Early To Bed, Early To Rise…

….makes a farmer’s wife healthy, wealthy and wise.  Or at least healthy.  Not sure about the whole wealthy part and wise is a relative term.  I guess wealthy is relative too.   Moving on.

I’ve been trying to get to bed earlier, like before 10, so that I can get up earlier.  So the last few days I’ve gotten up between 5 and 5:15 so that I can nurse Naomi, put her back down to sleep and get outside to work for an hour or two.  Paul gets to hang out with the kids as they get up and maybe start serving breakfast while I tend to cows, chickens and sheep.  It’s a beautiful arrangement once I actually get my butt out of bed.  Before this new arrangement I was finding it hard to make it outside before 10 or some days not at all until after lunch.  Which pretty much drove me nuts.

So forgive me for a lack of posts.  They’re still amassing in my head as I work.  If anyone would like to follow me around with a video camera at 6am I will gladly share them all verbally.

In other news, we’ve been busy keeping up with harvesting from the garden while also trying to pull out old plants and get new seeds in the ground.  Fall crops are thriving in the basement under grow lights, waiting to be transplanted.  I’m kinda afraid to bring them outside to harden them off for fear that they’ll get eaten by bugs.  Any tips?

Bedtime is calling.  Hope you all are enjoying August thus far.  We’re hoping some of these chances of rain pan out.  Not to be greedy or anything but we sure do love a good inch or two every week or so.

Ciao

August 3, 2016 by psessen Leave a comment

A Harvest Detour

Yesterday I picked the blackberries and green beans.  The children checked the zucchini, cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes.  Thus my hopes were high this morning that I could work on planting some beets and then pick up the yard so it would be ready for Grandma to mow this afternoon.  But nooooo….before I could plant I had to harvest.  In addition to what is shown, the children also picked a few carrots to snack on.  And trimmed up some sweet potato vines, from which the leaves were removed and saved for cooking.  And we still need to go back and get an onion or two for salsa.   And I just started way too many sentences with “And.”   Oh well.

Am I the only gardener out there who gets annoyed at having to harvest things when I had my heart set on planting or weeding or mulching?  It’s silly really.  The whole point of gardening is to enjoy the harvest.  Of course there is usually a decent amount of weed harvesting done during the vegetable harvesting.  Maybe I’m the only weirdo gardener…

I’m really in love with our system of gardening.  The planting rows get hay and grass clippings and compost as those things are available.  The walkways get wood chips.  Weeds are hand pulled or smothered with more hay/chips.  When I want to transplant I simply pull back a little bit of hay, dig a hole, pop the plant in and then pull the covering back around the plant.  On days like today when I want to plant seed….I pull back the hay to make a row, work it up slightly with a hand shovel and then plant.  Thanks to the rain and the constant ground cover working it up was incredibly fast and easy.   The rows stay the same year after year.  The planting rows are never walked on(in theory) and the tiller gathers dust in the barn.

Anywho, back to the beets.  I planted 2 rows in 2 different places for a total of 4 rows, all about 4ft long.  If my seeds germinate well, that will be a fair amount of beets to can.  One area had a new layer of unfinished compost and then hay added a few weeks ago.  The other area had dead squash plants ripped out just before planted and had nothing new added.  That row was more like soil so we’ll see which the beets prefer.

See that pretty basil?  It’s one of 3 plants that a customer shared with us just a few weeks ago.  All 3 are doing great and will be much appreciated.  If they grow in a hurry they might even get used to make roasted tomato sauce.

Just for the fun of it I took a picture of our little baby carrots that Ethan planted a few weeks ago.  I didn’t mark anything down, but I’m pretty sure they germinated in under a week.  I don’t know why I bother trying to plant carrots in the spring, they always take forever and don’t do nearly as well.  Somebody please remind me not to waste time or space on carrots next spring….thanks.

The boys always want to take pictures so I told them they could each take one.  Ethan chose to photograph the cherry tomatoes that are just getting started.

Micah took 3 pictures of the vegetables that I had already taken pictures of…..yeah.  Why not?

That about wraps it up.  Now we just need to pick green beans again tonight and do some canning tomorrow.  And make salsa this afternoon.  Come to think of it, I should probably re-check the tomatoes since I planted a green variety….maybe some of them were ripe and I just never thought about it.  Of course everything ended up all being a jumble by planting time so I don’t actually know which plants are which variety.  Always room for improvement.

