The Beginning Farmer

Okay, just in case you didn’t see it on my wife’s blog or in the comments section of the last post here is a link to the little piece from this weekend. It is kind of an interesting deal because I suspect I spent about an hour talking, and then the recording guy probably spent another 30 minutes just getting sound. After all of that it was condensed and stitched together into the few minutes that you can listen to online. So, the big question is how many people listened to my rambling about the chicken in the muddy pigpen or heard me trying to keep our dog Sophie from eating the microphone…

If you haven’t had a chance to listen and would like to just take THIS LINK and then click on the little player above my picture…

Thanks to the folks over at Farmers’ Markets Today magazine I am learning lots of great things. One of the latest things that I have found browsing through the pages of the September/October issue is a short column about an online publication called, “Cultivating the Web“, from www.eatwellguide.org. It looks like a wonderful resource for small farmers who are looking to expand their markets, build relationships with their customers, and connect with new potential buyers.

The entire publication is online in the from of a .pdf file that you read on your computer. I should also point out that it even loaded fairly well on my non-high speed internet. This neat tool seems to cover everything from blogs to Flickr and of course the old stand-by … e-mail! I haven’t had a lot of time to read the entire thing yet, but if you have a rainy day this weekend (or sometime in the future) I encourage you to check this out.

Okay, just let me say upfront that I’m not usually one to toot my own horn, and normally I probably wouldn’t mention this until after I really know that it happens… But, there is a possibility that I will be on the National Public Radio show “Weekend America” this Saturday. Like I said, normally I would just like to wait and make sure that it shows up and then just send a link to where you can listen online, but now that we are living the life of “slightly faster than dial-up” internet I realize that listening online isn’t really an option for every one.

Here is the deal. Weekend American is a show that is carried by quite a few public radio stations across the country, in fact you can see if there is a station near you by checking out this list (notice not many stations in Iowa…). I don’t know exactly when I’ll be on, if I’m even on at all, but I do know that I spent some time recording an interview earlier this week and had to send in a picture.

The short interview will include some “sound bites” from the farm and a bit of me talking about farming, faith, and the upcoming election. But, really I’m not sure what they will pick out because we talked for quite awhile and I believe they are going to condense it down to just a few minutes. Hopefully it is a neat little deal…

So, there is your heads up… If it really happens I’ll post a link whenever it is available. In fact I’ll probably have to listen online because I don’t think I’ll be able to pull in a station at the farm!

Whenever my wife sees this book she has to make some comment about “Harris” and why he shouldn’t be on a pig … but, I digress! This really is a book that I have throughly enjoyed reading, probably because it was originally published in 1883. Old books in my opinion are great, and in many cases better than things that are being written now … of course we are still learning lots of great stuff these days that is being written about when it comes to agriculture… What I’m trying to say though is that it is a really good book, and if you haven’t checked it out yet you should.

Here are a few things I have especially enjoyed in the last couple weeks of reading:

• There is a great chapter discussing the construction and design of pig pens and piggeries. Although I may not be up to building anything like the book suggests for our pastured pigs I do love the suggestions about construction, layout, and even materials. It is also great to see the images they have included of the different layouts and the reasons for the designs.
• The various discussions and dissections of the different feeding experiments is priceless information. Although the scientific procedures of the day may not be quite as stringent as today the various feeding trials reported on in the book are great and gave me a lot to think about when it comes to feeding. I would have to say that it really made me want to look beyond the “normal” pig ration to see what else is available in my area.
• One last thing that has been especially informational were the chapters on different breeds. Mr. Harris broke the chapters down into sections on American Breeds and British Breeds. I think it was very helpful to read a little bit about the development of certain breeds and what specific things they were going for in those breeds. This is great information to have today when you are selecting pigs.

I know a few others who read this blog have read the book, so I would be interested in hearing some other thoughts on the book as well. Are there anythings in particular that you really took away from the book or enjoyed?

Even though we aren’t at a place where we could support supplying a CSA with meat (both in production volume and storage capabilities) I am becoming increasingly interested in the idea of joining with other farms to create a CSA subscription that includes vegetables, fruits, herbs, eggs, beef, pork, poultry, and more. It just seems like it would be a great thing for all of the farmers involved and for the consumers. This way people could pick up a box of food that includes much of what they need for a diverse number of dishes. They could have pork one night, beef the next, a veggie meal following that, and even mix in some poultry. The possibilities are endless!

But, what really got me thinking about all this was the article I read about Marin Sun Farms from California, the subsequent comment on that post from “The Farmers”, and now an article that I read in “Farmers’ Markets Today” (FMT) magazine (that newish publication I think you should check out).

The article in FMT talks about a group CSA in the Chapel Hill/Durham/Raleigh area of North Carolina. This CSA is set up so that the consumers have a choice of participating in any combination of the three options they offer. You can purchase a produce share, a meat share, and a dairy share for various prices and then combine them in any way you would like.

Of course I have no practical working experience with this, but in my mind it could be a good marketing tool for the different farms involved because it will expose them to new potential customers and in turn open up new sales. I could also be a great way to sell some of the things that you seem to have a surplus of (that is what the Marin Sun Farms article was about).

I would love to hear any more thoughts on this subject if you have any. Or if you have any experience about how it has or hasn’t worked let us know!

