The Husbandman

Image Credit

 Husbandman: noun    1. One whose occupation is husbandry, a farmer.

                                    2. The master of a family.

                                    3. A farmer; a cultivator or tiller of the ground.

I happened to read a recent post from Joel Salatin's blog HERE and was pleased to learn that he was asked to be one of six "Advisor the the Secretary" spots under the new Secretary of Agriculture.  This is huge!  Joel Salatin is a champion for the small farmer.  He stands diametrically opposed to the policies started under Earl Butz, Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture from 1971-1976.  Those policies incentivized large-scale corporate farming and an end to the small family farm.  It was dubbed, "Get big or Get Out!" and signaled the beginning of the end for rural American farming families.

Growing up on a farm was truly the 'good ole days.'  There's not a day that passes that I don't think about it.  Sure, it was hard work, but there was something about it that was noble, satisfying even uplifting for your soul.  It made men out of boys.  I was in a town about 15 miles north of our family farm last week and ran into a fellow that now owns a construction company.  He reminded me that 45 years ago we used to pull red rice at the farm together when we were boys.  We laughed and told the shop owner about how hard it was, that it was hotter than a two dollar pistol on those humid July mornings when the air hung over you like a wet blanket.  We lamented that we didn't know about Gold Bond Medicated powder back then to cure the chafing caused by walking in wet blue jeans, rubbing your inner thighs raw.  After a while, we hugged each other said goodbye, and I drove off.

I wondered, why, after all these years, do we look back on hard times with fondness?  It was like a rite of passage for a young man starting out in life.  You met difficulty head on, facing it and when the day was done, you had some fulfillment of accomplishing something that was worthwhile.  Sweat-stained shirts and caps and calloused hands were the currency used to buy the transition to adulthood.

Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.  - Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson's quote above was prescient.  It seemed to be stating truth of the time while warning of what happens when you wage war against small agriculture.  Things began to change, first slowly and then quickly.  Workers became hard to find.  Today, much of the work is done by huge machines and very few people.  Those that do the manual labor are foreign labor on work visas, doing work that American's "don't want to do."  The older farmers died off and were replaced by corporations that hired farm managers.  A curious thing happened, though.

The old farmers weren't the only things dying off.  The farming communities began dying off, too.  The kids found jobs in the cities.  Subdivisions germinated and grew on fertile land where rice, soybeans and cattle once grew.  The businesses like hardware stores, feed stores, parts houses, and welding shops that once thrived by local farmers, were shuttered and replaced by vape stores, dollar stores, and lounges.  Storefronts on Main Streets were boarded up and drug abuse ran rampant.  Thieves steal what's not chained down.

On a positive note, my nephew was telling me about "Aggie Day" at their school.  I can remember how they would grease down a pig with Vaseline and boys would run through the mud and try to catch it.  The winner got to take the pig home to raise.  I also remember the pride I had when I got my blue corduroy Future Farmers of America jacket.  I'm glad to see that schools in rural America still do this.

Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state.  Thomas Jefferson

In the 80's, a popular movie taught that "Greed is Good" and we were coaxed to become a service economy - we would have an economy that was fueled by consumption.  And boy did we consume!  The trouble is, most of the producing was done overseas or by large corporate conglomerates.  The capital outlay involved in farming in this new paradigm make it prohibitive for all but a few young men and women to pursue these days.  That leaves farming to these big outfits or hirelings who don't own the land or aren't husbandmen or stewards of the land, to merely use it, stripping it of its fertility and topsoil, caring not for the generations that would follow.

I love the land.  I love our farm.  The memories that germinated and grew from those few inches of topsoil are a crop that I harvest most days when I think of the good old days on the family farm.  I pray that Joel Salatin might be able to do something to resurrect the dream of the family farm.  It just might spark a revival in rural America!

