Fowl Rescue

Why is that things seem to go wrong the most when you’re short on time? I’ve got more company than I expected coming this weekend, the house is a wreck, and I needed to get some groceries. But I haven’t been sleeping well, so after the guys went off to work this morning, I laid down for a quick nap figuring I’d be more energetic after a little rest.

I was dreaming about catching chicks, and that there were all kinds all over the house. Little did I realize when I woke up almost two hours later that was a prophetic dream. Two hours! Oh man! I didn’t have that kind of time to waste today! But okay, I feel better, so time to get moving, and fast.

My one little injured chick was peeping. I figured she was lonely. I kept wishing for something else to hatch out soon so she’d have a buddy. I held her a while and talked to her, then zipped outside to do the morning chores.

The wound is healing, even though it still looks pretty yuck.

The animals were all giving me the hairy eyeball, like, “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” I was mobbed by chickens and guineas looking for some scratch grain, peafowl screeching for their morning chow, and indignant goats butting my legs because they hadn’t got their morning treat of animal crackers yet. Okay, okay! I’m moving as fast as I can.

Then I heard it.

If you’ve ever had guineas with keets, you know this sound. It’s that high-pitched locater cheep that means, “Help me, I’m lost!” One little keet was running around in the back yard screaming at the top of its little lungs. At first I figured it got separated from the group we saw last night, and when the guineas all came in for food, it’d find its mama. No such luck.

Instead, the older guineas were pecking at it, so I figured I’d better go to the rescue. I got out my trusty net, waded through the other critters, and went after it.

Now if you’ve ever chased a guinea keet you’re probably already laughing, because you know those short little legs move like they’re jet-propelled. It’s really too bad no one had a camera, cause I’m sure this would have qualified for a winner on “Funniest Home Videos.”

After much running around in the 90 degree heat, I finally captured the little twerp, took it inside, and put it in the brooder box with the injured chick. Finally! Now back out to finish my chores.

I wasn’t out there for very long until I heard that sound again. Uh-oh, there’s another keet somewhere! I grabbed my trusty net again, and went off to hunt it down. This one was in the weeds along the driveway. Those weeds include poison ivy.

We went around in circles, I slipped on some rocks and skinned my leg up a little, and about that time I was thinking, “I sure hope you appreciate me saving your life little keet, cause if I get poison ivy for the first time in MY life, I ain’t gonna be happy.” After a whole lot of tries, I finally netted the little speedball, put it in a bucket in the feed room and figured I’d finish my chores, then take it inside.

Only once it shut-up, I heard that sound again. HOW MANY OF THESE KEETS ARE RUNNING LOOSE!?! I’m sure about that time I heard God laughing and saying, “You’d think by now you’d be careful what you wish for! Now you’ve got some little cheeps to keep your lonesome chick company.”

The trouble is, this one was down in the bottom pasture. Now keets are nigh impossible to see in grass, let alone tall weeds like’s in that pasture. The only way you can find one is to home in on the cheeps, and then you still have to extremely lucky to locate it.

I went to look at a known nest site there, and discovered a mass of adult guinea feathers. Hmmmm, so that’s probably why these are running loose on their own – someone had mama for a midnight snack. But where is this little cheeper?

Feathers to the left, two nests of eggs to the right.

I waded through a whole lot of weeds, and probably still wouldn’t have found it except for one thing. This one doesn’t blend in. It’s a light gray. I’ve never seen a keet this color. We had some white guineas way back when we first got some, but I don’t remember them hatching out any gray keets. What I do remember is white guineas are the first to go when the predators come looking for food. They stand out, unlike the regular colored ones, so get picked off quickly.

At any rate, I captured that chick, and thankfully didn’t hear any more cheeps, so took them inside. Unfortunately, I just thought I was done chasing keets, cause when I got in the house I heard the sound again, and it wasn’t coming from the brooder box.

Oh no! The first little cheep had jumped out of the box and was running around all over the house. I headed towards the sound and stepped in something squishy. “Oh crap!” Yep, that’s what it was alright. Guess the little fink’s digestive system is working fine.

