[goodcompanion]

@Ixy 27400 wrote:

It’s possible, just different and I don’t share the apparent negativity about what people are prepared to do. Yes some people are very lazy and stupid, but not all! And not ‘all’ of them would need to work the land IMO, as we DO have some oil-free technology that we haven’t had in the past.

Nothing negative implied on my part about what people in general or yourself in particular are prepared to do. I am just saying that it is much more likely that they will do it on small decentralized holdings than on large centralized holdings. History proves decentralized small operations to be the better survivors of crisis. Physics favor smaller operations when using natural sources of power. I think individual people will do amazing things, probably yourself included. But most likely those amazing things will not extend over hundreds or thousands of acres, if history is any guide.

As for the Farming/Ranching disagreement, you can’t pin that entirely on me. You yourself used the American cattle drives as justification for your argument that animal powered operations can easily scale up. My point is that this is true perhaps of situations in which there is a broad range and no need to stockpile anything anywhere. But you say you have dairy and arable aspects to your operation. To these (“farming operations”), the laws of exponential decrease in efficiency with incremental increase in size apply, and your scale will be limited by the laws of physics. This is a GOOD THING. Why would anyone want unlimited scale? Cheap energy has freed our hands, as a race, to behave as if there were no limitations, and here we are as a result. Why not let your operation be sane in scale and leave some land for the next person to have their own small operation too?

[goodcompanion]

@Ixy 27376 wrote:

Size is still not proven to me to be an issue. You mention the medieval example – sorry but yes, the big abbeys DID export vast quantities of materials all over the globe – wool! Most of their product went to italy! and it was all done with animals and oil-free ships. Similar financial concerns applied, in fact what did Rievaulx in was a debt to Italian merchants and the failure of a wool crop. Nothing to do with reliance on draught animals or the size of their operation – the same financial problems could ruin our small farm too. The notion of medieval peasants scratching away on a quarter of an acre to support themselves is only part of the story, agriculture has been largescale and global for centuries.

I agree that medieval manorial insularity has nothing to do with draft animals or the size of the operation. But I disagree that there was as heavy a degree of trade as you suggest. Some goods did travel, but nothing on the scale of what would take place a few centuries later. The roads, warehouses, canals, ports, and ships were simply not up to the task, for one thing. A comparison of the displacement tonnage of a cogge (medieval cargo ship) of the 1200s versus a cargo fluyt of the 1600s tells a story of rapidly increasing trade volumes.

You could also argue that the medieval manor is not really a single operation but an agglomeration of interconnected smaller ones. The limiting factor in the size of a manor is the ability of people on the perimeter to reach the center in a timely fashion. The people within it share a culture and allegiange that separates them from other manors and the outside world. The manor was also created by external pressure. It was not an option for most to leave and try one’s luck elsewhere. This is why the manor is a poor model for anyone trying to create a large-scale animal power farm in the present day. We don’t share a culture, we don’t all swear fealty to the same lord, and we are all free to leave when we are fed up.

What you describe for your 5000 head operation sounds to me a lot more like ranching than farming. You may or may not be able to carry it out, that’s not of interest to me. Ranching as you point out, as in the American range in the Old West, scales up quite easily, as long as there is more grass over the next rise. But if the land is good land, ranching is just not as productive as farming. This is why medieval europe was engaged in farming (with pasturing as a crucial part of that) rather than ranching. Go to the African Savannah, or Wyoming or Western Australia, maybe ranching is the thing to do. But if you are farming, then you are up against inexorable problems of physics that will absolutely, certainly limit your scale.

[goodcompanion]

@reb 27363 wrote:

Oh ya, I’m also a Peep eater, and you guys should try putting them in a microwave. I know seems cruel but it is funny to watch them grow and almost blow up. ***WARNING**** Don’t eat right after, they will be hot, Don’t ask how I know.
Richard

The same thing happens when you put them in a hypobaric chamber, and you don’t get your mouth burned when you eat one!

a classic site devoted to scientific research on marshmallow peeps:

http://www.peepresearch.org

“peeps are unique in the animal kingdom in that they are always born as conjoined quintuplets.”