 

We All Need Somebody To Lean On

The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”  Mark 12:31 NASB

Neighbors.  We have some good ones.  Always so caring and generous and kind.  The Bible has a lot to say about neighbors.  In fact, The Parable of the Good Samaritan, is an answer to the question, "Who is my neighbor?"  It is easy to put limits on who our neighbor is and it is easy to provide a multitude of excuses for why this person cannot be considered our neighbor.  Jesus cleared it up by saying that our neighbor is anyone in our proximity with whom we can share the love of God.

I'm sure you can think of examples of when you've experienced someone being a good neighbor.  I'm thinking of two examples with a farming context that come to mind that I can share.

When I was farming with my Dad back in the year 2000, times were tough - input costs of the crop were sky high and prices for your harvested crop were low.  People were in a pinch.  I remember as a grown man crying in my crawfish boat, wondering how the bills were going to get paid?  How was I going to support my family?  It was hard for everyone.

But there was a certain brotherhood in farming.  If a tractor broke down, well, you'd drive to your neighboring farmer's shop and borrow his.  If you were stuck in the mud, you'd flag down the farmer down the road and he'd come with a tractor and a chain and pull you out.  Harvest time was always a little stressful.  The crop was ripening in the field and bad weather sets in, bringing the harvest to a halt.  A combine breaks and requires major work that sets you behind.  What to do?

At about 11 AM when the dew had burned off the rice, you'd look down the road and here comes the neighboring farmer in his combine, with his workers driving a tractor and cart and truck following close behind.  They would give you a day's work or whatever it took to get you out of a bind.  They wouldn't accept pay.  At the end of the day, you'd fill their tanks with diesel and they'd drive off into the sunset like the hero with the white hat.  It was a sacrifice of their time, their money, their labor, but they did it because they were honorable men that had great love for their neighbor.  You'd do the same for them, too, and when the opportunity arose, you did.

I remember I was renting a farm a little south of Oberlin.  Dad was helping me get my crop in.  A terrible storm arose and lightning struck my Dad's combine in the field while he was sitting in it.  A scary situation, for sure.  As I recall, the cab filled with electrical smoke and it fried the circuit boards in the electronics, requiring expensive and time consuming repairs.  Lots of things were going wrong.  We were falling behind.

My brother-in-law's Dad farmed south of Kinder, easily ten miles away.  He heard of our plight and drove his combine on a busy road ten miles up Highway 165 to come help me.  It put a big lump in my throat when I saw that John Deere turning down the dirt road to come help us.  How do you repay that kind of service?  The words, "Thank you," seem so lacking, so trivial, so useless in such times.  The recipient of something like that (I'm speaking from experience), feels so ill-equipped even to respond.  The fact that I'm remembering these examples two and a half decades later speaks volumes about the impact that neighbors have had on my life.  It's things you never ever forget.

The fact of the matter is neighbors don't do things for neighbors for a thank you or for a full tank of diesel or a plate lunch or a cold Dr. Pepper.  It's an expression of love, of selfless service to a fellow human being.  It's lending a helping hand to someone who needs it.  Taking responsibility for the well-being of another and living out the words of Christ, loving your neighbor as yourself.  I have had a lot of people in my life that have modeled that type of behavior.  Giants, in my eyes.  I hope to be able to live up to their example.

Farm of the Future?

From a recent Wall Street Journal Article, entitled High-Tech Farm Startups Are Laid Low

by Financing Drought, Pests:

Startups that promised to make farming a high-tech business are withering, suffering from rising costs, tight financing, pests and other problems that have troubled traditional agriculture for centuries.

Investors poured billions of dollars into companies such as AppHarvest and Local Bounti that grow lettuce, tomatoes and other crops in indoor farms that use advanced technology such as sensors and robots to offset weather-related risks, use less water and produce more consistent crops.

Shares of the two companies are down more than 95% since they went public in 2021, and in recent months at least four companies in the sector have shut down or filed for bankruptcy.