It ran in the office, where there are far too many places for it to hide. I crawled around on my hands and knees trying to find it. It ran out of there and into another room and under the bed.

Hiding out among some stuff on a shelf in the office.

By this time my legs were really itching and I knew I couldn’t reach the keet, so I figured I’d take a shower and get ready to go to the grocery store and maybe by then it would be out again. About the time I started to step in the shower, I heard cheeping in the hallway.

I headed after the little cheep, and it zipped towards the living room. I was praying, “Please Lord, I don’t care if you laugh, but don’t let anyone come to the door and see me running around the house with no clothes on, trying to catch this little beast. I haven’t got time to explain it the psychiatrist after they take me away in the straight-jacket!”

Lucky for me, when those little keet feet hit the linoleum in front of the door, the keet went sliding and I grabbed it.

That's the little gray one hopping out of the water dish.

Once I got it back in the brooder box, I threw a towel over the box and went looking for a screen to put over it so there’d be no more jailbreaks. I now have 1 chick and 3 keets cheeping away in a hopefully escape proof box.

And I’m NOT going back outside for fear I might hear more cheeps!

Play this movie, and you'll hear a lot of those locator cheeps!

Waiting on CSA Deliveries

I had hoped to have a picture to put on here this evening of our latest batch of goodies from our CSA (Community Suported Agriculture) membership. This is our third week, and frankly, it’s not going as well as I’d hoped. It’s not the goodies we’re getting that’s the problem, but trying to connect to get them!

First off, they deliver to various areas. When we signed up, we understood there was going to be a drop-off in the town where The Farmer works. Before I ever signed us up, he agreed to pick the food up on his lunch hour, or after work, so no problem there.

The first glitch was the drop-off point. The store which is the pick-up point isn’t in the same town at all, but in the next one over. Okay, we made that adjustment, though it makes it harder and less cost effective since he has to drive further to pick it up.

The next problem is the timing. The first week the guy delivering the food baskets had to work through the delivery day, and stuff didn’t get delivered until the next day. Okay, beginning of the season, glitches happen, move on.

The next week the Farmer called to check if the food had been delivered before going to pick it up. He called right before he left work, and it still wasn’t there. Evidently the guy came soon after, and the storeowner called The Farmer on his cell phone to let him know the food was there, but he was already on his way home. Considering he was more than half way home and considering the price of gas, he didn’t turn around but figured he’d pick it up the next day.

Here we are on the third week, and due to Memorial Day our delivery date was changed again, and we could live with that, but it’s not knowing what time of day the stuff will be there that’s a major problem. The store closes at 5pm, and The Farmer was there at 4:30 this evening, and the guy still hadn’t delivered the stuff. I suppose he made it there before closing time, but then how is anyone supposed to get their stuff until the next day?

That means the greens and vegetables are going to sit in their basket yet another day. I understand they have to be picked one day and delivered the next, but the way it’s going, it’s the following evening of the third day before I finally get them. The produce has lost quite a bit of freshness by that time, especially since it’s not being refrigerated.

Maybe this is how all CSA’s are run, and maybe it works for people who can drop everything to go pick stuff up whenever they get around to delivering it, but it’s not working that well for us. The timing needs to be consistent. I’m beginning to regret I ever signed up for this. It’s not cheap, but for FRESH veggies I figured it was worth it.

If this doesn’t get better, I’m afraid I’m going to feel like it’s not worth the extra expense and trouble for tired vegetables. And if I feel that way, and really wanted to do this, seems like it would be awfully tough to get people just learning to appreciate eating fresh vegetables to bother with it.

How about it, how does this work for other people? Am I expecting too much, or are there better ways of doing this?

Picking up Pastured Poultry & Delivering a Single Sheep

It’s been a busy weekend, and it’s not even over yet since we’ve still got Memorial Day!

Friday afternoon I went out the back roads through places I’ve never been, and ended up at Mountain Fork Farm to pick up my order of pastured broilers.

