[goodcompanion]

I have spoken with them, several years back. Friendly folks, they invited me to tour member farms, a tour I was never able to take. Their office in Rimont, France is open wednesday through friday, 9 to 5 local time. How’s your French? There is also a book in print, maybe we’ve discussed it on the site before, by Jean Noelle. Here it is on Amazon Canada, not too expensive…

http://www.amazon.ca/Machines-modernes-traction-animale/dp/2858026068/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306520226&sr=8-1

Good luck

[goodcompanion]

There’s the rub. All that energy in the pasture, a gigantic solar panel, as you put it, but how to run our gizmo-heavy lives with it. There’s probably no way.

I had a brief burst of optimism on reading Andy’s first post but upon closer review the word does seem to be that the methane digester is largely a creature of the CAFO. The nice thing about using an animal’s muscle power instead of trying to chemically disassemble its poop is that the muscle power is easy and cheap to tap into.

I figured out that my annual hay crop is about 70 million kilocalories. Wow! If only people had rumens, we’d be all set. My fuel and infrastructure to get that hay baled and stacked in the barn amounts to maybe a couple million kcal at most. Still, a major caloric surplus! We’re producing energy, whee!

But when I feed those bales out to my horses and my beef cows, much of the energy is dissipated as movement, body heat, gas, and so on. I produce a surplus of about 7 market animals weighing out at 550 lbs each, of which maybe 300 lbs is eaten. 7 x 300 = 2100 lbs of beef. The beef has about 1000 kcal to the pound so we are at 2.1 kcal of beef.

Of course there is the horse muscle energy as well but let’s set that aside for the time being.

Hey, wait a minute! I put up 70 million kcal of hay using just 2 million or so kcal of inputs and I thought I was doing a damn good job. But the end result is about the same caloric value in food as I put into the haying process, to say nothing of maintaining the barns and fences and the energy cost of processing. Maybe I’m not doing such a good job after all.

So, there it is, that great big green solar panel. I’m farming grass and creating food. Yet in the end analysis I’m breaking even on energy. I guess at that I should still pat myself on the back since most american farming burns up 10 calories for each produced in food. Still, it’s hard to get too cocky.

Let alone any hope of tapping that big green solar panel somehow to power the rest of my lifestyle. Add in the utility costs and the road vehicles and we are back at a hopelessly imbalanced energy equation.

It’s a worthy goal to strive not to waste energy, and to effectively convert solar power to food. If that’s not the farmer’s job, then what is? But with cheap energy flooding the culture it is damn near impossible to have a net energy gain from farming. Only a handful of “labor saving devices” seems to torpedo the energy math.

I’m hoping my rice equation will look better than the beef equation. Supposedly rice has one of the highest caloric net productivity of any food system.

[goodcompanion]

@near horse 27118 wrote:

I spent a little time as part of an online sustainable farm/ranch course – it did not address draft animal-power (nor any other forms of power/energy) as an option (although I did bring it up). The classes seem to focus on developing a “whole farm plan” but IMO, power source is a basic component of any farm plan.

Thanks Erik for bringing this up – I’m more inclined to practice the energy version of IPM (integrated pest management) – some things can be handled using draft-power directly while others, like transportation, might need to be integrated (as you said, charging batteries or something).

A lot of infrastructure has been built over the last 100 yrs that’s not conducive for use by animal power directly – although the Amish seem to be making it work for them. Just my quick thoughts.

BTW- Last night I was reading an article called The Passive House – Green without Gizmos in Fine Homebuilding (April/May 2010) in which they feature some super E efficient houses – 3 main requirements: air infiltration (0.6 changes per hour) BTU consumption (annual E consumption for heating/cooling 4755Btu/sq ft) Total E usage (11.1 kwh/sq ft). R-values were 62 in the roof, 45 in the wall, 35 in the floor…. While the E savings are phenomenal, it’s questionable whether the cost or products used are practical.

Home heat is the easy one. At least for us. Draft power in the field is easy (ish!) too. But what about this niggling dependency on the grid and all of its apparatus for food production and life in general?