Here is a photo of this "farm:"

Notice the verdant, pastoral landscape, the blue skies, chirping birds and brilliant sunshine.  I jest.  I am going to expose myself as being the old- fashioned, Luddite, backwards curmudgeon that I am, but folks, "That ain't no farm and what's going on in that hermetically sealed, antiseptic building ain't farming!"  That is a scientific laboratory.  I can only imagine what a tomato grown in a metal building without fresh air and sunshine tastes like.  I can see two "farm workers" laboring in "their fields" with masks on.  

I read that article and I have mixed feelings.  I wish no one ill will and want to see no one fail.  Their business venture that would have robots and sensors work the land, use less water, avoid pests and the vagaries of the weather to achieve more consistent crops and efficient production is failing.  The cost of the lighting alone is a detriment to profitability.  

On the other hand, if you go back to Genesis, this is not what God intended farming to be.  After the fall of Man, sin entered the world and a Curse fell upon creation.  Things were no longer going to be easy.  Thorns would arise.  Man must "toil by the sweat of his brow."  It seems that in all our humanist wisdom, we feel like we can break the curse.  God told man to be a husbandman, a steward of His Creation, a tiller of the soil.  And yet, here we are farming in metal buildings under LED lights, growing plants in soil-less containers.  There will be no sweat on the farm laborers' brows!

Truth be told, despite this article, modern agriculture is rushing headlong into this brave, new world in the remaining fields around us.  Farm labor, you see, is beneath the dignity of most Americans.  We must import workers to do this work that no one wants to do.  In fact, we don't need many workers anyway.  We have farm implements that drive themselves.  Smart machines that apply the correct amount of chemicals to the soil to kill the pests, eradicate the weeds, and encourage plant growth.

If you drive on gravel roads, you don't see many farmers anymore.  Who is stewarding the land?  In THIS ARTICLE, Farm Bureau lists these fast facts:

Farm and ranch families comprise less than 2% of the U.S. population.  Most families in America were once tied to Agriculture.

After accounting for input costs, farmers and ranchers receive only 8 cents out of every dollar spent on food at home and away from home. The rest goes for costs beyond the farm gate: wages and materials for production, processing, marketing, transportation and distribution.

From Wikipedia: By 2000, the biggest component of the Farm Bill was the Food Stamp program.

Farming is hard.  I know it all too well.  Input costs are high.  The amount of investment required and necessary to farm is paralyzing to even think about.  You are one weather disaster away from bankruptcy.  You are dependent upon government policies, regulations, and payments that change.  I remember when there was something called an LDP (loan deficiency payment).  Each Tuesday, the Government would change the payment.  When the LDP would increase by $0.20 per barrel, amazingly, the price the mill would buy your rice from you would drop by $0.20.  The payment meant for the farmer went to the middleman.  It seemed like the farmer takes on all the risk and gets very little of the reward.

Yes, farming is hard, but growing up on a farm was a great life.  I wouldn't trade it for the world.  One day each week, I'm going to try to commit to having a blog post describing memories of growing up on a farm in the 70's and 80's.  As our family farms get gobbled up by huge corporate farms and family farms dwindle, I think it is important to keep the memories of our farming heritage alive.  

Uzziah Loved the Soil

"He also built towers in the wilderness and carved out many cisterns, for he had much livestock, both in the lowland and in the plain. He also had plowmen and vinedressers in the hill country and the fertile fields, for he loved the soil."  - 2 Chronicles 26:10

Uzziah is mentioned in Isaiah 6:1-8 at the commencement of Isaiah's ministry.  To learn more about Uzziah, you must flip backward in your Bible to 2 Chronicles 26.  In that chapter we learn that Uzziah was a king who was 16 years old when he became king.  We learn that he was a GOOD king.  We learn that he is mighty in battle and has built a formidable war machine, including inventing catapults to aid him in overtaking walled cities.  We learn that he was famous.  We also learn, importantly, that he is a husbandman - a keeper of livestock, a farmer!

He "loved the soil."  He farmed not from necessity.  He was king and had all he needed.  No, he farmed because he loved it.  I admire Uzziah for his love for things agricultural.  I think God put that desire in many people and that it hearkens back to him placing Adam in the Garden to keep it.