Yes, I know we have chickens here on our farm. And yes, I thought about raising some for the freezer. There’s just one catch, but it’s a BIG catch. If I raise them, I have to process them, which is a nice way of saying I have to chop their heads off, scald, pluck and gut each chicken. I’ve done it in my time, but at this stage I don’t have the stamina for such a big project, so I decided to support some other farmer who does.

It was a nice drive, and what I saw of the farm was gorgeous. They had a canopy set up a little ways down their driveway, right before you go through the gate to their property, with chickens in coolers ready for pickup. I wish I’d thought to ask how many acres they have. It has to be pretty good sized, because I couldn’t even see their house from where I was.

The first thing you see is a big greenhouse in a field to the right of the driveway. They also sell a wide variety of vegetables that are grown using sustainable agriculture methods, so no doubt get a lot of use from the greenhouse.

They have a shed not far from the greenhouse with big coolers for the chickens and such.

There was a big field to the left, and the road winds on back through the trees. I could hear chickens way off, and I know from their website they raise turkeys, Berkshire hogs, Dexter cattle and horses. I was disappointed not to see any of that, but maybe I’ll be able to go back again another time.

Saturday I spent catching up on work in the house, with laundry and cleaning and baking a couple of Cherry-Orange coffee cakes, several pizza crusts, bread for us, and “Birdie bread” – made with whole grains and veggies, cut up in cubes, and fed to my picky parrot.

Today we delivered a ewe to a friend’s farm way out back of beyond. You even have to drive through a creek to get to the farm. I reckon they don’t go anywhere during hard rains! They were supposed to be home by mid-morning, having gone to a Fiber Festival earlier this weekend. We got there mid-afternoon, but nobody greeted us but the dogs.

Of course, that’s a pretty big greeting, considering they are HUGE Great Pyrenees, and there were about ten of them prancing around us. They will not, however, win any awards for vicious watchdogs, as they were far more interested in seeing if we would pet them. Of course, we’ve been there before, but even the young pups we’d not seen before were eager for their share of attention.

We wandered around the yard for a while. The dogs were all barking and the one inside was going nuts. I knocked at the door. No answer. What to do???

Fortunately, they have several pens, and there was one unoccupied behind the house, complete with shade tree, so we put the ewe in there, got her a bucket of water, left a note in the screen door, and went back home.

The funny thing is, a couple hours after we got home Kim called me. I figured she was going to comment on the new sheep and tell me where she’d been. Wrong! I said, “Did you find the present we left for you?”

Turns out she hadn’t, and she’d been home the whole time. I’m not sure where she was working, but her mother was in the house and never realized we were out there, or unloading sheep in the pen right by the house. I figured there was no way they could NOT know we were there considering how the dogs were carrying on, including the one in the house. We’d left a note in the screen door and left a sheep, so there’s no denying we were there!

At any rate, the sheep got delivered, and I got to check out a bunch of the ewes and lambs she had running around.

We’ll do the check and registration thing to each other through the mail, so … all’s well that ends well?

We tried a different route home, and I couldn't resist snapping a picture of this lovely red barn we passed. Oh… and Robin… you won’t believe how many wild turkeys we saw on the way to and from their farm! They never stood still long enough for a picture, but I promise, we really did see LOTS of them!

Farmland in Canada

This is the field behind the kids house in Manitoba. As you can see, even though the weather has warmed up in the last few days, there is still patches of snow here and there.
Last year they grew canola in the field. In past years, they have also had potatoes there, and wheat. It will be interesting to see what they plant this year.

Taking pictures...

We're starting to take pictures for next year's fund-raising calendar for Ellie. The calendar pages start with shots like these:

I'll take this photo and build a picture around it with a "Little Red Riding Hood Theme".

We've also taken some shots of Ellie with a Winnie the Pooh outfit on, and will take more pictures tomorrow and Monday.

I just know it's gonna be a great calendar!

Sometimes Farming is Hard

Let’s face it – farming isn’t always fun.