Thanks to the farmer and grandma for holding down the fort while I hid in the bedroom to write this.  Why do I make time to blog?  Because I like to and it’s a good excuse for an occasional sanity break.  Plus it’s too hot to work on fence anyway.

Sweet potato leaves are free for the taking.  Just come tell me you want some and I’ll cut off some vines that are trying to take over rows that don’t belong to them.  You have to pick them off the vine yourself though.  They are very tender and mild when cooked.  You could easily “hide” them if necessary.  If you grow sweet potatoes and aren’t eating some of the leaves….you should be.

The Farmer’s Wife

Back to reality….

 

July 21, 2016 by psessen Leave a comment

A Good Reminder

Isn’t my mom an amazing flower gardener?  Too pretty not to share.  And there’s more of them in all different colors all around the yard.

I was reminded today(last Saturday), once again, of how blessed we are to be here.  How spoiled we are to live in a nice house, on a beautiful farm.  We’re here strictly as renters but we have the added bonus that maybe we’ll some day inherit a portion of the farm.  Maybe all this hard work to improve the soil and expand the garden and build fence will be something we’ll get to enjoy long term.  Then again, maybe not.  Like anything in life, it’s a gamble.

Farming’s a hard business to get started in.  Some friends of ours are a few years into their farm and are faced with a tractor that isn’t working, raccoons that are outsmarting their efforts to protect their chickens, a truck in poor shape and a lease that isn’t being renewed.  Any improvements in soil health as a result of their grazing efforts will be left behind.  Thankfully in this game, most of the infrastructure is portable.  But it’s still a big pain to move animals and supplies in addition to personal household belongings.  Not to mention finding a new place to rent that meets their needs.

Another farming friend has also had raccoon issues.  She works a full time non-farming job and has to travel from her house in town out to her farm twice a day.  I’m sure late nights and early mornings are more common for her than they are for us.  She owns her land but it’s still not an easy task to keep everything going smoothly.

We have so much to be thankful for.  Good health.  A sweet rental situation.  A car that has another 150K miles left on it…ahem.  Generous customers and neighbors.  Good food to give us energy for long and busy days.  Wonderful neighbors.  Google.  No joke.  I don’t know where we would be without Google.

On our longest and hardest days I try to remember that it could be FAR worse.  Then I buckle down and keep going until everything is done so that I can enjoy my wonderful bed.  Thank you Costco for my wonderful mattress.  Probably not made in the USA, but I’m keeping it as long as I can.

Peace out ya’ll.  We have ground lamb, breakfast sausage, Italian sausage and stew meat back in stock.  Just need to get an updated price list printed.  Come see us and all the pretty flowers.  Customers are always welcome to wander through the garden and around the yard or go see the animals.  Just check in with us first if you plan to wander beyond the yard.

The Farmer’s Wife

July 16, 2016 by psessen Leave a comment

Why We Aren’t Certified Organic In A Nutshell

I should be sleeping but I have a quote I want to share and there’s no time like the present right?  No witty intro this time.  Let’s get to it.

Taken from an ACRES USA magazine interview with Grace Gershuny about her views on organics.

“This is one of the major things that people don’t understand, and in particular the activist community doesn’t understand.  The push for higher standards has actually made it easier for the large, professional business organizations than for the smaller owner-operators.  They are simply better equipped to deal with the increasingly finicky and paperwork heavy demands of organic certification.  So the demand for higher standards has helped create the very situation that organic activists feared most.  Organic certification is not a health and safety standard, it is a lot of information about how the product is produced.  It is a process standard, not a product quality standard.”

The more the food system is regulated the more it drives out the little guy who cares about soil health.  It shifts money to the big agribusiness who can afford to jump through hoops and who only meets the bare minimum of requirements necessary to smack an “Organic” label on their mono-culture carrots to get the uneducated consumer to buy their product.  If you want amazing food that can not only keep you healthy but restore health for those who are ailing – you need to either grow it yourself or find a farmer who can’t stop talking about nutrient density, soil micro-organisms and bio-diversity. To name a few.  I’m sure there are a few exceptions to the rule on the big farms side of things, but I don’t know how to figure out who they are when I’m looking at a produce display at the grocery store.