I have many fond memories of loving the soil and farming from early childhood.  I have told the story before, but a can recall pushing my chair back from the table as a toddler and running outside with my fruit cocktail and planting it.  Sadly, I can report that the germination was 0%.  I remember planting green beans in Dixie Cups in elementary school, watching the progress of growth day by day.  It was magical, mesmerizing!

Loving the soil is something that doesn't come without hard work.  I recall clearing land to be planted for the first time.  It was bottomland off of Carrier Road in Oberlin.  Our goal was to plant this land.  My Dad said it was "rested land" and would yield like crazy.  As the hot, summer sun beat down, we pulled a flatbed wagon across the cleared land with an old John Deere 4020 tractor.  We tossed pine knots onto the trailer as we criss-crossed  the land.  When the pile of pine knots was tall and threatened to fall off the trailer, we unloaded them in a pile against the fence row.  We pulled a disk across the newly cleared land and picked up more pine knots.  After a rain, you could walk across the land and find antique bottles and old-fashioned marbles and wonder about the lives that those folks lived a generation or two before - those tied to the soil like you.

It is a strong pull - the love for the land.  Once the land was cleared, as the sun set, we leaned against the old wagon with sweat-drenched clothes.  The muscles ached, the back protested, and we didn't smell too good, but we had pride in what we had accomplished.  The first harvest from this 'new' land was special.  In our own small way, we had tamed the land and converted formerly useless land into useful and productive land.  

In some sense, the taming of the land is metaphorical of what the Lord does to the untamed human heart.  If we yield to Him, believing in the finished work of His Son, He transforms the hardened soil of our hearts to fertile soil, productive and wholesome, yielding a bountiful harvest.  Praise Be to God!

An Outlook on Farming in America in 2019

Image Credit

I read a good book by Wendell Berry called "The Unsettling of America."  I think it is one of those books that you keep in your personal library to go back and read again.  I recently read an article from the NEW YORKER - Wendell Berry that had some interesting quotes.  I pulled out a few excerpts that I'll post below.  The bolded part is the question asked by the author of The New Yorker and Wendell Berry's answers are below it.  Below that, in bolded green, I wrote down my thoughts as this article was so timely.:

What’s your outlook on farming in America?
Between 1940 and 2012, the number of farms in the U.S. decreased by four million. The absence of so many farmers and their families is seen as progress by the liberals and conservatives who have been in charge of the economy since about 1952. Meanwhile, the farmland and the few surviving farmers are being ruined both by destructive ways of production and by overproduction. The millions who are gone have been replaced by bigger and bigger machines, and by toxic chemicals. If we should decide to replace the chemicals and some of the machinery with humans, as for health or survival we need to do, that would be very difficult and it would take a long time.

Very sad about the dramatic decrease in U.S. farms in 72 years!  I was just talking to my Dad about the sentiments brought up in Wendell Berry's answer just last week.  The farmers that are left are in stretched very thin.  They are farming more land, with fewer employees and more expensive equipment.  They have very little time to be a true husbandman or steward of the land.  They plant and they harvest.  They don't have much time for being a caretaker for the soil.  Landlords are left with an absentee farmer on their land.  The farmers are trying everything they can do to make ends meet.  There is lots of stress as the stakes are much higher in farming these days. 

Why would it be so difficult?
Because there is no farmer pool from which farmers can be recruited ready-made. Once, we could more or less expect good farmers to be the parents of good farmers. That kind of succession was hardly a public concern. When farmers are taught, starting in childhood, by parents and grandparents and neighbors, their education comes “naturally,” and at little cost to the land. A good farmer is one who brings competent knowledge, work wisdom, and a locally adapted agrarian culture to a particular farm that has been lovingly studied and learned over a number of years. We are not talking here about “job training” but rather about the lifelong education of an artist, the wisdom that come from unceasing attention and practice. A young-adult non-farmer can learn to farm from reading, apprenticeship to a farmer, advice from neighbors, trial and error—but that is more awkward, is personally risky, and it may be costly to the land.