If you raise crops of some sort, there are problems with the weather, fuel costs for heating greenhouses and running equipment, and a sometimes fickle market, to name a few.

When you raise animals, you have all those problems and then some. And it’s easy to get attached to animals, especially the little ones. Babies of any sort are cute! It’s great to look out and see lambs or kids or calves or colts or any little critters frolicking around in the fields.

Yes, it’s great --- that is, IF the moms are taking proper care of the youngsters and everyone is doing fine. But it isn’t always like that. Sometimes things go wrong. That’s when farming really tops the charts in the “not fun” department. That’s where I’ve been this week.

You can raise the same sort of critters for years, using the same husbandry practices, and then all of a sudden, one year it all goes wrong. Sometimes you can figure out the cause and adapt or change things. Sometimes you have no idea what the problem was, so there’s just not much you can do about it.

When our little twin goat kids were born this spring, I was a little concerned. The mother is getting up in years and had a difficult labor. Worse, she was NOT supposed to be pregnant in the first place, but was bred by one of her sons. One of the kids had a deformed leg, but that eventually improved. Overall, they seemed healthy enough.

At least, they seemed fine until this week. Then one get sick, and within 24 hours was dead. Then the second one got sick, and within 24 hours was dead. I worked over them until I could barely straighten back up, giving them antibiotics, dextrose, vitamins, and every other therapy I could find that would pertain to the problem.

Nothing helped.

I knew it was a slim chance going in that I could save either kid. It didn’t help that I read even though they've had vaccinations, once in a while, some kids still get sick. They were in my care, and they died.

That’s hard.

This morning Son #2 and I had burial detail. The ground is too hard and rocky here to dig down very deep, so we opt for an above ground burial. It’s easier, but not easy. It has to be done right to make a hot compost so the body is broken down quickly and with no odor. We had 5 big carts full of stuff we put in the pile: some below, some above the bodies. It was hard work. To make matters worse, it was raining.

While we worked the llamas hummed and the mama goat cried. Their mournful dirge made a hard job even harder. I’d moved them as far away as possible from where we were working. It didn’t matter. When we were finally done and I let them out, that mama goat made a beeline to where we’d buried her babies and cried some more. It was heartrending.

Sometimes farming is hard.

Mainstream moves to Organic, while Organic moves to Mainstream…

Back in my younger years, and NO, contrary to what my kids may think, that was NOT in the Stone Age… I was a bit of hippie. Fast food, chemical farming and an urban lifestyle were much more popular than the counterculture of organic farming and alternative energy that interested me. I read magazines like “Mother Earth News” and “Organic Gardening & Farming” and anything else I could find about leading a healthier, sustainable lifestyle back before it became somewhat of a fad.

And I bought all kinds of books put out by Rodale Press, such as:
* The Rodale Herb Book
* Organic Plant Protection
* Stocking Up
* The Rodale Cookbook
* The Good Goodies
* Naturally Delicious Desserts and Snacks
… and many others.

At that time, Rodale was the leader in organic farming. I knew what to expect when I bought a book from them. No chemicals. Whole foods.

Then came the years where we moved from place to place, and I had nowhere to garden, and eventually slipped into a more mainstream type of eating, with convenience foods and other highly processed psuedo-food.

After being back on a farm for 10 years, and gradually getting back into that healthier lifestyle, I renewed my interest in books on a sustainable, healthier way of life.

Since I collect cookbooks, I naturally wanted some with recipes for the kind of meals I’m trying to fix these days. Health problems dictated an even more stringent approach, and I’ve discovered that good diabetic cookbooks and those for the G.I. diet have a lot of what I’m looking for. Imagine how excited I was when I got a flyer in the mail from my long lost supplier of great books – Rodale Press – advertising a new book on G.I. Cooking! “Aha!” says I, “Here’s where I’ll get a really great cookbook with recipes using fresh-from-the-farm ingredients like grass-fed beef, fresh cheeses, local produce and other goodies!”

