[dominiquer60]

Wow, the potential of the SFC is great, to the point that it should be careful not to spread its self too thin too quick. As a young and aspiring/part time farmer I value all the listed goals of this organization, but to narrow it down Education/training, Reaserch, Networking, Advocacy, Access to Land and Legal Assistance are some of my bigger interests.

Small farms need a voice advocating small farms and their needs. It is tough to do this in an Agribusiness world where soil and industry meet to make global dollars. I can get small farm concerns in my state’s Farm Bureau Official Policy, but I can’t get them to act on it or influence the American Farm Bureau enough to make a difference. It would be great to have an Advocate of Agrarian minded folks that make a living not a profit.

Farmer to Farmer education/training in a real life setting is priceless. We had a local group, Regional Farm and Food Project, founded by writer Tracy Frisch, that held many farmer to farmer workshops. I was fortunate enough to get in on the last couple years of these and learned a lot. Unfortunately now that she is no longer involved, the group no longer focuses on making farmers, they focus on making customers which is nice but no longer serves my continuing education needs.

DAP serves very well for networking, I am a big fan. With such a small but slightly growing population in such a large area, it can only help to have networking as an important part of SFC.

I understand that my donation toward this project represents involvement, mutual support and respect. It is hard for me to financially support an effort that has such ambitious goals, but an unclear focus (at the moment). I think that my plan is to support it a little at a time, and as focus solidifies so can my support.

Erika

PS The caretaking services sound almost too good to be true especially a farm too small to support apprentices that can usually serve as such a service, but what if you could take off for a special weekend or a conference:)

[dominiquer60]

This happens all the time in Plain Clothes Christian neighborhoods, they all help each other and live close enough to do so. A friend of mine (Englishman) used to help his Amish neighbors with a tractor or truck now and then and they would help him in return. They had him driving teams and helping with threshing too. Amish can make good neighbors once you get to know them and any time a group of people get together to help each other community is built, and that is always a good thing in my eyes.

[dominiquer60]

http://www.marketfarm.com/
These folks plan on having yeoman shanks for sale also. They recommend at least 25 hp per shank with the other type of subsoiler that they offer. I don’t know what the conversion to mules, horses and Halflingers is, but I imagine 2 bottom will take some serious real horsepower.

[dominiquer60]

Jason,
I know a mare or two that would look nice between those boys.
Erika

[dominiquer60]

I’ve been meaning to reply to this one for a while now, but every time I went about searching for this thread I was distracted by weeks worth of discussions that I hadn’t read yet.

The Healing Harvest Foundation and the Biological Woodsmen, Woodswomen and well broke teams that the foundation helps to produce are an asset to our communities. I had not given animal powered logging much thought until I heard Jason give his Keynote speech at the first NEAPFD. Then I saw the health of Carl’s woodlot, attended the second NEAPFD and the Low Impact Forestry workshop in Maine. Recently I was invited to stop at Jason’s farm on my migration north. Getting to know Jason and the HHF through DAP has been a great experience for me, but getting to meet everyone and the Suffolks was a truly worth while visit.

Unfortunately I missed the Open Woods day, but I met Jason, his son, the HHF apprentices and the herd. The HHF crew do a wonderful job at preserving the culture of working with animals in the forest and making a living at it. Taking a few days to tag along with these folks on the farm and in the woods was a great way to decompress and get some more details about forest management that is easier to absorb on sight. For anyone on the fence about taking the opportunity to learn more about modern animal logging and the forest, there is nothing like getting your nose out of your book or keyboard and finding an experienced person to learn from. I have no intentions of becoming a animal powered logger, but If I can find the time to attend one of Jason’s workshops, I know I will be able to gain some valuable skills that I can use in my future woodlot. There is a great quote about how a good farmer plants trees even though he will never be around to see them bare fruit, I am sure that a similar thing could be said about
Biological Woodsmen and the restorative “worst first” method.

Some talk about a hero as being a person that prevents or stops crime, but I find subtle qualities of a hero in people that take on young folks and through education and the creation of responsibility eliminate the possibility of crime with good honest culture. Thank you Jason, HHF and all the other Biological Woodsmen for taking the time to spread culture to others, especially young folks.