Here's where the rubber meets the road.  When I graduated from college, I remember my Dad telling me that my investment was the suit on my back and the briefcase in my hand.  My investment was next to nothing.  Every two weeks a paycheck was deposited in my bank account.  My Return on Investment was ridiculously high compared to his.  He didn't need to tell me, but his investment was much higher.  He had land and very expensive equipment (tractors, combines, trucks) - not to mention the upkeep and maintenance on both.  He had employees that depended on him.  He had capital improvements.  He had a production loan to cover the costs of seed, fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides.  He had to pay the crop duster.  Back breaking labor was necessary to bring your crop in.  You were at the whims of the weather, the government, crop disaster, etc.   Then after harvest, the price you got for your commodity was always in doubt.  Prices could fall beneath the cost of production.  These seemingly insurmountable barriers to becoming a farmer make it very risky for a young person to farm. 

It seems counterintuitive for agriculture to keep moving in the present direction.
The solution is not simple in the approved, modern way. It’s not deterministic, which is what people really want. They want it to be decided by fate, or technology, or genetics, or something. To bring it back to politics, I was an Adlai Stevenson man when I was eighteen. I loved his eloquence. I couldn’t tell you now what he thought of farming. But when Eisenhower came in, his Secretary of Agriculture was Ezra Taft Benson, who said to the farmers, “Get big or get out,” a heartless and a foolish thing to say. My argument is that this ended official thought about agriculture. We were not to worry about it anymore. If farmers go to town that’s just more laborers for the labor pool, just more consumers of industrial food.

Oh, our agricultural research universities like LSU, funded by check-off dollars has greatly increased yields over time, but unfortunately the price of inputs has increased at a greater rate.  Farmers, if they are lucky, make just enough to 'give it one more year to see if it will get better.'  The "Get big or Get Out" quote by Eisenhower's Secretary of Agriculture, was perhaps a true statement, but to me, it marked the beginning of the end of the rich farming heritage of our nation's past.  Technology.  Productivity.  Innovation. All good, but the ability to grow more with less labor changed the fabric of rural America.  Young people left the farm and moved or commuted to the cities for employment.  Main Street USA crumbled and soon boarded up storefronts replaced bustling small towns.  We changed from a nation of producers to a nation of consumers.

Tricia and I moved to the country and as I look out of my front window, I see a field that was once in soybean production, but is now being surveyed and staked out for a new subdivision.  This is going on all over our country as fertile fields are being covered with concrete and starter homes.  In terms of agriculture, where do we go from here?  I don't know.  The shrinking pool of farmers in our country are still very productive.  They literally feed the world.  For those with a love of the land and farming, but an inability to commercially farm for whatever reason, there is still an opportunity to enjoy to pastoral life by having a homestead farm and raising a few animals and crops for your family on small acreage.  You won't feed the world, but you can feed your family, and that's a good thing! 

A Good Article With a Bad Headline

Image Credit

After reading THIS WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE that I want to share with you, I have several observations.  First and foremost, the article is loaded with some very, very interesting data, and I'll share that with you in a moment.  The article highlights results from the recently released 2017 Census of Agriculture from the Department of Agriculture.  I want to apologize for the next two paragraphs in advance.  The headline of the article really put a burr under my saddle.

The thing that is troubling to me is the headline of the article.  I'm not making this up.  The headline is: "Advocates hoped census would find diversity in agriculture. It found old white people."  Old white people?  Seriously.  First off, why would your foremost goal be hoping to find diversity in agriculture?  American farmers feed our country and export food to many other countries as well.  Why wouldn't advocates hope to find productivity in agriculture?  Or profitability?  Or yield increases?  Or efficiency?  Or land stewardship?  Or growth in the number of farmers that are tasked with feeding our families?  But no, the author of this article seeks to make sure that agriculture has the proper quota or allocation of people fitting every acceptable race and gender - since everyone can agree that this is what makes farming successful, right? 

