[dlskidmore]

Thing is, it’s impossible to do a double-blind study, from what I hear raw milk tastes different enough, and any study that obviously is asking what kind of milk do you drink and how often are you ill will have reporter bias, so there’s no good way to prove the safety of the milk. A study of raw milk drinkers vs non-raw milk drinkers would indicate the safety to some degree though. Are there any raw milk companies/co-ops/associations that are big enough to fund such a study?

[dlskidmore]

I have no desire to drink my milk raw, but I support your right to do so. As long as everything is honestly labeled, I think you should be allowed to buy whatever your neighbor is producing. I do support programs like organic certification where the government licences certification organizations, so we all have a standard of what product labels mean. There are also good privately run programs like the National Yogurt Association’s Live and Active Cultures seal and the various Kosher seals. I think supporting these types of certifications promotes the public perception that the food chain can be safeguarded without government interference.

[dlskidmore]

@near horse 20880 wrote:

You’ve exposed the soft underbelly of our economy. It’s called “Unearned Income”.

Although I agree that it is better to work with your hands, not all unearned income is bad. Many of us have had to rely on lenders to purchase land or equipment, and stock trading is basically high-risk lending to businesses. I have no problem with the person who takes the money he earned with his hands and invests it in another person’s work, or who gives it to someone who has not earned it. Now excessive taking of that credit line or charity can do you harm, but it does have it’s place.

@mitchmaine 20895 wrote:

there is a lot of college kids around here, trying to get all the blisters they can and five acres to boot. don’t know what it means other than college didn’t do it for them and they are looking for something different, real or whatever. may not last but they are here.
lots of easier ways to make money, so maybe thats not what they are after. who knows

You might lump me in that category. I’m doing well on my technical career track, but I’d really rather have a job where I can keep my children with me. (I have none yet because I don’t want a daycare to raise them.) I considered shopkeeping and other city businesses, but in the end I decided it was best for my health and for the development of future children to have a more physical job outdoors. It’s definitely not about the money for me, the money is what’s holding me back from doing it immediately.

5 acres doesn’t sound like much though, I’m mostly looking at the 20-40 acre range, enough to do a decent amount of grass fed livestock in addition to the more intensive market garden.

[dlskidmore]

@OldKat 20848 wrote:

The guy that is filling in for her, Erik Wesner (sp?) has a blog called Amish America. If anyone is not familiar with it give it a look.

I have his book on my list, heard about it through an online friend that knows him:

Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive

[dlskidmore]

@Ira 20844 wrote:

What’s a wagon shoe ???

I had that same question and here’s what I found:

http://www.farmcollector.com/letters/calling-wagon-shoe-collectors.aspx
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Wagon+shoe

I’m still not entirely clear, does this serve a similar function to chock blocks?

[dlskidmore]

What a nice little seeder! Was it originally designed to go with a lawn tractor? It looks light enough for Maggie to use. (Great Dane, theoretical working load up to 375 lbs, but I mostly work her with 200 or less.) How easy is it to pull? I assume there’s some resistance from the ground drive spreader action?

[dlskidmore]

@Vicki 20804 wrote:

I know in the wilderness of Ohio, distance to town was not a factor as much as road quality or lack thereof. Ohio had terrible roads for a long time, because of its forests, soils, rainfall, which made horses unable to travel well. Oxen were preferred because they can go in mud and snow up to the belly.

So what do we know about the history of road paving as compared to the decline of oxen?

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blasphalt.htm
Seems modern asphalt was invented in 1824, but the article doesn’t say much about how fast it spread across the country.

http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.saburchill.com/history/chapters/IR/024.html
Says the roads were paved (gravel/dirt paving) for stagecoach use which peaked from 1815 to 1840 when railroads began taking over the market share. These sound though like the main arteries, not the little farm to town roads that may have still been unpaved and in rough shape.

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1851.html
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1586.html
There were a lot of new roads built during the new deal era, but this is near the end of our previously established peak horse use period.

[dlskidmore]

I’ve been a bit curious about the reasons for the switch myself.

It seems that on a small farm, oxen are the much more economical choice. They are less expensive to feed and stronger. As a common meat animal, a large number can be raised profitably, and only the ones with the best temperaments selected for later work.

The superior speed of the horse though gives it a bigger advantage for travel use, and for covering larger amounts of ground in a day for larger plots.

I’d be curious to know if there was a direct correlation between farm size/distance from town and the preference for horses over oxen.

I’d be even more curious to know if there is a well-defined boundary as to how many acres it is practical to work with one pair of oxen vs one pair of horses.

[dlskidmore]

I did another walkthrough today. The top of the berm looks pretty bad, but the side of the berm has a decently thick thatch on it, looks much more hopeful.

[dlskidmore]

I don’t think it’s compaction, I can see the soil, and it’s the grey of gravel/sand, not red of clay or black of organics.

After having forgotten them today, I’ll put on my calendar to bring tools next week for a proper analysis.

I’m scheming about getting organics in there. I think we’ll start with a small area and expand as we have enough organics to add in, rather than do a poor job of enriching the whole area.

[dlskidmore]

There’s a trend in human body piercing to start with a small piercing and put progressively larger objects through the hole to enlarge it. I’ve no piercings myself, so I don’t know much about it. Would this be a less painful way to make the larger hole for a nose ring in an ox?

[dlskidmore]

Well, the good news is I have contact information for a potential local sheep mentor. The bad news is that his lambing season is right in the middle of my current employer’s busy season. I’ve got mandatory overtime, and no ability to slip over to the farm for a substantial amount of time. I’m hesitant to make the call when I don’t actually have time to offer. Perhaps when my employer’s busy season is over there will still be some barn work to be done. With fall lambing they must be keeping the young confined indoors and have plenty of cleaning and feeding chores to do.

[dlskidmore]

Thanks. I’ll see what I can scrape up for large quantities of organic matter to compost. I know a fellow with some rotting hay in the barn…

[dlskidmore]

If you wanted the larger diameter without more weight, you could do papercrete. Pure papercrete would probably be too light, weigh out the amount of sand you want for additional ballast and replace some of the paper pulp.

[dlskidmore]

Personally I found Empire Farm Days to be way more educational than the Monroe County Fair (Monroe County, NY). We did hang around the goat & cattle show for awhile, but it was just a small little sideshow, with a tiny little ring run by the 4H club. 8 cows looked uncomfortably crowded in there. Not that Empire Farm days had a ton of live animal showing, but the cooperative extension office of the university that serves several counties around here had a building bigger than the county livestock barn full of displays, pamphlets, and experts. There were a few live demo animals in various educational exhibits. There were also haying demonstrations at EFD (although I skipped out on those when I saw the monstrous machines they were demonstrating with, I was more interested in learning about the process than seeing how fast a monstrous machine can cover ground.)

Next year though I need to cover the three county fairs in the area where we want to move to, and see if I can detect differences in the agricultural enthusiasm.

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