Further more thank you everyone that takes part in preserving and continuing our animal powered culture, our future depends on the use and spread of such knowledge and experience.

Erika

[dominiquer60]

As I have mentioned before, South Florida has no real spring other than the oaks loosing their leaves. I worked the morning of March 29th and was on the road north the next morning by 5 AM, couldn’t get out of the state fast enough. The weather in Florida has been rather dry, normally on my journey north I see waves of crimson clover on the side of 95 but none this year, just brown grass.

In northern FL I begin to notice that there are deciduous trees and that they have bright new shiny leaves. Georgia brought azaleas passed there prime and gobs of Wisteria hanging from trees. Tractors where busy planting and green grass sprinkled with black and red beef cows showed the progress of the season. In South Carolina there was more freshly stirred ground and the remains of daffodil beds, green grass was prolific and trees were dressed in infant leaves. It started to get interesting as the sun was setting and North Carolina sped by. Daffodils passed prime but still blooming, dairy farms razing rotational pastures, mobile chicken houses with a few hundred hens busy in the last hunt for worms of the day. I knew I was getting closer to where I wanted to be.

I entered the great state of Virginia as the sun kissed the horizon and immediately started to gain altitude up the side of the great Appalachian Mountain chain. Once on top I could see a patchwork of highland pastures and hayfields, all emerald green. As night set I passed a multitude of small farms and towns until I found the correct pig path and a hospitable little farm. The weather was all spring, warm sun, cool wind, fog, rain, frost it was almost as good as being home and the people were nearly as friendly as my Yankee folks back home. I enjoyed a great dose of southern hospitality and shared some great meals with these self proclaimed Redneck Tree Huggers. Eventually the call of the yankee homeland was too strong and I left this oasis of back road sanity/insanity, still not sure ;).

I have always wanted to take the I-81 route home and I am glad that I took the opportunity to do so this year. Although farms are bigger than they used to be and pavement has sprawled, you still get a good sense that farming will always be an important part of Appalachia. Buds on trees slowly disappeared with the red earth of Virgina and were replaced in time with historic looking dairy barns with stone foundations and huge beds of daffodils in full blume. Grass became increasingly shorter as if going back in time and eventually poked through the dead dry tufts of brown from last year as we approached NY. The Susquehanna was swollen brown with runoff and the landscape looks thawed but dormant. Blue ice still clings to the NW faces of rock canyons along I-88. Farmers at the head waters of the great Susquehanna carefully spread manure in fields furthest from the tributaries. The sun sinks low as I pull into my fathers house, always my first stop home. He still has the markers for the snow plow out, just in case and there is still evidence of the snow drift in the shadows of his two barns. But the cats are out and enjoying the last rays of the sun and the crocuses are in their prime, it is the beginning of spring in the hilltowns.

I feels good to be home and see the progress in the greenhouse and get the cracks in my hands filled with black potting soil, shovel manure, feed the hens, pinch flowers back and all the other numerous activities that mean spring to me in the northeast. It feels wonderful to be home:)

Erika

[dominiquer60]

It could work well especially in a small town/city situation with farms close to a population. The family in this news report have a 1500′ change in elevation and a half hour drive with their van to the area where they deliver, its not a horse friendly route.

Speaking of bakery deliveries, my grandfather used to deliver door to door with horse and wagon in the city of Schenectady, NY for the Freihofer company until they stopped that service in 1960. At the end of the day he would count the money and the horse would know the way home and would slow down for major intersections with the lines between his knees. Grandpa would look up once in a while to make sure the intersection was ok to cross. My grandfather is not a horseman and the delivery drivers hardly knew anything about the animals other than how to steer and offer them some oats and water at lunch. I know that a baker in Crown Point recently delivered to town folk using a Halfinger or Fjord, I don’t know if he does any more, I heard he is not baking much either.