If you want to know how we raise our sheep and what we feed them, just ask.

One final note.  We were fortunate to find a hay supplier who uses organic principles on his farm.  We buy all the hay he is willing to bale in round bales and our cows do great on it.  When we ran out this past spring and again just recently when we tried a bale from somewhere else…our cows started showing the initial signs of mastitis.  Likely from the chemical nitrogen used to fertilize convention hay fields.  Methods matter.  All fertilizers are not created equal.  All hay is not the same.  It’s more than just what cutting and what level of humidity and what protein percentage.  We farm according to the founding principles of organic agriculture the best we can given our location in the middle of corn and bean fields.  Not messing with the headaches of certification allows us to farm and improve our systems instead of filling out paperwork and tracking every little thing.

Know your farmer, know your food.

Goodnight.

Yours Truly

July 13, 2016 by psessen Leave a comment

Made In The USA

I learned two very important things in high school.  From two very wonderful people.  Mrs. Head taught me to write.  She was my teacher for Freshman Honors English.  I didn’t really know what to sign up for my first year of high school.  I had gone to a small private grade school and never really enjoyed English, so I’m not sure why I chose honors over regular, but I did.  Ya know what happened?  It kicked my butt.  Yet in hindsight I’m so very glad that I was in that class with that teacher because it made the rest of high school and college writing a breeze.  So thank you Mrs. Head for teaching me to write good….come on, laugh a little.

The second lesson I learned was thanks to Mr. Parker.  While Mrs. Head was the type of teacher everyone liked to hate because she was so dang tough, Mr. Parker was the type everyone(I think) loved.  He was the only teacher(that I had) to invite his classes over to his house for a BBQ after a field trip.  Mr. Parker taught Honors Physics, which I took my senior year.  The most important thing he wanted to teach all of his students was HOW TO THINK.  Not how to get the right answer, but to figure out why and how things happen.  Every class for the first few weeks was started with a question about how something worked or why certain things happened.

So there’s what I learned in high school: how to write and how to think.  Other than that I was really good at learn and forget.  As in past the test and move on.  To be sure I had some other great teachers too.  I would bet a lot of them are still teaching at EHS.  Maybe I’ll go visit some day…likely not.

All that is a prelude into what I’ve been thinking about lately.  Namely that maybe I should think about things a little more.  Particularly things that I buy.  You see, I’m asking the local community to pay a premium for farm fresh, nutrient dense food for a variety of reasons.  One of them being that it provides our family with an income from doing something we love and can do together.  I’m asking people to pay enough for us to cover our costs and have a little left over without having to need Paul or I working off the farm.  But what about everything else besides food?

The verse in the bible about not worrying about what you will eat or drink or wear has really hit home for me the past few years.  We knew we wouldn’t be making much, money wise, when we started off down this road called farming.  We also knew we could live very simply and be happy.  And as we’ve gone along the Lord has generously provided a good deal of what we eat, drink and wear free of charge.  Our children live almost entirely in hand me downs and thrift store finds(found by aunts and grandmas).  My mom brings home a good deal of “damaged” food from the Hope Center to supplement what we grow ourselves.  As for drink, well, we mostly drink water and milk.  The milk comes from our cows and the water comes from a little spring a few miles down the road.  Free of charge.

All that to say, we don’t spend much on personal items.  We make simple recipes for shampoo and conditioner and toothpaste and don’t mess with perfume/cologne, makeup and the like.  But when I do have to spend money on something, I’ve been thinking that I need to start making a little more effort to buy things made in the USA or that are certified fair trade.  If I’m going to be passionate about high quality food, then maybe those philosophies should be extended to material goods as well.

So what do we buy that I could be making more of an effort to buy from manufacturers operating in the USA?  Socks for starters.  My boys rip holes in socks like crazy.  I’ve tried various brands at Walmart, Target and K-Mart and they’re all the same.  So I’ve ordered 3 pairs from 3 different USA companies from Amazon.  Today.  And some Made in USA rain boots for Ethan, because everyone else already has a pair, most of which were given to us.

I’ve learned that buying from USA companies takes more time spent researching but I suppose it was still easier than hauling everyone through a mega store.  We’ll see how the socks hold up.  What else do you all buy that is made in the USA or fair trade from other countries?

