add ACV to their livestock water tanks and to their own diets. I’m not exactly sure what it is all about, but there is a book that tells a lot of the story titled, “Folk Medicine”. It is also supposed to help lower cholesterol … do you think it does that for bovine also? 🙂
• Desert Dyna-Min: One of the commenters mentioned that they keep this one around at all times and Mr. Winter spoke very highly of it. They described it as the bouillon cube of minerals for cattle. We are talking about 2 to 4 ounces per day, but I’m not sure how they feed this … maybe someone can chime in.
• Hemocel 100: This is a product by Agri-Dynamics (same as Desert Dyna-Min) that he likes to give to sick animals as a rumen starter. The companies website touts this one as a dairy supplement as well.

Of course most of those things are something that you add when there is trouble or to prevent trouble. The biggest thing that I got out of this workshop was that holistic herd care has as much or more to do with preventation as it does with treatment. Mr. Winter spoke a lot about soil health and forage quality being key to a holistic approach to care … but, that does take time.

I would be interested in hearing anyones thoughts on the ideas of holistic vet care and herd health as it is something that is really starting to interest me.

Saturday at the Practical Farmers of Iowa Annual Conference was just as great as Friday, but in a different way. Of course because of the snow and the wind I woke up in Marshalltown and didn’t have as far to travel to get to the conference, so in a way that was nice. Once I got there I had a great day attending the keynote by Joel Huesby, a session on the new Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), a great lunch containing all Iowa food, my session on websites and blogging, a great little discussion with other beginning farmers, and finally a cluster group on alfalfa and grass mixes. It was a great day filled with lots of information! So, instead of detailing everything I just thought I would share some of the notes I took and then take time to disect things later.

• Here is the first thing I wrote about the CSP session, “apply through the NRCS”. But, after that and lots of questions and discussion from the group I started writing things like this, “this is pretty confusing … not sure if anyone will ever get it” and this, “there seems to be a disconnect on what is in the 2008 farm bill.” That is not to say that it wasn’t informational, but rather that things are so confusing that there were many different interpratations represented in the room. It kind of made me dislike governmental bureaucracy a little bit more.
• “EQIP: more interesting than CSP”. Water systems … inside fencing … frost seeding clover in released CRP ground … wind breaks … need to find out about this.
• “Iowa Micro Loan Foundation: not ready yet, but very soon.”
• “72 dpi for photos intended for the internet will help dial-up users view your website more easily”
• “Hmm, Kelli Miller had a quote on the ‘Grow Your Small Market Farm’ display that was about me! I guess I should attend those classes.” (By the way, it looks like we will be signing up)

Like I said, those are just some thoughts and quotes from my notes. Even from that sampling I can tell how useful these two days were for me. Besides the notes I made many good contacts and picked up a bunch of great information. The way that I summed up the weekend for my wife describes it best I think … “I learned a lot this weekend, and I also learned what I need to learn about”. Basically, I did pick up a ton of information and then I also jotted down more information about things I wanted to research. At least I should have good blog discussion fodder for a while now!

Day number one at the PFI Annual Conference … Great! I gotta say that I really enjoyed my first day at the conference from the workshop to the food and especially the “King Corn” guys. In fact the only down fall for the event so far has been the weather. After getting out of the conference at 9:40 PM I found the snow and wind a bit greater than I expected. I drove a little ways and decided that driving as slow as I was would mean about 2 1/2 hours until I got home. So, I decided to stay in Marshalltown and pony up for a hotel. But, everything else was great.

Here are a few bullet points from the day:

• The workshop I attended led by Will Winter, DVM was great. I ended up taking a few pages of notes … most of which I didn’t completely understand. But, the reason I wrote down all those notes was so I could go home and do a little more research. Mr. Winter is a Holistic Veterinarian who only works with natural remedies and of course focuses on prevention more than anything. I wrote down words like: Desert Dyna-Min, Hemocel 100, Rescue Remedy, Selenium, and so much more. I feel like I have the beginning of an understanding!
• There are a lot of interesting vendors and what not in the Exibition Hall. I’m kind of shy when it comes to going up to people I don’t know, but I have had some good conversation in there and collected some good information. Hopefully I’ll have some more to write about from what I looked at there.
• The food is good! Local chili, local cornbread, local ice cream, local milk … what is there not to like. I can’t wait for lunch today.
• I have recognized a few faces that I have seen around before at things like auctions and field days. It is great to know that there are others out there who are and are willing to think differently about farming.
• The highlight of the day without a doubt though was the “King Corn” guys (specifically Aaron and Curt). If you have been following the blog for a long time you might remember that Aaron found my post and started interacting. He had a lot of great stuff to say and really opened my eyes to what the film was about and the possibilities. I had hoped to met him soon after that, but our paths never crossed because of one thing or another. Well, we finally got to meet! And I’m happy that he remembered me … honestly I never would have expected him to. I had a good conversation with him and also was introduced to Curt. One more cool thing … it seems that Aaron has opened a grocery store in the Brox that sells food “that you know where it came from”. Check out the website for Urban Rustic.

Today I take off for the Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) annual conference in Marshalltown, IA. I’m pretty excited for a couple of reasons. First of all, this will be my first opportunity to attend a the PFI conference and it will also be my first farming conference of any sort. I had hoped to go to quite a few others, but they all landed smack dab in the middle of a youth event. The second reason that I’m excited to attend is that I will have a chance to share some of my thoughts about farm blogging (and I will get to learn more about website design and such). Hopefully I’ll be able to share a little bit and encourage others to start blogging about their farm life and work.

But, my little session isn’t what I’m most excited for. I am most excited for the different sessions and speakers that I will get to see. I thought it would be fun to share with you all what sessions I’m going to, and then when it is all said and done I’ll report back on some of the things I heard, saw, and learned.

On Friday afternoon there are a set of workshops that you can choose from, and this was probably the most difficult choice I had to make when it comes to what I am going to attend. There is one called, “Fledgling Farmers” that features some farmers that started their farms from scratch and a person that helps beginning farmers find land. That sounded pretty interesting, but since we already have the land I thought I didn’t want to hear what I should have done (just kidding). Instead I decided to go with the workshop titled, “The Art of Raising Drug-Free and Healthy Livestock”. This session will discuss a holistic (from the animals to the soil) approach to herd and flock health and is led by Will Winter who works with Thousand Hills Cattle Company.

The rest of Friday evening features different food and gatherings until 8:00 PM when we get a sneak peak at a new film by the “King Corn” guys. You know I can’t wait for that!

Saturday morning will find me attending the keynote and then in the session titled, “The New Conservation Stewardship (Security) Program”. Since I have written about this a couple of times on the blog I thought it would be good to get some more information on the program and see if it is something that would fit a farm like ours. It should be pretty interesting.

In the afternoon I’ll be working with another farmer on the session called, “Cyber Farmers: Using Websites and Blogs”. As I mentioned I’m really looking forward to this … mostly because I think there will be a lot for me to learn.

After that session there will be some time to meet with other farmers and then a sort of “what the attendees want to know” session where they will tackle some of the topics that people ask about. All in all it sounds like a great two days!

Now all I have to do is make sure I schedule in the time to finish my sermon for Sunday…

I have always been a medium sized dog kind of guy. The first dog I picked out was an English Springer Spaniel … a nice medium sized dog. Probably my favorite dog ever was Brandy, a Blue Heeler cross … a nice medium sized dog. When we got our first dog as a family (just last year) I picked out a Treeing Cur from my dad … a nice smaller medium sized dog. But, my wife has always liked big dogs! She likes labs and anything bigger than that because of the sense of security that they can give.

So, now that we are out on the farm and there are times that I come home after dark she would like a dog around that is a bit more imposing than a 20 pound cur. I guess I can’t say that I blame her. But, if we are going to get another dog for the family it would be nice if we got one that would also help with the farm (right now the best our dog Sophie can do is act as my “chore buddy” when I’m out working). With that in mind I have begun researching some of the breeds that are commonly called Livestock Guardian Dogs. They seem like a good type of dog to check out if we are looking for something to help protect the home and the animals.

