[goodcompanion]

@dominiquer60 25143 wrote:

I had a hard time putting a thought into words earlier.

I think that within reason size doesn’t matter, it is how you use it, how much heart, care and common sense you put into it that matters. Of course there are farms that are just too big even if well “managed,” I just hate seeing good folks being squeezed by big government, especially when the guys with enough money seem exempt from such rules, or get away with crap all too easily.

erika

I think I have to respectfully disagree on the size issue. Size does matter, always. I am not saying anything about the character of people who farm larger acreages, or how much they love or are good at what they do. Fact is, the bigger your tract, the more thinly that love is spread over it.

Ask any farmer what the best size farm is. Guarantee they’ll either reply with the acreage they already have or one that is slightly bigger. It’s not a useful discussion.

My background is that I am in dairy central here. My lands are polluted with runoff from conventional producers, who are fine people of excellent character but kind of laugh off the idea that what I am doing is farming too. The local ag service providers like NRCS don’t give you the time of day around here either unless you are bulk milk. Every bulk farm in my town has a big expensive manure containment system of one kind or another paid for out of the public purse, and over half of those farms have sold their cows since it was installed anyway. Those that are left give farms a bad name operating under the umbrella of the Right to (Destroy the Natural and Social Environment While I) Farm Law.

Erika, sounds like you’re square in the center of the debate. I’m sorry for that and didn’t mean to sound off on you personally. However I really don’t have the back of the bulk dairy crowd on this one, and they don’t have mine either. Just the way it is.

[goodcompanion]

I would totally support this law, frankly. If your bulk tank is over a thousand gallons then your farm probably bears little resemblance to mine. I’m not going to get up in arms to defend conventional dairy from having to clean up (or at least prove that they are prepared to clean up) after their own messes.

I would like it if there was also an EPA law that would fine farmers for nitrifying the watershed! Maybe even jail time too! But if there were that would probably kill off the remaining 1000 or so dairies in my state. Fact is, if those producers were not permitted to externalize the cost of their pollution in the first place that they would not be in business anyway.

Farming that way is a choice. Every choice entails risks. Why is conventional dairy so special that the taxpayer needs to step in and clean up after them time and again?

I assume that this is the kind of issue this likes of Rural Vermont will take a backseat on. At least I’d hope so.

[goodcompanion]

@near horse 25132 wrote:

It appears this article was meant to stir the pot and get folks outraged at the EPA.

IMHO the only fat of concern was between the ears of the original writer. Seemingly innocuous substances can have negative impacts on the environment when the volume is large enough. And therein lies the positive – sure when you’re processing 100,000’s of gallons of milk and a line breaks and all of that hits the river, that can be a problem. Or those confinement system manure lagoons – bigger isn’t always better. So another argument for small local production.

If they want to be megasize then they need to take mega precautions.

Exactly my thoughts. If farmers choose to operate at such a scale that the storage and transport of the product threatens the common good, why shouldn’t they be held responsible for damage?

The EPA and NRCS operate under the assumption that left to their own devices, farmers will destroy the environment in every way imaginable. And considering the dominant ag model and its effects, they are not exactly wrong in believing this.

Not a farming issue. This is an industrial issue.

[goodcompanion]

@J-L 25109 wrote:

As much as I admire anyone who stands up for what they believe in, when you start advertising yourselves as the radical, civil disobedient, advocacy group from the backwoods of whatever state, you are going to turn off a fair amount of people in my oppinion. Not everyone is a hippy worshipper.
I agree with the root of your cause, and I suspect most people would, if they hear it put forward in a manner that’s more palatable.
Chaining your naked body to your milk barn doors might not be the best way.;)
Just an oppinion from someone who’s a little more on the conservative side.

I don’t find that Rural VT puts itself forward this way. The work is simply good and needed and as such seems to attract the support of the broad range of the public as you mention. Both neo-hippies and old guard vermonters have room under this banner. I like to think that DAP is kinda similar in that regard.

[goodcompanion]

“Suspect was pulled over for 49 mph in a 35 mph zone. Upon being asked for ID suspect became agitated. Officers removed the suspect from the vehicle and placed under arrest. Search of the vehicle revealed 133.5 grams of homemade cheese of high potency, and approximately 200 ml of a kefir-like fluid. Arraignment pending for assaulting an officer and posession of prohibited substances.”