My new bag was made in India and sold through Noonday.  I’ve never owned a diaper bag of the type to be found in the baby department.  I made a cloth sling bag when I was pregnant with Ethan and that has been my diaper bag/purse up until now.  I thought maybe after 8 years and 5 children it was time for something new.  This beauty was hand made from goat leather by the lowest class of people in India.  I love knowing that someone was able to support themselves and their family through the work of their hands and I fully expect this bag to be my main bag for the next 10 years+.  Supposedly it gets darker and softer with use.  It might take a while for mine to age seeing as how I don’t get out much.

I think that if we could see the working and living conditions of the people who produce all the cheap stuff that we Americans have come to love, expect and depend on…well, we might not be so eager to buy it.  So for what it’s worth, as time and money allow, I’m going to make it a point to stop and think about where I buy the things I want and need.  Baby steps are better than no steps at all.  If you’ve walked this road already and have companies to recommend….please share.

The Farmer’s Wife

Written between 3-4pm on Sunday, while two babies were napping and Paul and the older 4 were at the new Splash Pad in Edwardsville.  Booyah!  Is my writing any gooder when it’s not done late at night?

July 11, 2016 by psessen Leave a comment

A Slide Show Of….Well, Yesterday.

I would say a slide show of today, but it’s already 12:05 as I start typing this.  I don’t seem to be able to get around to writing before 10 or 11pm.  The computer is in our bedroom so by the time everything is done and we’re ready for bed I hate to stay up late typing while Paul is trying to sleep.  So I moved the computer to the kitchen.  Hopefully Naomi will let me sleep in a little tomorrow.  I told the big kids they’re not allowed to come down until after 7 since they were up until 9:30.  Anyway, on with the day.

Paul and I filled containers with potting soil last night so that the boys could get busy planting as soon as they were done with breakfast.  We’re attempting broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage planted as fall crops.  We also planted some onions by seed in the hopes that planting them this year and then letting them overwinter, with a good mulch cover, would give us bigger bulbs next year.  We shall see.

After seeds were done, I had Ethan pick any decent size cucumbers he could find.  Those, combined with the harvest of a day or two ago, got turned into bread and butter pickles.  A gallon and a half for the fridge.  Ethan picked, Micah washed, Ethan chopped, both boys packed into jars and momma cut the onions and made the sugar/vinegar mix.  It’s really only fair to make them do most of the work.  If you could see them eat the pickles a few days from now you would agree.

Next up was a trip out to the field to watch daddy plant another fence post.  What to do when you get bored?  Pick flowers of course.  Tis the season!

This is a shot of the 18 acres we planted last fall.  18 acres of crop land planted in a diverse mixture of grasses, legumes and winter wheat.  The wheat did a great job of getting a jump on the weeds and giving the grasses and clovers and chance to get going.  We’ve only mowed the field once so far.  At this point we’re hoping to let the grasses and clovers go to seed before a second mowing and then hopefully a round or two of grazing this fall.  It’s all trial and error.  Hopefully not too much error though.  This field needs to start paying us back…

A close up of what’s growing in between the brown wheat.  Even though we mowed it after the wheat seed heads had formed, we still got lots more seed heads.  So maybe we’ll get a bonus crop of wheat to be grazed with the perennials.

And last of all, a picture of one of the volunteer sunflower in the garden.  They’re just starting to bloom.  Wish I could say that same thing about tomatoes ripening.  They just keep getting bigger, but no color yet.

What else did we do and not take pictures of….harvested one row of potatoes(momma and children), harvested some garlic(Ethan), picked blackberries(kiddos), pulled lots of weeds(momma and grandma), chatted with our old neighbor who stopped by for a visit(everyone).  Took care of a baby, gave the girls a bath, cleaned the milking equipment really well, caught up on emails, read library books.

It was a busy day.  I should be sleeping.  Pardon any typos, spelling oopsies or grammar errors.  It’s past my bed time.

The Farmer’s Wife

July 10, 2016 by psessen 1 Comment

Why Not Comply?