[goodcompanion]

Oops, just rechecking my math here. The 5000 acre farm is actually 2.8 miles on a side, average trip out loaded 1.1 miles long, for a total of 11,000 ton-miles. Not 14,000. So If there were a hundred fifty acre farms they would haul manure a total of 750 ton-miles combined. So you could say that the large farm wastes 14.6 times more energy hauling manure than a hundred small ones for this particular operation. In case anyone cares.

[goodcompanion]

@Carl Russell 27351 wrote:

Erik, I put together a similar slide show a few years ago for a presentation at Green Mountain College. I would be glad to send you a disc with the Powerpoint or the photo files. All I did was grab photos from DAP.com Gallery, and a few other places including NEAPFD files. I wasn’t too concerned about pic size and quality, and most of them came through with good resolution.

I can also send you a disc with all of the past NEAPFD pics too, if you would like.

Thanks for taking this on, Carl

p.s. Don’t hesitate to grab any photos that I have posted without asking me… they are all fair game as far as I am concerned.

That is a great head start, an unplanned-for windfall!

But for the rest of you teamsters, please consider submitting a favorite and/or more recent photo that I can use for the glory of DAPNet.

[goodcompanion]

@Ixy 27343 wrote:

We also forgot to mention that oxen would actually contribute to farm productivity in other ways – if you were working hundreds of oxen, you’d be producing a lot of valuable manure and beef!!

I’m not arguing for a complete ‘transition to oxen’, I don’t like to tell others what they should be doing, what I’m arguing is that if somebody out there has a large farm, if they WANTED to, it would be perfectly possible for them to work it successfully entirely with oxen/horses/mules/elephants/you name it. Size of the farm is a non issue, as if it makes economic sense on a small scale (without economy of scale to shield it from economic reality) then it will undoubtedly work on a large scale. YET, whenever we hear of a draught animal success story, there is always the hurried caveat stuffed on the end ‘will not work on large farms’. But, if that caveat is always applied, that person with the large farm won’t even try.

The reason the person with the large farm won’t try is not because others suggest that draft will not work on large farms. There are many, many factors preventing large landowners from making this transition. Some of these factors are clear from a review of large farms with animals through history.

Large animal powered holdings have existed in the past. The Roman latifundia is one example, and like the contemporary industrialized farm it produced primarily cash crops that were shipped off-farm. Another example is the big draft farms in the western US from the 1890s up until the beginning of the tractor era. This also produced a cash crop for the landowner, and in fact many of these landowners became quite rich.

As an alternate example, the medieval manor is also large and also uses animal power but this is really quite different from the above examples. It does not ship substantial amounts of product off-farm and does not produce cash for its lord, since a serf pays in kind. The beginnings of a cash system in the countryside in the 1500s paved the way for the destruction of the manor and these steady-state relationships. In the medieval manor, commerce over great distance is not generally possible, each manor being kind of like an economic island with limited dealings with the wider world.

So the better examples for what a farm like Ixy suggests are the latifundia and the big western farm. These operations are characterized by huge social stratification (a la Grapes of Wrath). They also take place in the context of complex societies where the landowner has the ability to ship crops great distances to urban markets for great profits. The workers are desperate enough for any kind of a situation to be a cog in this agricultural machine by choice. In the case of some of the latifundia laborers, and all the laborers on farms in the Old American South, they were simply slaves. In either case, the hallmark of the large animal-powered farm is extreme social stratification.

This is why the large animal farm can’t be realized. Present day farmers, even large ones, are so encumbered by capital and debt that they are in no position to take up economic dominance over a vast number of minions. The potential minions are not-so-willing, and also lack the skills, to submit to such a social and economic order.

Maybe the suggestion is that a nuclear family can manage 1000 head of oxen themselves without any help, easy-peasy, as it’s been suggested. I think it’s safe to say that the belief that managing many draft animals with few people on a large estate is easy and practical is a minority opinion, no less so amongst those who are in the field and know how much care and attention even a small operation and a small number of animals demands.