So far my research has been limited to the internet (here is a nice site I found) and one phone conversation that we had with someone selling some Great Pyrenees cross pups (3/4 Pyr). What I have found on the internet is pretty good stuff and a lot of satisfied owners, and the person we talked with the dogs for say also had a lot of nice things to say (they raise them with their sheep). But, I would love to hear some more first hand knowledge from people that own LGD’s or have been around them.

What do you like about them? Are they good with kids? How do they do with strangers (relatives and such)? How do you go about training them to guard the livestock and the people? Hopefully someone out there has some ideas…

**Also, don’t forget that we still have wholes and halves of pork left that will be going to the locker in a couple weeks. Let us know if you are interested.**

That is the title of an opinion piece from the New York Times that frequent commenter Yeoman passed on to me the other day. You can check out the article for yourself by taking this link, and I do strongly encourage you to check it out because it is a very interesting bit of right that gives a thinking type of person a lot to think about. I thought I would take a few moments today to share a few of the quotes that struck me the most and then add a little bit of my opinion that that of the authors, Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson.

“The extraordinary rainstorms last June caused catastrophic soil erosion in the grain lands of Iowa, where there were gullies 200 feet wide. But even worse damage is done over the long term under normal rainfall — by the little rills and sheets of erosion on incompletely covered or denuded cropland, and by various degradations resulting from industrial procedures and technologies alien to both agriculture and nature.”

-Yes, we did have a lot of rain in Iowa last summer (not just June) and it did cause a lot of soil erosion. I saw pictures from around the state of huge washouts, I drove over roads that lost half of themselves down stream, and I even saw little waterways on our completely grass covered farm grow in size. This loss of top soil is something I find myself thinking about a lot as I drive the seven miles into town for work and see bare fields on either side of the road.

“Civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying their farmland. This irremediable loss, never enough noticed, has been made worse by the huge monocultures and continuous soil-exposure of the agriculture we now practice.”

-I think this is an interesting comment about civilizations destroying themselves by neglecting their topsoil. In fact I would go out on a limb and say one of the man reason that it hasn’t destroyed our American civilization yet is because we have a lot more land than many earlier civilizations and because our Midwestern region had seemingly unending topsoil when we got there. But, all you have to do is look towards the Eastern part of our country and understand why many farmers in the 18th and 19th centuries were willing to live on the edge of the wilderness where they had to fear for their safety … because the land was being used up in the East.

“Industrial agricultural has made our food supply entirely dependent on fossil fuels and, by substituting technological “solutions” for human work and care, has virtually destroyed the cultures of husbandry (imperfect as they may have been) once indigenous to family farms and farming neighborhoods.”

-The further we get into our farming journey the more I become keenly aware that we are destroying “the cultures of husbandry”. Really the old adage that there is nothing new under the sun is completely true when it comes to farming. The thing is though that we have just about lost what really worked and so it seems like people are coming up with lots of “new” ideas for farm management. Remember … grass-fed isn’t new, organic isn’t new, natural isn’t new, and extensive crop rotations aren’t new!

“And with an increase in the use of perennial plants and grazing animals would come more employment opportunities in agriculture — provided, of course, that farmers would be paid justly for their work and their goods.”

-This quote just really struck me because I often wonder how many people out there don’t understand that many farmers/ranchers are underpaid for the work that they provide … and I could even go so far as saying for the security they provide our country. I do like the possibility of increased employment opportunities in agriculture!

“We need a 50-year farm bill that addresses forthrightly the problems of soil loss and degradation, toxic pollution, fossil-fuel dependency and the destruction of rural communities.”

-Come on, do we really think we are willing to look that far into the future?

Of course there is a lot more that I could say, but I think this is enough for now. I do encourage you to go check out this short piece and report back with some of your thoughts. If nothing else it should make some good discussion.

Here is a little self-promotion for your Tuesday morning. If you are in the vicinity of Central Iowa and would love some great small-farm raised pork just let us know.

Happy New Year from Stoneyfield Farm! What a year last year was. We were able to purchase land for our farm, we built our house and are now living in it, and we have brought our livestock to our farm as well. Things are really coming along!

Since you expressed interest in our meat, I thought I would update you on how it is coming along.