We love our cows and we love our customers, so why not attempt to comply with the new rules set forth by IDPH?  The short answer is that we have no interest in the headaches and paperwork of trying to work with regulators who have no actual experience or knowledge of raw dairy.  We don’t want to be nitpicked over things that don’t matter.  And we don’t want to waste a ton of time and paper proving that our milk is safe, when a simple milk test can determine if it is or not.

The reports we have heard from 2 of the 3 farms that have applied for a permit do not improve our opinion of this whole ordeal.  One is a Grade A dairy already and said they don’t believe anyone will pass.  The other submitted their first 3 milk tests with flying colors and then had the 4th fail in one aspect.  But because they had been requesting butterfat content on each test they knew it wasn’t even their sample.  The butterfat content dropped almost a whole percentage!  That doesn’t happen within the same group of cows in a short period of time.  So what does IDPH do?  Reasonably they would have them re-submit the last sample right?  Nope.  They made them start over from the beginning.  4 more samples paid for by the farmer.  Fun stuff.  Farmers have money to burn right?

I have no faith in government agencies.  They are all too often bought out by industries with a vested interest.  And when it comes to food, I believe their policies are designed to keep the American public sick.  Whether through ignorance or evil intent.  So why would I make myself miserable trying to work with them?

Then too, there was the requirement to post a warning about the dangers of raw milk on EVERY carton.  Just in case our customers forgot from one week to the next that our milk could cause serious illness to small children, pregnant women and the elderly.  And the requirement to post their pre-written warning in 2 inch letters where the milk was dispensed.  That would end up being a 3ft by 4ft sign.  Sheesh.

Whether you are in favor of raw milk or not, I want you to know that this is how your tax dollars are being spent!   This is why our state can’t even keep all our rest stops open.

So now what?  The cows are paid for, the winter hay is paid for, the rent is partially paid.  What do we do with these wonderful animals and all their creamy goodness?  I can only make so much cheese and butter!  We can buy an extra calf or two every time a cow calves and have every cow nursing 3 calves and then sell them when weaned.  Or we could get some pigs and feed the milk to them.  More work though since we would still have to milk the cows.  But we’ve got to milk a few for us anyway…  Did you know someone originally wanted the new regulations to apply to single cows for family use?  Good grief people!  Leave me the heck alone.

If anyone would like to skim the full set of regulations and then call IDPH and give them a piece of your mind let me know and I will email them to you.  Just don’t tell them I sent you.  Of course they have so much free time that they’ll probably read this anyway.  If so then I want you (IDPH) to know that we’re holding on to our cows and equipment while waiting to see if you amend your burdensome regulations to be reasonable.   Until then we’ll get on with the business of figuring out plan B.

The Farmer’s Angry Wife

July 2, 2016 by psessen 2 Comments

Tools Of The Trade

This picture sums up a lot of the tools we use around the farm.  It was taken a day or two ago, as the children were waiting for daddy to finish up milking and take the cows back out to pasture.  Allow me to break it down for you.

The most obvious tool here would be the golf cart.  I suppose a real rough and tough farmer would have a 4-wheeler or a horse, but we’re rookies so we’re rockin the golf cart.  Because it was here and we like to work with what we’ve got.  That being said, we will likely be the death of this golf cart and will then need to purchase it’s replacement.  But that’s a whole lot cheaper than buying a 4-wheeler or horse or tractor!

Next up we have buckets.  We use buckets all day every day.  Big ones for soaking grain for the chickens and for clabbering skim milk for dogs and chickens.  Little ones for collecting kitchen scraps for the chickens and for making up dinner for the dogs every night.  Various sizes for collecting weeds as we pull them.  I used to buy palm and coconut oil in gallon buckets so we have 8 or 9 of them floating around.  Plus a goodly assortment of 4 & 5 gallon sizes.   Can never have too many buckets on a farm!

On the back we have one of our poly reels and a bunch of step in posts.  These are what we use for moving the cows around.  They are absolutely wonderful as we prefer to move the cows several times per day.  We hope to eventually use them for the sheep as well, but not until we have perimeter fencing done.  That way if the sheep get “out,” they won’t really be out.  Just in the wrong place.

Speaking of perimeter fencing…we’re getting so close to having the first round done.  Paul worked by moonlight till about 2am one night and then decided it made more sense to just get up at 4:30am and be out working at first light.  Then milk cows and do chores and have lunch and NAP!  He woke Ethan up to go along last time and now Micah won’t stop asking if he can go next time.  Fun bonding time I guess.  If I weren’t on baby duty I would be out there with them.