[goodcompanion]

These guys at the VAA are just stuck in the age of consolidation.

I kind of feel bad for them in a certain way. They are unable to reinvent themselves and remain relevant in an agricultural landscape that is changing with or without them. They are protecting the interests of an industry that is in chronic, inexorable decline and the interests of a public that is no longer as uninformed as they assume them to be.

The thing that galls me though is that their inability to adapt forces farmers into outlawdom. I know the farmer-pirate thing is funny to some but I frankly don’t find it so. Personally, I believe in rules, order, and standards since it is pretty difficult to have community without them. And farmers as a group have historically had the most to lose if common faith in the rule of law goes by the wayside! A settled, well stewarded landscape is orderly; Good Farming should be the wellspring of Good Law.

But when the government renders it illegal or simply extremely impractical to make a living from ones own land using ancestral knowledge then we are really in trouble. It seems that our bureaucracy cares more about a$$-covering than the wellfare of its own citizens trying to build and rebuild true community.

[goodcompanion]

Seems to me the Agency of Ag will not allow anything pertaining to raw and/or decentralized dairy unless forced to do so by statute. If the statute can possibly be read as not expressly allowing it, then the VAA will throw all their legal weight against allowing it.

Stand back a few steps and it makes the VAA look ridiculous. Clearly people buying raw milk from local producers know what they are getting into and teaching a few dozen such people how to make their own cheese and whatnot out of such milk is no threat to their health or anyone else’s. A total waste of taxpayer resources to go after them, too.

And after the customer has bought the milk, isn’t that milk their property to dispose of as they see fit? Why is the state interposing itself between a property owner and the spread of information about what to do with their own property? Clearly if I own a jug of milk and turn it into yogurt or whatever, I am not going to get a knock on my door from a state trooper. Yogurt is not a prohibited substance. So why is it a prosecuteable offense to spread word about how yogurt is made?

Baffling.

[goodcompanion]

Hope I brightened everyone’s day with my accounting b.s.! Seriously though that language does tick me off, especially when spouted by a bailed-out investment banker trying to justify their useless existence. Not one person–not one–prosecuted for the whole subprime debacle. Guess everyone, regulators included, were just doing a fine job keeping the economy running and the whole event sort of happened to them (and by extension to all of us) by accident, some kind of Act of God. Nothing anyone should have done differently. Sweet Mercy, someone give them a bonus, for the love of Pete.

[goodcompanion]

I usually use a deferred collateralized security tranche of each horse in an amortized hay annuity-based debt retained revenue expenditure obligation, plus a 15% accrued capital income dividend allowance for each hoof I haven’t trimmed since I’m busy filing taxes.

Plus if the barnyard is wet in April I consider the assets to be offshore.

[goodcompanion]

Interesting post, thanks for sharing your observations!

I was in Banes, Cuba for a couple weeks about 8 years ago as part of a Quaker delegation to a partner group there. I hadn’t any proficiency with drafts at the time though so I didn’t really know what to look for. I saw oxen at work collecting cut brush in the village streets. I was made to understand at the time that the old man with the ox cart who collects cut brush is paid the same salary as a doctor, about $35 per month, plus a ration.

We also traveled once by “coche,” a sort of nag-drawn taxi. It was maybe a 10 mile round trip, gone at at a trot the whole way. Pulled maybe 8 people. I remember that a horse diaper was used, not so much out of not wanting to pollute the streets but more out of not wanting anyone else to have the fertility.

The animals are all really lean there. The SPCA would certainly have a lifetime of work cut out for them, were there such a thing. If there were, they would get paid $35 per month, plus a ration.

I was told that Cuba is a good place to live for the very young and the old, but kind of frustrating to be in the middle. On the whole though people seemed about as happy as anywhere else I’ve seen.

The Iraq war broke out when I was there and I still have the state newspaper’s take on it “La Guerra Imperialistica y Immoral de Bush Contre La Nacion Soverena de Iraq Impezca!”