Our Dexter cattle are now at the farm and are adjusting to their home. They are growing well and are enjoying the hay made from our land. We are looking forward to spring when the pastures green up and we can start our rotational grazing with them. It looks like we should have a few steers ready for sale near the end of the summer.

Our hogs have been enjoying the farm a bit longer than the cows. They arrived here in June and are now ready to head to the processor. If you are interested in purchasing pork, here is a little more information on them:

The pork that we have available this winter is “Old Fashioned Pork”, just like Grandpa and Grandma used to have. Our pigs are kept outside free of confinement houses and have not been fed or given antibiotics or hormones. They have been allowed to live the way pigs were designed to live – rooting up the ground, wallowing in the mud, and relaxing in the sun. They have been fed a varied diet of soybean meal, ground corn, and ear corn (corn still on the cob) with access to grass and hay from time to time as well.

We will be selling our hogs by the whole and half (or by smaller portions if there is a group you would like to go in with). The pricing for our “Old Fashioned Pork” is as follows:
-Purchase of hog = $1.00 / pound on the hoof (live weight) to be paid to Stoneyfield Farm
-Processing of hog = $0.60 / pound hanging weight to be paid to Milo Locker

The hogs we have this winter are around 250 lbs. The hanging weight should be somewhere around 175 lbs. Depending on which cuts you choose, you would then end up with around 123 lbs of meat if you purchased a whole hog. (Let us know if you would like a worksheet that helps you see what cuts you can have.)

This would equal around $2.89 per pound of meat consisting of your choice of cuts. Please keep in mind that the price per pound might vary depending on the individual hog and which cuts you choose.

We have a processing date reserved at the Milo locker, and the meat should be ready to be picked up the first week of February. We will need to finalize our order for this processing date this week so if you are interested in purchasing pork, please let us know within the next few days. If you would rather have a hog processed at a locker closer, please let us know so we can make arrangements. (Processing charges may be different at other lockers.)

If you have questions or would like more details, please feel free to call or e-mail. If you would like to purchase a whole or half of “Old Fashioned Pork”, please let us know within the next few days.

Thanks again for your interests in our farm and our products. We pray you have a wonderful New Year!

Ethan and Rebecca Book
Stoneyfield Farm
ethan@stoneyfieldonline.com

I don’t know if you can tell or not, but when it comes to making a decision I usually take a long time and mull things over A LOT! That is what is going on with our shed/barn’ish building plans at the moment. I figure you only get one chance to put up a big building (I’m not really into tearing things down) so I better make sure that we have the right placement, the right design, the right price, and of course the right idea. So, here is what I’m thinking … I would love to hear your thoughts on the plan.

• Right now we are looking at building a 24′ x 32′ building with clear span trusses and 12′ side walls. The building would have walls on three sides and be open across the front to the South with two 16′ bays. I am also going to ask the building how much it would cost to add another 16′ bay making it 24′ x 48′, but money is an issue so we will have to see.
• Off of the back of the building I would like to add a 16′ lean-to that will continue the pitch of the roof. This should give us about a 7′ or 8′ side wall on the lean-to and this area would ideally become a winter feeding area for our cattle. We would be able to throw down hay from the main area and feed the cattle in deep bedding much like Joel Salatin writes about and does. The lean-to would also mean that all of the main area could be used for storage.
• One of the questions we are facing is how much we are going to hire done and how much we are going to do ourselves. As of now we are planning with the same builder who put up the building for our house because we are comfortable with him and pleased with his work, but we aren’t sure how much to have him do. Initially we were going to have him frame up the building and put on the roof. That would mean that we would add the lean-to and the steel for it and the sides. The thing we need to figure out is how easy it would be to add the lean-to after the building roof is done.
• Another question that I have been thinking about is what all we are going to add to the interior or around the shed. What I mean is that I would like to run electricity out there so we can plug in our fencers there and also have lights. It would also be great to have a water hydrant out there for watering livestock, and I have even been thinking about installing a freeze proof cattle water thing (something like this one).

So, there are some of the plans. There are more things that are bouncing around in my head, but I would love to hear your thoughts on the subject. Either things from experience or ideas that pop into your mind.