What else….?  Do children count as tools?  We use them to catch chicks that haven’t figured out that they’re supposed to spend the night inside the coop.  They also come in handy when moving sheep longer distances.  If bribed, they make decent weed pullers.  Then too, they like to greet and entertain customers.  The fuel and maintenance necessary to maintain them is often overwhelming but they’re learning to earn their keep.

As a side note, this heat is getting old!  We’re getting close to having our first of two shade structures done.  But for now, if the sections where they cows need to graze don’t have shade we don’t put them out to pasture until after dinner.  They get to go hang out in a grove of trees not too far from the barn during the hottest part of the day and then eat their fill at night.  A bit backwards from what they’re used to but they seem to be adjusting.  We’ve taken a hit on production but still have had plenty to satisfy customer demand.  Just means I’m not getting any butter or cheese, but I don’t mind a little break.

The Farmer’s Wife

June 19, 2016June 19, 2016 by psessen Leave a comment

Why Aren’t There More of Us – Part 2

I have lost track of how many people have told me they were either camping this past weekend or gone on vacation for the next week or two and won’t be needing milk.  I could throw a pity party and complain about how small scale dairy farmers never get a vacation…but vacationing with a baby, a toddler and a 3 1/2 year old who refuses to be fully potty trained sounds like more work than staying home.  I told Paul on our 9th Anniversary that I’m going to start planning our second honeymoon for our 20th Anniversary.  Because that very well may be the next vacation we take.

I don’t really think a lack of vacations is first on the list for why there aren’t more sustainable farmers, dairy or otherwise.  But no vacations plus no sick days plus no weekends doesn’t make this job terribly attractive to a lot of people.  The goal is to get to the point that we can reduce our daily hours of work and have more time for family stuff, like schooling and fishing and games.  A sort of trade-off for never having a day off.  We’ll see if that ever pans out.

So what else keeps people out of this line of business?  Fear perhaps.  Fear of failure.  Of going broke.  Of a prolonged drought or hail storm or some other weather phenomenon wiping out all your hard work in a matter of hours.  Fear of not being able to invest enough for retirement to maintain your desired standard of living in old age.  Fear of working all day every day until you burn out.

I think another reason is often that one spouse would love to farm and the other has no interest.  When Paul quit his job he had quite a few guys tell him they would love to do something similar but their wife just couldn’t stand to leave the city.  We’re both so grateful that farming is a shared passion and we both had no reservations about the decision to give it a go.

Then too there are all the expenses and taxes associated with being self-employed.  Not specific to farming exactly but a deterrent to striking out on one’s own rather than working for a company with good benefits.  Most families with children would be unwilling to be without health insurance.  We may at some point look into one of the cost sharing organizations but so far we’ve just gone without insurance since Paul quit his engineering job.

And if all those reason weren’t enough, there’s also government regulations and harassment as a possibility.  Although raw milk has been the subject of controversy more often than most other products, the government has also gone after pig and poultry producers in recent years.  And the number of regulations in all sectors tends only to increase.  Never mind that you never hear of big outbreaks from small family farms.  And yet the government often thinks we should have to follow all the same procedures and protocols that the big mega-farms do.

I’m sure there are other reasons there aren’t more of us.  Cost of land for sure.  But for now that’s all I’ve got.

And for fun here’s a few garden pictures…

Some volunteer fennel that either survived the winter or got a really early start from seed that fell last year.  It’s taller than I am.  Anyone know how to get fennel to form a nice bulb at the bottom like the stuff in the store?  Google it, right?  Another day perhaps.

My two rows of summer squash, planted among garlic, are looking AWESOME.  I have never not had my plants get wiped out by squash bugs.  Even having had gardens in 3 different states, those nasty critters always find me.  But this is the first time I’ve grown garlic and I purposely spaced it out enough to plant squash in the same row, so I’ve got my hopes up that it will deter the bugs.  So far so good.  Watch me post in a few days about the first sightings of my arch nemesis.