When it finally came in the mail, I eagerly tore open the package and started reading through the introductory stuff and checking out the recipes. To say it wasn’t what I expected is a gross understatement. I thought maybe I was missing something, so I went through it a couple more times, paying closer attention to recipe ingredients.

Here’s a sample of what I found:
* a suggested snack of 1 oz. potato chips and 4 ounces juice,
* suggested use of reduced-fat margarine spread,
* commercial frozen dinners included in the suggested diet plans, and
* frequent use of brown sugar and white sugar.

The point is, it didn’t look any different from a cookbook I could pick up anywhere. That was most definitely NOT what I wanted or expected.

What happened?

These days I can go to Publix, a major chain grocery store, and buy a huge variety of fresh, canned, boxed and frozen organic foods. I won’t debate the misuse of the word “organic” here, but the point is that the mainstream is moving towards healthier foods.

And what used to be the counterculture, back-to-the-earth, good foods and farming people – well some of them seem to be moving towards the mainstream. I don’t know if they’re trying to reach a broader audience and increase sales or what the idea is, but I miss being able to order a book from someplace like Rodale Press, and know it won’t look like every other book out there, but stick to that sustainable type of lifestyle J.I. Rodale promoted.

Maybe this was a fluke, but I’ll be a little leery of buying from that source again.

So what did I do with this not-what-I-was-looking-for cookbook? I did something I very rarely do, considering how much I love books of all kinds, and being a collector of cookbooks in particular, because I can usually find some merit in a book and figure it’s worth keeping, especially considering you have to pay postage to return a book. Well, this one was NOT worth it.

I sent it back.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Here we are, all set to start a new year. And every year, I think I’m going to do better, and get more done, and have BIG plans for what I’m going to accomplish. And every year, most of the things I accomplish don’t seem to match what I’d planned to accomplish. Maybe this year will be different? (I know, take off those rose-colored glasses!)

So what’s on the agenda for 2008?

#1) Get rid of all the wool from past shearings sitting in my basement.

#2) Update our farm website. Our critter population has changed dramatically.

#3) Rejuvenate my flock of laying hens. Time to order some new chicks this spring! My hens are getting elderly – I didn’t even know that chickens lost coloration in their feathers like we do in our hair.

#4) Order some meat breed chicks also, and fill our freezer with some “I know what’s in ‘em” chicken. My biggest hang-up is finding someone to do the processing. I can’t handle all the feather plucking and cleaning out and stuff like I did when younger and healthier.

#4) Find someone who raises beef without hormones, and put some no-dye-or-anything-else-in-it beef in our freezer.

#5) More, higher raised beds in the garden. Even just one that was tall enough I don’t have to bend over to work would be great. It would make growing veggies so much easier for me.

#6) Finish refinishing the house, specifically, the hall bathroom and my office. Those are the major projects, but there’s a bunch of little stuff that needs done, too.

#7) And the most major project, clear out all the extras in the house, from merging 3 households of packrats. It’s time to clear things out, but it takes a lot of time and effort, and is difficult when you have lots to do, and not enough hours during the day you can work!

I know doing all this will be difficult in one year, but it’s good to have goals to shoot for!

Friday on the farm...

It was beautiful out there when I went to do chores this morning. The weather has warmed up again, and I wore a light jacket instead of my heavy winter coat. Even at that, I pulled off the jacket before I was half way finished with the chores. Though the sun was shining, it’s pretty dreary. What colored leaves we had have either turned brown, fallen to the ground, or both. Still, there’s a little color peeking through here and there, like this lovely little violet.Toby was in rare form this morning, galloping all over the place, carrying around a big piece of lumber he found somewhere. He’s got to have a piece of wood in his mouth, whether it’s so tiny you can barely see the end of it sticking out of his mouth, or so large it’s twice his size and he’s dragging it along behind him.

He’s the farm jester, always finding ways to make me laugh, no matter how grumpy I might be. He loves to play in the water. In the original game, he jumped up and bit the water, but later it evolved to him wanting sprayed while he ran around with his lumber stogie in his mouth.

The other animals generally ignore his lunacy, unless he gets too close. Then they’ll scoot out of his way while casting a wary eye in his direction.