I guess my answer is go ahead and use it while it lasts but don’t count on it being there forever. Might be a good idea too to find a way to power a few particularly useful devices mechanically, through wind, steam, or draft power, if one can pull it off and not look too crazy in the process.

Here’s the thing. I can look anyone in the eye and say that I farm with horses because I enjoy it and because it saves me money over farming with tractors. But if I were to try to use horses to generate power as an alternative to grid power it sure as hell would not save me money.

However I can still justify the horse treadmill for power supply where the grid is not available, for instance to operate a transfer pump in my rice paddies. A treadmill is kind of an expensive tool but if you had one you could surely contrive many uses for it, some of them worthwhile now, some of them maybe worthwhile someday.

[goodcompanion]

@jac 27101 wrote:

I think we as a race have to accept that we dont have a given right to cheap energy anymore… Erik if your car jouries are all short, would a fast moving pony not be able to replace the battery car ?…
John

Oh yes. I feel like horse transport for me would absolutely be a good alternative to the car! Except not just yet! Right now I am subject to the same pressures of time as everyone else in this dippy culture, my 5 year old kid goes to T ball practice at 6, home at 7, and I jump in the car and whisk him there and back in a couple minutes. It takes 15 minutes by horse, not including the harnessing and hitching. And often I have to make dinner during that time.

And some other trips are 15 miles each way and none of my horses can do that at a trot.

Also it is not particularly safe driving a horsedrawn vehicle in motorized traffic.

So you see I can come up with ample excuses why I don’t use a horse in traffic right now. But take away the time pressure and take away the motorized traffic and I am ALL FOR IT. It is a wonderful way to get around!

[goodcompanion]

I like square bales. They’re the right fit for how much hay I expect to make and how much labor I have to throw at the proposition. For me I don’t have a problem baling them with a tractor in the field. Acres of hay lying on the ground, the window’s only so many days, let’s cut to the chase and bale it. All other operations I do with horses, but not baling. The baler requires a big motor anyway, I just don’t understand how towing a noisy motorized baler behind horses is much different that towing one behind a tractor.

If we lived in a world where labor wasn’t so expensive relative to the price of food, all that hay could be put up with hired labor with hay forks and would be a good stroke of business at that.

If you had a baler with a motor on it but didn’t want to haul it in the field, I can see some merits to your idea of baling in the barn. Consider that a large haywagon loaded loose with forks is equal to maybe 60-80 bales? That’s all most teams can pull from the field anyway, depending on distance and terrain. So why not, as you say, bring the hay in loose and bale it in the barn for compact storage and handling.

Compact storage and handling is all you’d gain from the use of the baler, since you’d need to physically heave the hay about the same amount baling it in the barn and stacking versus just stacking loose and not baling.

So on the other hand, if you’ve gotten it as far as the barn loose, maybe you might just as well fork it up into the loft and store it loose? I did this with about 5 acres of hay this last season and it seemed to be the best hay I made, possibly ever. 28 acres is a lot for a small crew to cut and put up in small batches over a season but it is doable.

Personally I hay lands of about the same order of what you’re talking about, in similar climatic conditions (arrgh!). Having thought long and hard about it, running that baler is one thing I will unapologetically do with the tractor.

[goodcompanion]

@Countymouse 26986 wrote:

Steven,
I can see how you would think this, but forecarts are just so stable it is hard to imagine how one would fall off one in normal farm use. I have only fallen off mine once, because I was trotting on an old logging road and one wheel hit a foot tall stump hidden in grass. This was a major launch, but in my experience it takes something like this to knock someone off a forecart (unless they’re not paying attention). In comparison, I also have a ride-on-top disc that I have fallen off of several times at a walk due to rough terraign or rocks. I have never been injured on this disc, but I would say the risk of me falling in front of the blades is higher that the risk of me falling off a forecart at all…

I suppose, and would be inclined to agree, but for the fact that a forecart fall-off and run-over actually occurred on my farm. While nobody has been run over by a harrow that you sit on. I realize that is not a statistical sample or anything. I would still use a forecart and a harrow myself, but this is a risk.