Goodnight,

The Farmer’s Wife

June 14, 2016 by psessen 1 Comment

Rooting For The Underdog

As long as people have raised crops of any kind, there has been a war between people and weeds.  Prior to World War II, the war on weeds was fought through a variety of strategies.  Crop rotation, cover crops, manual weeding and others I probably don’t even know about.  And then WWII ended and the chemical weapons companies had to find new uses for their products or go out of business.  They figured out that they could adapt their products to be used on weeds instead of people and the rest is history.

After the war, farmers had this new weapon to use in their battle against weeds.  As they converted to using chemical sprays to kill the weeds and the bugs, they gradually forgot all the other means they used to have to employ.  Spraying chemicals was so much easier and faster and cheaper(supposedly).  All those other practices, many of which also built and maintained healthy soils, were abandoned.  Fast forward to today.  Most farmers only grow one or two crops year after year and rely on chemical fertilizers in addition to pesticides and herbicides.  “Cide” of course meaning “killer.”  Think about it….

So while the farmers hire the big trucks to come out and spray the fields for weeds, I’m silently rooting for the weeds to win.  Heresy in these here parts to say such a thing.  Them’s fighting words!  I really don’t want to offend neighbors and certainly not my mom, but I am not a fan of conventional agriculture.  We have wonderful neighbors and I truly believe a lot of them have never considered what their farming practices are doing to the air, water and food supply, not to mention their own bodies.  Those that have given it consideration are often too entrenched in their ways to change.  For many, that style of farming is all they know and, to them, it works.  They’re not out to destroy the world.  They’re just trying to get the best financial return per acre with the least amount of work because they all either have off the farm jobs or they’re retired and getting old.    My point is, I hope I can say that I hate the system but still like and appreciate the people that operate within it.  I hope more of the younger generation will join us on the dark side.

So what’s so great about weeds?  I’ve read many articles over the years that have helped me see weeds in a different light.  A weed is simply an undesired species of plant.  To a crop farmer, weeds are bad because they can choke out the crop and steal away water and nutrients.  To a cattle farmer, weeds are bad because the cows won’t eat them and they take up precious space in the pasture.  To which I say, get some goats, they love weeds.  Just make sure you have adequate fencing and patience!

From man’s point of view, weeds are a nuisance.  But what about from nature’s point of view?  Weeds are what heal broken landscapes.  Weeds grow where the ground is bare or compacted or deficient in nutrients.  Weeds are abundantly prevalent where soil is exceedingly poor.  Weeds have strong root systems that often go far deeper into the ground than the desired plant or crop.  They bring up nutrients from far lower in the ground.  Things that aren’t accessible to shallower rooted grasses and such.  Weeds are designed to heal the land.  They can withstand the extremes of weather and many are adapting to withstand Roundup.  In the agricultural world they call them super-weeds.  Illinois is one of the last few states where this phenomenon hasn’t been seen on a large scale, but I believe it’s only a matter of time.  Mother nature wants to undo all the damage we’ve done to our soils.

So how do we deal with the “weeds” in our pastures?  We graze small sections and rotate often so that what doesn’t get eaten will hopefully get trampled.  We also follow the picky, pampered dairy cows with sheep.  Sheep will eat a much larger variety of plants than cows will. Goats are even better but we haven’t been very effective in how we use the few goats that we have.  Lack of time and fencing.  Some day…  We give our pastures as much rest time as we can in between rounds of grazing to promote the health of the soil.  We believe that as our soil health improves, the weeds will decrease on their own.  As long as something will eat it we don’t consider it a weed.  Especially since a lot of “weeds” are nutritional powerhouses.

So, dear weeds, while everyone else is out to destroy you, know that you have one fan in your corner.  I’ll keep on silently rooting for your survival.  Because it makes me so very happy to know that after so many years of soil abuse, something still wants to grow.

The Farmer’s Wife

I wrote this several days ago but hadn’t posted yet.  Tonight after the kids were in bed mom remarked that some of the weeds in the bean field didn’t seem to be dying off after the first round of spraying.  Do I want my mom to take a loss on her crop just because I disagree with the system of farming practiced in her fields?  No.  That would be like wishing a friend or family member who smokes would get lung cancer.  But I do want to see farmers forced to adopt methods of weed/pest control other than just spraying chemicals.  And ultimately I want to see mother nature triumph over man’s abuse.

 

June 10, 2016 by psessen Leave a comment