Eventually, they’ll go back to munching their hay or grass or whatever they were doing.

It’s another beautiful Friday on the farm.

The End of an Era

I just got off the phone from talking with our state vet. She’s a wonderful lady, and has been out here once a year for a long time now to check out our sheep flock and goat herd for Scrapie.

But not this year.

I was in the voluntary program, as I felt it made it easier to sell registered stock. However, I disliked all the paperwork. Worse, there wasn’t any way to correct any mistakes you might have made once the paperwork was in. And then there was the problem we had when someone gave The Farmer an OLD goat. She was too old to have kids any more, so NOT breeding stock. Didn’t matter, getting that goat set our years in the program back to Day 1.

Since we’ve downsized and are mostly a retirement home for a few old goats and sheep, there just isn’t much point to keeping up with something that creates a lot of work and no return for your trouble. So I told her I was opting out of the program. I won’t have any lambs or kids this year, and won’t be selling any more goats or sheep, so why keep it up?

It’s the end of an era.

Changes...

I just came in from doing evening chores. What a difference a few days make!

Change #1: The weather. We had nice, moderate fall weather earlier, but today it’s COLD, necessitating a winter coat and warmer pants. Phooey. My chronic pain and fibromyalgia don’t like this cold weather.

Change #2: Give it up, the pastures are too brown. It’s time to start feeding hay. That means scattering flakes around so all the animals get a chance to eat their share.

Change #3: It’s getting harder to fill the water buckets. It’s too cold in the morning to use the hoses. They’re full of ice. However, a little solar heat, and by the middle of the afternoon the water is flowing through the hoses once again. That makes it easier to keep the heated water buckets topped off.

Having a lot fewer animals should make it cheaper to feed them this winter, but I’m not sure how much easier it’s going to be. I still have to go out every morning and evening, I still have to put out hay, I still have to carry a feed bucket in the evening, and I still have to worry about keeping water available.

And I’m sure going to miss lambs and kids come spring.

It Makes Me Smile…

Yes, it makes me smile...

* When I head out the door to do morning chores, and my parrot hollers, “Bye-bye, see you later!”

* When I go outside and take a deep breath of that crisp, cool air that smells of leaves and fall.

* When I walk out in the back yard and all the chickens come running to greet me. (Okay, so they’re just looking for me to throw out grain, but it’s still fun!)

* When the hen I raised from a hatchling cause her mom deserted her waits for me to hold out a hand full of grain so she can eat from my hand.

* When our crazy dog comes running with a stick as long as he is hanging out of his mouth, then wants me to play games with spraying water at him while he runs around and still has the long stick in his mouth.

* When our cat plops down in front of me, and rolls over to have his tummy rubbed.

* When our Sheep Matriarch comes nosing around my hands to see if I have any treats.

* When our old goat gals come hobbling out of their pasture in the morning, ready to rock and roll even when they wobble like Weebles.

* When our llama puts her nose in my face to greet me “Good Morning.”

Living in the country sure makes for lots of smiles!

Another day on the farm...

It rained on us almost all the way back from Florida. It's rained on and off since we got home, at least until today.

Today the sun came out, and although there was a hard frost on the ground this morning, it warmed up quite a bit. I was able to go out in the middle of the day and use the water hoses to fill all the buckets in different pens and pastures.

I just came in from yet another foray outside, doing evening chores. We don't have many goats and sheep any more, but we sure have a lot of guineas! They outnumber the chickens 3 to 1, and they're very aggressive, so when I'm throwing grain around in the evening, I have to stand guard next to the chickens to make sure they get their share.

The last couple of evenings, our farm collie Toby has helped keep the guineas in the pasture, giving the chickens time to eat in peace. I'm not sure if he realizes he's helping though. He just loves to aggravate the guineas. His favorite game is to run through the middle of a bunch of them and watch them scatter in all directions.

But for whatever reason he's holding them at bay, it is helpful, and I hope he keeps doing it!

Hay, Hay, Hay!