I have a ride-on disc and have fallen off that and landed behind. But that was because I was drunk. (Just kidding! …..Or am I?)

A forecart is lighter and more likely to bounce than a heavy manure spreader or harrow, when hitting a stone or a furrow, especially a forecart with rubber tires.

[goodcompanion]

Had an accident here last year where an apprentice fell off a forecart and was run over by a harrow being pulled. Not seriously hurt, amazingly. So I have to really agree with this observation.

Forecarts are the trend of our times, I guess. There is something to be said for that drawbar convenience. It makes it easier to substitute a horse drawbar for a tractor drawbar, and even in some cases a pto shaft too. Back in the day I guess labor was more plentiful so convenience was not so great an issue. If it took five minutes longer to change a team from a wagon pole to a binder pole than it does to pull a pin on a wagon short pole and set a pin on a binder short pole, then that might not be a big deal.

[goodcompanion]

So it articulates at the truck I guess. I use a short pole and a forecart so the result is much the same I guess.

[goodcompanion]

I will try to take a look at my binder soon to see if I can help.

Why do you want a tongue truck? I don’t understand.

[goodcompanion]

@Carl Russell 26659 wrote:

Randy Quenneville, Program Chief of the Vermont Meat Inspection Agency, has concerns that “there seems to be a general lack of understanding of sanitation principles and dressing procedures among small farmers.” The state agency works with small farming operations to help them understand USDA regulations and find ways to work within the bounds of federal law.

According to Quenneville, farmers are allowed to slaughter on-farm if they build a room that meets minimum sanitation requirements. At about $3 per square foot for new construction, however, the room requires a certain amount of initial investment.

This burns me up. No, can’t let those filthy hicks get their hands on your food. Our problem is that, as farmers, (A) we are just plain dirty and (B) we ‘don’t understand’ USDA regulations. Just too ignorant all around, I guess.

Yet there is an exemption for the itinerant slaughterer with no explicit onus on that person to adhere to any criteria of sanitation or masterful understanding of USDA policy.

Also, I think they left a zero off that $3 per square foot new construction figure. Who can build new construction for $3 per square foot? A hoophouse with a dirt floor, maybe.

I would rant more but I am missing the royal wedding.

[goodcompanion]

@near horse 26656 wrote:

The threat of fines and enforcement doesn’t sound like “voluntary compliance” at all to me. That is coerced compliance.

Well put.

Jason, I totally understand the idea of flying under the radar with the local dinners. Such things are happening because they meet a need. But there is an element of risk to those involved of being made examples of by the state. The reasoning of the ordinance is to bring the dialog on appropriate food regulation into an open public debate. Neighbors growing and preparing foods for neighbors should not have to be a dirty little secret that risks fines and lawsuits from state and federal officials.

If the majority of the population in a town, or in a state, truly believes that local food constitutes a health risk, then let the constituency decide how to protect the public good against such risk. As a producer, I would be willing to submit to requirements that my peers and neighbors thought reasonable and necessary. But our current system is out of step with the public sentiment (and I believe also with the public interest), and is trying to quash the local-food resurgence out of a belief in the supremacy and safeness of bigness that the general public no longer shares.

[goodcompanion]

Let there be peas in earth

[goodcompanion]

My rice is germinating just fine in the hoop house. I guess the folks in northern Japan were doing their own work along similar lines and now there are several strains of cold-tolerant rice out there.

May 17th we’ll have 100 high school kids transplanting seedlings–should be interesting. And with the weather shaping up this way, maybe rice will be my only cereal crop this year…..arrgh…

[goodcompanion]

At least the extra rain produces grass….

Up here in the champlain clay plain the summers are almost never dry enough for me…most crops suffer from it in the heavy soil. So I am switching to rice. No joke. Seems like with climate change that heavy rains are likely to become more normal–hell, who knows, but seems that way at the moment.

[goodcompanion]

Agreed that it’s been rough. Work is not done and the cattle are hungry.

[Author]

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