Sorry for the late post, but I was busy wrapping up some loose ends with our old house today and getting the last things off of the property. I don’t have much time for a full on post today, but encourage you to check out the Epi-Log later today for a new post and if that isn’t enough for you then you need to check out this article from Sustainable Farmer:

“Neil Kentner banks on historic breeds to sustain Wynsmoor Manor“

They have a nice article, a video, and some good links!

That is actually a topic that I have been wondering about lately (especially sense I purchased land towards the top … although ours isn’t good row crop ground). Yesterday I was checking out Allan Nation’s blog and ran across his thoughts on the farmland price run up and the possible run down. Take the link above and scroll down to the post titled, “Is Farmland the Next Asset to Collapse?” from October, 13th.

Basically Mr. Nation writes that the cash rent will actually be the first to go because of the falling grain prices (he mentions $3.50 and $8.00 for corn and beans respectively at the moment, which is about or slightly less than the farmers would get for selling right now). If those lower prices hold (really no telling what it will do, but if the markets stay down than they might also) then it is going to make it a little difficult at times to pay the current cash rent prices with the income you make from an acre of corn/beans.

Mr. Nation theorizes that then we could see a drop in land prices in around 2010 or 2011… I’m not sure where I land on all of this, but I know that I have talked with quite a few people about it from time to time trying to get a handle on the subject. On one hand many of the farmers that I talk with don’t think there will be quite the bubble burst as there was in the 80’s farm crisis because there is a bit more capital behind some of the purchases today. But, on the other hand there is beginning to be a sense that $8,000 an acre and up for crop land might be a little too high in the long run.

I know what I would like to see happen … I wouldn’t mind seeing things just kind of hold steady and then bottom out in about ten years. That would give us some time to gain a little equity and savings and then swipe up a little more land when the price is right! But, I’m not holding my breath on that one 🙂

I wrote a post for the Epi-Log that will go up later this morning about Marin Sun Farms in California. The cool thing was that they have a meat CSA that helps them do a better job of selling the entire animal and allows them to have consistent sales. But, there was one quote that struck me while I was reading the article in, “The Stockman GrassFarmer” that I didn’t touch on in the Epi-Log post.

Specifically the qoute was, “He is currently experimenting with harvesting beeves at weaning as ‘baby beef’ to get their carcass size down to a more customer friendly size”.

The first thing that popped into my head is, “that is exactly what a finished Dexter is … a customer friendly size!” Of course I do understand that he will get to that size much more quickly with baby beef, but Dexter owners can reach the same “perfect carcass size” by finishing their beeves, marketing the meat as meat with a great flavor, and all along mantaining a small buy very useful breed.

Like I said, I understand the differences, but I also see this is as a great way to market Dexter beef for consumers. I continue to become more and more interested in the idea of a meat CSA, even to the point of combining pork and other meat into the monthly packages (I think they may do that at Marin Sun). I’ll have to do a little more research into this…

I’m not sure how I missed it, but there was an interesting article in the New York Times (that is why I missed it) on page A1 about Iowa’s vanishing barns. But, in reality the article is about more than that. It is about the size of today’s Iowa farms. It is about the young people who desire to farm but run into brick wall after brick wall. It is about the older generations who are now involved in the larger farms, but still see that there may be something wrong. In a nutshell it is kind of the same thing about large farms vs. small farms that I have written about before on this blog. But, since I have been blasted a time or two for writing those things I’ll just leave you with some interesting quotes from the article … including quotes from regular ol’ Iowans.

• “What had in the 1930s been an ordinary farm here — 80 or 160 acres and a few cows and sheep and chickens — is today far bigger and more specialized to pay for air-conditioned, G.P.S.-equipped combines and tractors, so much fuel and the now-skyrocketing price of farmland.”

• “All of that has left some of Iowa’s youngest, newest farmers doubtful that one could make a start in farming anymore without roots and connections and land dating back, say, to the W.P.A. era.”

• ““We just don’t neighbor like we used to,” said Donald Wedeking, 81, of Nemaha (A “Mighty Small Town,” as its sign somewhat ambiguously promises), who grows 830 acres of corn and soybeans with his son, far more than his family once did.”

• “These days, a farmer’s land can stretch into thousands of acres. When the W.P.A.’s writers came through, they wrote that Iowa had 221,986 separate farms on land totaling more than 34 million acres. Today, on only a little less land (31.5 million acres), Iowa has just 88,400 farms. More than half the farmland is owned by people 65 years old or older, an Iowa State University farm economist says, and about half of that is owned by those 75 or older.”

• “But the notion that young people, lured by big cities, have left purely by choice is not always so. On a gravel road near Albert City, a machine — some surreal cross between a spaceship and a gargantuan Transformers toy — suddenly appears in the distance. Cars pull over to make room. It stands 19 feet off the ground, its gaping boom, full of insecticide to battle the aphids in soybean plants, jutting out 90 feet. This sprayer ($168,000, used) is the latest tool in the kit of Josh Bellcock, 31, who farms 3,000 acres with family members. Without his family land and his longstanding ties to older farmers who live here (and from whom he rents land) Mr. Bellcock says he probably could not succeed as a young farmer starting out. Not now.”

• ““I’m pretty lucky,” Mr. Bellcock said. “People aren’t willing, unless it’s a family member, to go out of their way to help someone else.””