One other point. Ixy says, “size of the farm is a non-issue.” Size is always an issue. The greater the area the greater the distance from one place to another. Let’s say there are two farms that both rotationally graze stock and feed winter hay in a central barn, and one is 50 acres and one is 5000 acres.

Let’s focus on just the manure, and only the outbound trip with the spreader. We are going to spread 2 tons of manure to the acre, first on the 50 acre farm, then on the 5000 acre farm. On both farms, let’s say the barn is in the middle. On the 50 acre farm the average trip out is 400 feet (the farm is about 1400 feet on a side and is square). To spread 2 tons to the acre we must pull manure for a total of 7.5 ton-miles.

Now to the 5000 acre farm. The average trip out is 1.4 miles (this farm is a square three miles on a side). To spread the same 2 tons to the acre we must pull manure for a total of 14000 ton-miles.

On a larger farm you might employ a bigger spreader and more animals, but that only gets you so far. You are burning up 1866 times more energy simply moving manure around on the 5000 acre farm than on the 50 acre farm, even though the 5000 acre farm is only a hundred times bigger. Efficiency decreases exponentially with scale when it comes to getting material from A to B in small loads.

You could say, “but wait, we are going to have hay piles and manure piles in many different locations on this 5000 acre farm to decrease the travel distance.” I would agree that it would cut your energy loss in hauling. But what you are essentially doing when you decentralize your operation in this way is creating smaller farms within your larger farm which strengthens my point.

The reason we can get away with centralization on the contemporary large farm is because fossil fuel energy is used at every turn, for instance not just to move the gigantic liquid manure truck around, but also to fling the manure 60 feet to each side as it travels through the field. It is still colossally energy-wasteful but as long as energy is cheap this model will persist. Can’t pin that on the media.

[goodcompanion]

I am sure that we could figure out how to integrate the presentation with the site if contributors like yourself were willing, Karl.

Thanks to Erika for the first photo submission!

[goodcompanion]

Wanted to add that if you are presenting for DAPNet, in any capacity, that I will insert a special “plug” for your workshop when your photo comes up. So there’s a special incentive.

[goodcompanion]

I would like to take this opportunity to also confess that I love clubbing baby seals. There’s just something about it…

No, seriously. Mike Kane, a mentor of mine, one of the most thoughtful far-seeing farmers you’d ever meet….former motocross racer.

And did you know that Wendell Berry used to drive formula ones? Actually I just made that up.

Ehh…we all have our vices, I guess. Things we like, even though it’s probably wrong to do so. One of mine is marshmallow peeps. Those things are disgusting. But I like them so much. I usually eat a whole packet in a sitting. But then I feel bad about it afterwards.

Anyway, there is no DAP.com pope so might as well carry on liking race cars, I suppose, you can’t be excommunicated.

[goodcompanion]

@Oxbow Farm 27244 wrote:

Its not remotely the same. A 1000 acres farmed with a tractor takes one or two big tractors and associated equipment and their operators and a bunch of diesel. A 1000 acres farmed with oxen takes many many teams and many many teamsters. But the biggest diffence is the fuel. The tractor acres are fueled with fossilized sunlight. The ox acres are fueled by current sunlight. So a significant percentage of the 1000 acres has to go to feed the teams and the teamsters. This production never hits the market. So animal traction can never be as productive as petroleum agriculture cause your “tractor” is eating the same fuel as you are. When agriculture switched to tractors all those acres of hay and oats were converted to market acreage. If we contemplate switching back then all those acres have to be switched back as well. But there are billions more people now than there were back then. That’s why they call it overshoot. Scares the crap out of me.

Arithmatically, at the continued rate of population growth, there will be one human being per square meter of land area by 2500. We all know that’s not going to happen. Nor are people going to soberly look at the facts and think things over and decide that maybe there are just too many of us and we ought to stop having so many babies and give the rest of the planet a little more breathing room.

The rationalist hope that humanity will see the writing on the wall and get serious in confronting peak oil/global warming/nuclear proliferation/population explosion/leaky nuclear plants is probably doomed to disappointment. We humans can barely get together on a common agenda when times are good. When times are crappy we stick with our own and to hell with the next guy.