My favorite part of the news report is the kids, I get the privilage of being around them for a week every year at the local fair and they are a pleasure to be around. They are respectful, hard working, caring and considerate, I really hope that at least a couple of them take on the family farm someday when it is their turn.

[dominiquer60]

I won’t try to cheer you up, but I believe if anyone can overcome this set back, you Jen are the person that will be able to get it done.

Best Wishes,

Erika

[dominiquer60]

I would think that the two of you make a good team:)

[dominiquer60]

Congratulations Farmer Judkins! 😀

[dominiquer60]

If you found someone to transport it, I know a guy that loves an excuse to run his 1917 Peerless steam tractor. I can’t remember if it is 10 ton or 10,000 pounds, I think it is the former and therefore expensive to haul.

Erika

[dominiquer60]

I feel your pain OldKat, I just lost two of my poultry mentors within the same 5 days. They were both very dedicated men that were positive role models to the thousands of children and adults that they have influenced. My favorite mentor passed about this time 5 years ago, what is it about this time of year? Another dear friend of 93 is about to under go gall bladder surgery, I keep telling him that I will see him when I get home which is after the surgery. I know the risk is high but so are my hopes of sharing some quality time together when I go back up north. OldKat I hope Bruce, Don, Ed and Dick are all at peace and that our hearts mend quickly.

Be Well,

Erika

[dominiquer60]

Vicki take the Kevlar off, you don’t need it, what you need to do is spread some of your common sense to others in your community, you have some good points. Patrick and Robert I can agree with you both also, and Sanhestar I can see your point. I don’t think that there is any question that animals have emotions, I just don’t see their brains working in the same emotional capacity as ours. I don’t see it as we are superior or elite, however since we do use our brains and have such a large impact on our surrounding environment because of them, I see humans as having more responsibilities than our animal counterparts. Given the same stimulus a chicken, a horse and a human will all react somewhat differently and may share a similar emotion to the stimulus but it varies in complexity.

The chicken funeral for example, I wasn’t there, but being the big chicken dork that I am, if you take the emotion out of it, this is what sounds like happened. They are curious creatures and there is something about fresh soil that they cannot resist, it is a find, the rooster was defining his territory and claiming that area. The old hens all had a scratch first because they are higher on the pecking order, they didn’t find much and they moved on. I am not certain that they are able to grasp such a concept as grief like larger animals, this would partly explain their sometimes cannibalistic behavior. I love watching my chickens and if you do give them human like emotional complexities you can have one heck of a good barnyard soap opera. But I keep those thoughts in my head because I know in the chickens world things are much more simple than we tend to make them, sometimes I am envious. A good book that I read on animal behavior was Animals in Translation by Dr. Temple Grandin, it gives some good insight to how animals react to their environment, especially for folks with limited experience with animals, but I recommend it to everyone.

I don’t like animal rights groups, the ones that I know of seem to lack the knowledge of reality. Vicki you said it best that we need to be careful of what we say and how it may be perceived and used against us. Robert I agree that we should not let certain groups effect us or treat them as authority, but we should realize that they threaten to influence our potential customers or small farm supporters. I am in favor of educating folks before these types of organizations influence them first. My main objective of education is to teach folks good husbandry or to create a better educated consumer even if they are not my customers, I want more people understanding how they are voting for certain farming practices with every purchase.

“when livestock owners accept that their animals are not as simple in their feelings as they thought (or would want them to be)” Sanhestar brings up a good point that there are a number of owners that are not considerate of their animals. In contrast there are many ignorant non livestock owners that put too many human complexities on animal emotion/behavior, this is the wrong way to go also. I think that the challenges that we face as a group is to be considerate and compassionate with our animals and their care and to do this better than the uncompassionate and also to show the anthropomorphizers that livestock do not need to be mollycoddled to lead content and purposeful lives.

[dominiquer60]

You don’t need a draft to ask questions, I don’t have one and I am closing in on 200 posts, I am really not sure how that happened.:D

[dominiquer60]

I don’t know If you read these threads yet, http://www.draftanimalpower.com/showthread.php?t=1080&highlight=non-petrolium you will find the other link in the thread. I hope this helps.

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