We’ve been trying for some time to find a good source of hay this year. With the drought conditions here this summer, the price of hay is going through the barn roof. Some places we called wanted $8-9 per bale! Thankfully, we don’t need near as much as we used last year, since we sold the biggest part of the animals.

It’s been difficult to even find any hay to purchase at whatever price, though the big round bales are easier to come by. However, we don’t have the equipment to handle those, and certainly not enough muscle power to move such a huge thing. I don’t like to use them with our sheep anyway. I personally know of two people who have lost sheep due to the huge bale collapsing down on the sheep while they were eating.

The smaller bales work much better here. I can break them into even smaller flakes to scatter around in several places. There has to be lots of piles available, or the goats commandeer all the hay and the sheep don’t get any.

We finally found a place with the smaller square bales at prices that wouldn’t require the loss of an arm or leg to pay for it. I don't really know why they're called square bales when actually they're rectangular, but they're not round, and I guess 'square' is quicker to say.

At any rate, yesterday The Farmer went and picked up our hay for the winter. It took a couple of loads, and a lot of listening. The guy is bought it from is a TALKER. He’s always interesting, but don’t go there expecting a quick get-away!

That’s one less task done in preparation for fall and winter!

Thanks Farmer!

Is your food safe to eat?

In my last entry I mentioned a blog featuring the Robinson Farm on Prince Edward Island. However, I should clarify that the blog is not just for the Robinson Farm, but is an offshoot of the FoodTrust website, an organization that provides a link between consumers looking for high quality food and the farmers that produce it.

There are currently about 30 to 40 farms qualified for a FoodTrust license. These farmers must follow strict standards for production, with crop rotation, field buffer zones, Environmental Farm Plans and Integrated Pest Management.

Shoppers can buy a product with the FoodTrust label and be assured of the quality of food, and that an effort was made to grow it in an environmentally friendly way.

FoodTrust provides something akin to the “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” for farm produce. Along with looking for local growers and Community Supported Agriculture, it’s another way to look for a safe food source. It would be great to see more of these types of organizations, and more options available that allow a person to trust their food source.

I think everyone could agree we want our food to be safe to eat!

Do You Know Who Grows Your Food?

I’ve wondered who’s going to grow food if the farms are all turned into subdivisions. I’ve thought about Sustainable Agriculture, and trying to maintain a positive balance with the ecology.

I’m more and more convinced that the more food you can buy locally, the better off you are.

Why bother? What does it matter where your food comes from? Well, have you listened to the news lately? How many food items have been recalled in the last year?

The USDA’s Food Safety & Inspection Service has about 38 items listed on their recalls for this year alone, and the year’s not over. The FDA also has several food items on their recall list, along with pet foods and pharmaceuticals. The food recalls are made for reasons varying from mislabeling and undeclared allergens, to some serious pathogens like e. coli, listeria, and Staphylococcus aureus.

When growing food becomes big business, and food is coming from world-wide sources, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain quality control, to know where exactly the food came from, how it was handled from start to finish, and what exactly is in it, not to mention the impact on the planet from whatever production methods were used, such as high pesticide use.

Buying locally doesn’t guarantee good food, but it does give you an idea where your food came from and a person to question about how the food was grown.

That is not to say buying local is the only answer. There are some big farms out there growing quality food, trying to lessen their impact on the environment, and building a trustworthy reputation with their customers. We need more of these!

An example is the Robinson Farm on Prince Edward Island. They have a fascinating blog about the potatoes they grow. I was especially intrigued with the “Smart Spud,” a sort of genius electronic Mr. Potato Head. It’s put through the process with the other potatoes, and the data from the Smart Spud tells them where the potatoes are getting banged up and bruised. Cool, huh?

I’m sure most people would have trouble right now buying all their food from known and trusted sources alone. Hopefully such products will become more widely available as the market for quality food grows with more and more people becoming concerned about what they consume. We need farmers, big and small, who are willing to balance their need for profit with a stewardship of the land, and growing food that nourishes, not sickens, people.