[goodcompanion]

@mitchmaine 24810 wrote:

We are protected by a constitution that guarantees us the right to confront the government if it gets too powerful. but We are so rich, so comfortable, I feel like my hand is in cool water, just not as cool as yesterday.

mitch

Well put, I agree.

[goodcompanion]

Yup..we’ll see. Stats don’t look too good though. Consider: About 2 and a half million acres of arable land in Egypt. And when we say arable, oh boy is it ever. Vermont had about the same “arable” acreage in 1978 but there is no comparison for quality. In the Nile valley we are talking two, maybe three crops per year. So, for counting purposes, let’s say each Egyptian ag acre has three harvests of 3000 lbs of grain each per acre. Wow! 9000 lbs (4.5 tons) per acre. Total annual harvest:

4.5 tons per acre x 2.5 million acres = 11.25 million tons of grain. For argument’s sake let’s also say no waste, no spoilage, and no exports.

So now let’s play pharaoh here and allot each egyptian citizen 1000 lbs per year.

80 million people x 0.5 tons each = 40 million tons consumption.

Cough cough–note time of post–still nursing a cold that, like a certain north african autocrat, just does not want to call it quits.

[goodcompanion]

@near horse 24758 wrote:

Unfortunately, the history that we “learn” is often not the truth but a rewrite that redirects our perception of reality.

Read “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn and compare it to what we’re taught in school.

Erik makes a great point about international ag – people in developing countries starve while their ag sector grows export crops for the developed world. Corporate colonialism or, is it “the new world order and globalization”? Somethings don’t change and are so lucrative that they’re just repackaged and sold back to us over and over. Yick.

Mubarak just resigned so let’s see where Egypt goes with this. Regardless, it is impressive that the protest has made this much progress!

An analogy you could use in this situation is a bunch of slaves chained to the oars of a galley, building up over the years a festering anger towards the overseers, captain, and officers. Then one day they break their chains and kill their masters and rejoice. Only kind of briefly because there they are, on a galley in the middle of the ocean with very little food and water, and nobody left alive who knows how to sail the thing.

I realize that I’m not giving the Egyptian people a lot of credit here but I do think the situations is extremely grave due to the massive population and probably unresolvable economic problems, and the understandable political myopia most people there have developed over the years, since the old regime never allowed party outsiders to deal with each other or the wider world in a political way. So everything bad was attributable to the regime.

So now no more regime. What now?

[goodcompanion]

@john plowden 24689 wrote:

I use a 50-50 mix of linseed and turpentine – apply several coats –
John

I agree this is a really nice-smelling and looking preservative used in wooden boats. When it wears thin, just reapply. Gotta use real gum turpentine though, the cheaper stuff is just not its equal.

[goodcompanion]

@sickle hocks 24688 wrote:

Looking through old threads and enjoyed the discussion here on the economic and sustainability issues of feed for workhorses. Growing my own feed on the farm is an important goal for me. I anticipate having to supplement hay with some grain while working….the point has been made that it’s easy to sow but equipment intensive to harvest.

in gene logsden’s small scale grain raising book he mentions an old way:

– cut oats when grain just hardening, a bit of green in stalks
– tie stalks in bundles, set in shocks to dry
– then rank the bundles in a barn, or outside like a double stack of wood with butts out and heads in to protect from rain (maybe on pallets with tarps??)
– feed the oats (unthreshed) by the bundle as needed

so i wondered if the two of us with good quality scythes with grain cradles couldn’t find a few days to knock down two acres of oats and try this out…low tech, not much equipment (broadcast seeder, roller/harrows, scythes, wagon), the horses get some roughage too and if they pick through the straw and leave some it could be recovered for bedding

crazy idea????????????????????

you’d sure have to fence off the stacks securely in case something got out..

I bet you can do it!

Knocking down is kind of the easy part. All that gathering and tying up, kind of a pain, you have to be bending over so many times to do it. I love my reaper-binder.

I doubt you’d have to worry too much about the security of your rick in the event of an escape. With the bottoms all pointing out it’s not easy for animals to dismantle, though they might nibble a little bit. By the time a rick gets built up and packed down it’s kind of like a little building–pretty sturdy.

[Author]

Posts