The Beginning Farmer

With all that has been going lately I have hardly had a chance to browse through my August issue of “The Stockman Grassfarmer”. But, after working on the house this evening I picked it up and found an interesting article titled, “Finishing Grassfed Cattle Year Around in Deep Snow Country”. This is the type of article that interests a grassfarmer from Iowa, although I hope and pray that this winter isn’t a “deep snow” winter in Sounthern Iowa!

The article is written by William G. Winter (DVM) who is a consultant for Thousand Hills Cattle Company, a grass finished cattle buyer, and contains ten great points for the grass finisher in snow country. I won’t take time to expound on all ten of them, but I will mention a few that I really appreciated.

#2 – Prevent Heat Loss Stress With Wind Breaks: It seems that they advise against barns (I’m down with that), but do stress the importance of wind breaks if you want to maintain good winter gains. He says they mostly used stored forages (net wrapped or tubed), but of course any good wind break would work.

#5 – Prevent Parasites: I loved this quote, “Well-mineralized cattle, whether through the forages, supplementation, or both, do not get parasites. To my mind, there is never a case where poisons need to be used to control parasites.” Mr. Winter (fitting name, huh) goes on to write about Basic-H and diatomaceous earth.

#9 – Use Correct Breed Selection: This article suggests English breeds (how about Irish?), smaller with lots of muscling, the ability to develop a think coat, and cattle that are from smart stock. By smart stock (my words) they are talking about cows that root around in the snow, find shelter in storms, and stick with their young through rough weather.

Every single point was great, but I don’t want to copy the article word for word! I am encouraged with our Dexters after reading through this and experincing one winter with them.

I have to admit that from time to time I become easily overwhelmed and when that happens I have a strong desire to just shut down. I think I am getting close to that point with all that is going on in our lives right now…

• Becca is pregnant, which is a great blessing, but it does mean extra trips to Des Moines every two weeks for check ups and everything else that goes along with expecting a new baby.
• The school year has begun and with it next week I will begin youth groups for the year. This is all fine and dandy … except this year because of a combination of things (we are selling the house were we have youth group) in addition to starting up we are also trying to remodel a room at the church to be my new office/youth center.
• You may have heard that we are building a house … I have never built a house before … I become slightly overwhelmed when I go out there to work in the evenings.
• We need to be living in said house by September, 26th … that is close!!!
• There are about 130 cattle panels that I still need to go take down and bring to the farm … I thought I would have that done weeks ago.
• And, I still have fencing that needs to go up on the perimeter of the farm. That is on hold for the moment, but I need to use the panels mentioned above to build a temporary pen so that I can bring some of our Dexters up to our farm.

Of course I could go on and on and in doing so I would be describing the lives of most Americans (farmers or not). One thing that keeps running through my mind though is the amazing amount of work that was done by the founders of this country and our states. Because of my love for history I am constantly reading anything I can get my hands on about the daily lives of our founding fathers and those that have come before us.

As we try to start our farm from scratch with a lot of modern conveniences I can’t help but appreciate the families that began farming near Plimouth Plantation or those rough and tumble individuals that worked their way through the Cumberland Gap and carried the edge of the frontier with them. When I think of their work and determination I think it makes our current load a bit more managable.

What a blessing it is to be able to chase my dreams and be encouraged by the memory of those that have worked for theirs. Here are some links to a couple of great farming books that remind us of our heritage and the amount of work our ancestors did in the face of overwhelming times.

A Bountiful Harvest: The Midwestern Farm Photographs of Pete Wettach, 1925-1965 – This is a can’t miss book if you love great farm pictures.

A Good Day’s Work: An Iowa Farm in the Great Depression – I just learned about this book, but it looks very interesting and inspiring.

I would add to the list any of the great 18th century journals I have read, but since they don’t directly deal with farming I’ll leave them off for now. I would also love to hear about any historical agricultural accounts you know of!

Now that I have your attention we really do need your help shooting our livestock, but when I say “shooting” I’m talking about taking pictures! From time to time I have come to you guys for some specific advice or help and I have never been steered in the wrong direction. So, after realizing our camera was slowly beginning to add a growing purple line to our pictures we began looking for a new camera. First we looked online, then we went to Best Buy, and finally we came home really confused.

A camera has become an important part of our farm as we have spent more time writing about our experiences and as we have had the opportunity to share a little bit about sustainable farming over on the Epi-Log. We need something that we can use to take outdoor pictures of life on the farm and of course plenty of family snapshots. It is amazing how much cameras have changed since we bought our first digital about five years ago.

So, these are the cameras we have come up with:

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS5K (10.1 MP)

Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W150 (8.1 MP)

Canon Powershot SD1100IS (8.0 MP)

It isn’t like this is our top three or anything, but these are the ones that we were able to handle at Best Buy and liked the best. I would love to hear about your experiences with any of these brands or models. We have loved our Canon, but seemed to like the Panasonic and the Sony a little more this time around. Let us know what you think! Oh, I forgot to mention we are trying to land in the $200’ish range.