The thing I like about draft power is that it occupies a precious little scrap of ground between the rationalist belief in the power of human reason and empathy to solve all our problems and the hunker-down-and-wait-for-armageddon that seems to be a common response that people have (at least in my poor country) when faced with insurmountable systemic problems.

There is something to do.
It won’t solve everything.
It can restore some measure of balance.
But maybe not for everyone.

I guess I can live with that.

[goodcompanion]

@Dave G 27303 wrote:

Rivendell Farms

I’m sure with all this moisture there will something in the wheat this year. It seems like we get a new disease in wheat and corn every year. Hope your rice crop does well for you. The weather hasn’t been to kind to farmers for several years now.

If it continues fair from here on out it might be okay! The seed heads are not formed yet so they can’t be affected by fusarium yet.

[goodcompanion]

Wheat is definitely a tricky one. You can plant a crop and get yield but poor flour quality. Or maybe get neither yield nor quality. The industrial ag “solution” to this problem is to have all the flour wheat for the whole country grown in the semi-arid areas. Back in the old days I guess people did the best they could with such varieties and weather as they had and a good crop was maybe something you could really take to the bank. But you might not want to risk the farm on getting that bumper crop of first-rate baking-quality wheat.

I have been hammered with lousy growing conditions one year out of two. Much as I love growing wheat it is very frustrating to plant every year and graze it off every other year! This has led me to try to add other grains that are not so temperamental.

Must admit I feel somewhat vindicated in this decision as my rice crop is still alive and thriving when we are totally flooded out and nothing in the area has gotten planted. Not to say that on the whole I’m any happier about this relentless rain than anyone else…arrgh.

Last time I checked though, my stand of winter wheat was looking okay. Excess rain before heading is not a very big deal. It is waterlogging after heading you really have to watch out for. Paves the way for all kinds of bad things to happen to the health and well-being of your future flour.

[goodcompanion]

Gee, hard red winter is the preferred baking wheat around here.

The thing about good baking wheat is you want a high protein content for decent rising properties. If you are making johnnycake any wheat will do. But to get good protein (and gluten development is directly linked to protein) you need a good variety for your area, a good season, not too wet, (ha ha!) and an early harvest (hard dough stage).

Soft wheats (white, red) are mostly used in pastry flour.

There is some hard white wheat with decent baking properties out there but I’ve never seen or used it.

Durum wheat is mainly used for pasta and couscous, though it is sometimes used in bread.

Both spring and winter wheats of all varieties can produce good results. It is not a hard-and-fast division. Many so-called winter wheats can be spring sown and vice versa. For us, usually fall sowing is ideal.

In terms of flour, bakers look for protein percentage, generally anything upwards of 10% will give you a strong rise, and ash content. Ash content will give you an indication of the level of impurity in the flour. Germ and bran in the flour contribute to ash content. I like a little germ in white flour so a highish ash content isn’t necessarily bad in my book. Ash content represents the percentage of the wheat’s mass that can’t be incinerated. Pure wheat endosperm, the basis of flour, goes up in flames nearly completely.

You can’t test protein levels and ash content without a flour lab. You need to mill the wheat and bake with it and see what happens. There are a lot of variables in milling that can affect the result too, especially if you are sifting to make a kind of white flour, as I do.

Makes cornmeal look pretty simple, eh?

[goodcompanion]

They sent me some stuff most of which I’ve lost. There were some sources of manufactured implements. I think most of their designs are in that book. Tell you what, I just ordered the book. If anything useful is in it I will post about it on this thread.

Hope this helps.

[goodcompanion]

@Robert MoonShadow 27257 wrote:

Non-existant French, although if there were detailed photos, perhaps it would be useful? Anyways, how’d you get them to respond? I understand that they have plans for sale, but don’t usually bother w/ Americans, since they don’t have it translated to English… not sure on that, but just what I’ve heard – do know that they’ve never responded to me so far…perhaps Tiller International has something…

I just called them up. I admit that I wrote email and never got a response from that, even though I wrote in French. Seemed friendly enough, and there is at least someone there to answer the phone.

[Author]

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