It’s just good to know if your food came from a source you can trust.

Community Supported Agriculture...

… Or more about “Buy Local Now!”

Having been a proponent of organic farming, sustainable agriculture and such for years – I practically teethed on Organic Farming and Mother Earth News magazines! – I often forget that not everyone is familiar with such things. Sometimes it’s due to a lack of exposure, such as people who have always lived in cities and never had the opportunity to garden or farm. Sometimes people have just flat out never heard of such a thing. Other times, it’s just a lack of interest.

However, as more and more people become educated about the importance of the food we put in our bodies, they are taking an interest in where their food comes from and learning more about these things, including Community Supported Agriculture.

This great idea has been around for some time. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is defined on the USDA’s website as “a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community's farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production.

Typically, members or "share-holders" of the farm or garden pledge in advance to cover the anticipated costs of the farm operation and farmer's salary. In return, they receive shares in the farm's bounty throughout the growing season, as well as satisfaction gained from reconnecting to the land and participating directly in food production. Members also share in the risks of farming, including poor harvests due to unfavorable weather or pests.”

In some implementations of CSA, people why buy a share also do some of the work on the farm. In others, people pay for a season’s share of produce, but the farmer does all the work. Either way, it’s a good deal for both sides. The farmer gets a guaranteed wage for a season’s work, while those who support him get fresh produce on a regular basis.

If you’re interested in participating in a CSA, ask around in your local community, or search online. Places like Local Harvest have a map with farms marked that participate in CSA in the states. Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association has listings for both the United States and Canada.

When you find one, hopefully close to you, ask questions. There’s a lot of variation on how these programs are implemented. If you have the opportunity, give it a try! CSA is a great way to support local farmers and get some great food at the same time.

Fresh food is good for everybody!

Who will feed us when the big farms are gone?

Around here, you don’t have to drive far out of any community until you get to farms gone to suburbs. I’m talking about land that used to be part or all of a big farm, some of which had been in a family for generations, now sold and covered over with houses and streets. Sometimes there are nice houses, but too often what goes up is the cheapest the developer can get by with building.

We’ve lived on our little farm for less than a decade, and there are no less than 4 new subdivisions within a very short distance. One adjoins the back property line of our farm. Where once there were fields of soybeans or corn or cotton, there are now over 45 houses.

Just a couple of years ago we could look towards the back of our farm and see nothing but land with grass and trees and maybe a few animals.

Now just over our back fence line it's houses, houses and more houses.

I know people need a place to live, but they also need to eat. I’m left wondering, “Who’s going to feed everyone when the big farms are all gone?”

Something to think about.

Well, if the big farms are all paved over, what about the little guys? There’s a lot to be said for eating locally grown food. The fresher food is, the more nutrients it retains.

There’s more and more of a movement towards Sustainable Agriculture. It integrates three main goals—“environmental health, economic profitability, and social and economic equity.” The scope of what exactly Sustainable Agriculture entails is beyond one little blog entry, but if you want to learn more, just search the web, and websites like the UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, will pop up, along with many others.

You can also join an email group such as Sustainable Ag, and chat with people who are interested in, or actually practicing Sustainable Agriculture.

And last, but not least, check out farm websites of people who farm using the Sustainable Agriculture method, such as Seasons Eating Farm.

A lot of big farms are disappearing. We’d better come up with a substitute if we want to keep eating.

A Final Fix & New Beginnings

Over the weekend The Farmer worked on the aviary some more. The joints on the back hoop keep popping out of place when we have high winds or little goats that sneak inside and jump against it.

The hoop holding the netting is made of PVC plastic pipe, so he put new glue on the joints.

To help secure the top hoop, there is a rope from the top of the hoop to a tree. It was anchored in a downward slant. The Farmer decided it would work better at an upward slant.

To accomplish that, he needed a tall ladder and a trip in the treetop. I caught up with him just as he was ready to get back down...


It’s all fixed up and looks good now.

When I went out to take a picture of the finished work, I discovered there was also something new…
A whole bunch of new guinea keets!