On the Farm Front:

Not to leave you hanging on the farm/building front I’ll give a quick update. Yesterday we were able to take the camper out to the farm so we have a place to lay the kids down when we work late. While we were out there I walked around the pigs a little and was happy with their growth. I’m really looking forward to them this winter!

Also, we spent a little time caulking the cracks around the posts. This will help keep the creepy-crawlies out … we hope. Tomorrow evening I’m heading up it the rafters to run some more wire. Less the one month until we have to move out of our current house … anyone wanna have a work day 😉

As we inch closer to our first farm meat sales I am beginning to consider the different ways to sell our pork, beef, and possibly poultry. Our pigs should be ready around November/December (if you are interested in buying shoot us an e-mail) and I am starting to wonder if there are benefits to selling by the cut or at least in smaller packages. Of course if we decided to sell by the by the package there would be other hoops to jump through, but would the positives outweigh the difficulties?

Right now we are planning on selling our pigs as halves or wholes and just taking them to our locker or possibly one close to the customer. A couple of the biggest benefits with this sales method is that you have fewer customers to coordinate with and you are able to sell all of the cuts at the same time, not just the most popular cuts. Buying a whole or a half is also less expensive for the customer most of the time because you don’t have to use a state/national inspected/certified processor.

The downside of selling by halves or wholes for the consumer is that you get a lot of meat! Of course that isn’t a down side for everyone, but smaller families or couples (and singles) may not need or have the space for 80 or 160 pounds of pork and even more beef. I suppose another downside for the producer is that you are dealing with a smaller customer block. It may be a positive thing to be able to sell to many people.

If we decided to go the route of individual cut sales there are a few hoops that we would need to jump through. We would need an approved label, some sort of storage area (does it need to be certified?), and a certified processor. It is becoming more difficult for the small farmer to jump through all of those hoops, but it is possible and is being done by small-scale farms all over the country.

So, what are your thoughts? If you a farmer, potential farmer, customer, or potential customer I would love to hear what some of your thoughts are. Do you love the variety and relative economy of a half or whole? Or, do you like the idea of small package deals and individual packages for sale?

I realize that the 2008 Farm Bill is kind of old news at this point, but since I didn’t spend much time writing about it I thought I would include some tidbits from a recent article in “The Practical Farmers of Iowa” newsletter. They interviewed a few PFI members and asked them to grade the Farm Bill and give some of their thoughts about the positives and negatives. The grades and comments that followed were very interesting. I would love to hear some of your thoughts on the Farm Bill or on the grades and comments given by these Iowa farmers.

The four different farmers gave the bill a “D”, “B-“, “C-“, and another “B-“. That averages out to a solid “C” grade … which does mean that overall it received a decent passing grade. But, it is also obvious that they weren’t overly excited about the contents of the bill either. Let’s start with the positive comments.

All four of the respondents were pleased with the changes to the Conservation Stewardship Program, which I admit is a program that I know very little about (check out the link to read more). Also, it seems like they were happy with some of the changes in the beginning farmer supports. I for one am going to look into some of those changes and see if there are any new benefits for us. Finally, a couple of the mentioned the positives of the growing “organic” segment of the bill.

The dislike portion of their responses were very interesting. They were interesting because not everyone had a huge list of dislikes, and in some cases had more positive to say than negative. But, it was also very interesting (and telling) that all four of them listed the same thing as one of their dislikes. Care to guess what that was…?

“(Dislike) The continued high subsidies for unsustainable ag production. (How will it impact your farm) The high subsidies for corn and soybeans will mean a continuation of commodity farming for most of my operation – I have to go were the profits are.”

“It is frustrating that Congress again failed to pass commodity payment limitation reform in this Farm Bill.”

“As far as commodity programs, they failed to put limits on payments.”

“The lack of reform in the commodity subsidy program was discouraging.”

I think it says a lot that these farmers (which come from slightly different backgrounds/viewpoints) all pointed to the lack of change in commodity subsidies as one of the major downfalls in this bill. I also think the first quote above says a lot about our agricultural industry. I’m not quite sure where I would grade the 2008 Farm Bill, but I suppose I would call it average … for now.

Sorry if you are dial-up (I’ll be there soon), but since it is a Saturday and I have a lot of work to do here is a quick recap of our house building progress in picture format. They say a picture can say a 1,000 words, but if that isn’t enough and you have a question fire away 🙂

On Sunday this is roughly what our building looked like on the inside, minus the extra materials … it was completely bare and the inside layout was just something on paper.

Then we spent a lot of money at Menard’s and carried A LOT of heavy stuff inside. Thankfully we had four people to carry stuff in. It was also a big plus that most of the sheet rock came in with a fork lift.
We spent most of the week doing work similar to this kind of thing. Planning walls, building walls, and placing walls. We are sort of doing the design as we go thing even though we had the basic idea very well planned out.
By Friday afternoon all the framing was done (unless someone wants to move 100 sheets of sheet rock, then we will put up the last wall) so we started to rough in the wiring. We have most of it run through the ceiling and now we are starting to put it to all of the boxes.
The end result of the week? I have 708 unread e-mail messages in my inbox! We have been getting up early and working late with little time for breaks. I was going strong all week long, except for the day when I was down with a high temp … and the day that I worked with a 101º temp. Today I need to write a sermon … and check my e-mail 🙂

First of all let me throw out a quick apology to all those people who have e-mailed me with encouragement or asking about pricing/pork/beef/eggs. I have a bit of a backlog in the e-mail inbox and I am slowly going through it, but I haven’t had much time as I have been working roughly 7:00 AM until 10:00 PM everyday this week on the house and then on church work. It is a crazy time, but it is very fulfilling!

Secondly, I know I have talked about sheep multiple times on this blog, but while we were at the Iowa State Fair (the greatest) I picked up a brochure from the Midwest Katahdin Hair Sheep Association. They had some sheep on display in the Avenue of Breeds, so I was also able to see them in person (I may have noticed them before, but without much thought).

As I read through the brochure a few things popped out at me. I’ll list those below, but if you have any experience raising Katahdin sheep or even better marketing them or other sheep I (and probably others that read the blog) would love to hear your thoughts. Here is what I found interesting:

• The bred was devolped my Michael Piel in Maine (After a little more searching it looks like he used some African stock to get started and part of his growing flock also ended up at the Heifer Project International farm.
• They have good flocking instincts and work good from Canada to the Equator (I had worried about their lack of wool in Iowa winters).
• The flavor of the meat has a “mild lamb” taste. I’m no lamb expert and I’ve only had it once, so could someone explain a “mild lamb” taste?
• Most are white in color, but they can be red or brown (I would like some red or brown sheep to go with my dun Dexters!).

Well, the work continued today (as you can see from the picture), but it progressed despite my presence. I was at home most of the day with a 101+ temperature drifting in and out of sleep and only made a short appearance at the farm to feed the pigs and cut a few boards. In reality though, I’m not much of the builder out there … I’m just the worker! It truly is great to have Becca’s parents in town because they know what they are doing when it comes to building a house.

Anyways, as you can see from the picture we now have the rooms mostly framed in. There will be five rooms all along the back wall (kids room, babies room, parents room, bathroom, and laundry room) with a big common area across the front with our living room, dining room, and kitchen. Because of this the building stage has been able to progress fairly quickly as we can build the walls on the floor and then put them up.

We are only a little over one month away from having to be in the new house though, so we have a lot of work to do in a short amount of time. I guess this is where the “modern homesteader” thing really comes into play … we’ve got to get everything in order before the winter winds and snow surround us. It really is a cool process to see it all come together and makes me thankful that I am surrounding by so many people willing to help.

Keep checking back if you want some more house updates. Hopefully we will begin wiring tomorrow and maybe even be putting up some insulation by the end of the week!

I am a huge believer in strengths and Biblical gifts. A few years ago I was introduced to the book, “Now, Discover Your Strengths” by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. They have narrowed it down to thirty-four different strength “themes” that people can have. Things like Achiever, Focus, Harmony, Maximizer, Relator, and Significance are included in those strength themes. The basic idea is that when we know our strengths (and gifts) we will be most productive and influential to those around us.

The week long seminar that I attended really opened my eyes up to the way I work and how to utilize those strengths and passions that I have. It also opened up my mind that there really can be people that thrive in their particular job … even some jobs that I would deem undesirable. Since those classes I have tried to pay close attention to people working in their respective jobs.

I have found (and talked with) people who love their 9 to 5 cubicle grind. They thrive and grow in the work, the stress, and everything that goes with the business world. I have meet janitors who worked the late shift cleaning toilets in schools that wouldn’t trade their job for the world. They loved the service and results that see in their work. I have chatted with nursing home assistants that absolutely love working with the elderly in their care no matter what the work entails. They just love being with the people and serving them.

All of those jobs are ones that I would not like to touch with a ten foot pole, yet there are plenty of people that absolutely love them. I have to admit that I didn’t think there was a single person that loved to clean toilets or sit in a cubicle all day long. But, we each have strengths that lead us in different directions.

My strengths have lead me to a passion for ministry and for farming. And after reading through my strengths again I can see exactly why I am led to those two occupations … better yet … lifestyles! Check out my top five strengths below.

• Context: People strong in the Context theme enjoy thinking about the past. They understand the present by researching its history.
• Belief: People strong in the Belief theme have certain core values that are unchanging. Out of these values emerges a defined purpose for their life.
• Adaptability: People strong in the Adaptability theme prefer to “go with the flow.” They tend to be “now” people who take things as they come and discover the future one day at a time.
• Communication: People strong in the Communication theme generally find it easy to put their thoughts into words. They are good conversationalists and presenters.
• Responsibility: People strong in the Responsibility theme take psychological ownership of what they say they will do. They are committed to stable values such as honesty and loyalty.

It has been a few years since I had read through those. Now that we are living through the adventure of beginning a farm I can see exactly how those strengths are playing out and why we have been led the direction we have been led. With farming, as with any occupation, I think we really need to make sure we are playing to our strengths. There are many jobs I think would be fun (something in the music industry, some sort of traveling job, New York Yankee), but my strengths and passions led me other places. It really is key to play to your strengths!