I will go out on a limb and say that when most people are hungry and go to the grocery store to purchase food, they don't care about what color the farmer was that grew their rice or sweet potatoes.  I don't care what the race is of the fisherman who caught the crawfish I ate last week.  It is of no importance to me.  It is only important to the race merchants.  Why is segregating us into different people groups (rather than Americans) so very important to them?  I'm interested to hear when the Census of Basketball comes out.  I'm anxious to see if the author hopes to find diversity in the NBA.  I'm curious to see what they find.  End of rant.  Sorry.

So here are some very good insights that the census provided:

"All categories of midsize farms declined over the past five years. Farmer’s ages skewed older, leaving questions about what happens when they age out." 

"The number of farm operations dropped 3.2 percent to 2.04 million. Total acreage farmed nationwide dropped 1.6 percent, while the average farm size increased by the same percentage, to 441 acres."

"Industry consolidation continued. The number of dairy farms dropped 15 percent from 2012, but the number of milk cows rose."

"The number of farms 1 - 9.9 acres has grown 52.4% over the past 15 years from 2002 to 2017."

"The number of farmers and ranchers below the age of 35 is also up, rising 11 percent to about 285,000. They’re thoroughly outnumbered by the 396,000 producers age 75 and older, however."

"The average age of U.S. farm producers in 2017 was 57.5 years, creeping up from 56.3 years in 2012."

"About 3.2 million of 3.4 million farm producers are white."

"Regardless of race, only two out of every five American farm producers (1.42 million) list farming as their primary job. Almost as many, 1.37 million, spend 200 days or more each year working outside of the farm.  With labor and input costs up and the total market value of products sold down, this census offers many reasons American farmers are hedging their bets with a day job."

Now, excluding the offensive headline of the article, the quoted data points above were very interesting to me.  What I got out of it is that few people wake up in the morning and say, "I think I'll become a farmer today."  Farming is hard work.  Farmers work 6 days a week and on the seventh, they're at church.  Dairy farmers are at it seven days a week.  Most farmers, despite working so darn hard, rely on of-farm income to cash flow!  The input costs are high, thus making it prohibitive for new farmers to get into farming. 

Most people are not keen into getting into so much debt in seed, fertilizer, land, equipment, etc. to put in a crop that is at risk to the vagaries of the weather, fluctuating commodity prices, political winds, crop disease and pests, etc.  When I went to work for a large corporation right out of college, my Dad often told me that my only investment I had in receiving a steady paycheck was the suit on my back and my briefcase, while he had an insane amount invested and wasn't even guaranteed he would break even!  Farmers do it because it's in their blood and because they love the land.

American Farmers, I salute you!

Image Credit

Trouble in the Fields

Driving home this afternoon I found myself sandwiched between 18 wheelers and cars and trucks in a seemingly endless stream of tail lights stretching into the distance.  It's the drive home.  Concrete.  Asphalt.  Exhaust fumes.  Impatient commuters.  All of us wanting to get home. 

For some reason, I began singing the lyrics to a song I hadn't heard in years - "Trouble in the Fields," by Nanci Griffith.  Nanci Griffith is a folk musician and songwriter from Texas who has a real gift.  Why on earth did that song pop into my head?  I suppose it was the subconscious juxtaposition of the concrete stretching out before me on I-10 with the fertile fields that lie just beyond my windshield.

Indeed, farming has its share of struggles and disappointments.  The anguish of commuters who are inconvenienced by a stalled car or accident that causes all lanes to merge to one, pales in comparison to farmers facing commodity prices in free-fall, or drought, or too much rain, or crop failure that threatens to destroy the only way of life they've ever known and send them into bankruptcy or financial ruin despite back-breaking hard work.  Doesn't seem right.

Nanci Griffith speaks to this in her song "Trouble in the Fields."  She sings of hardships on the farm and dreams evaporating.  Bankers are ready to foreclose, people are throwing in the towel, and memories of the Great Depression and dust-bowl days that your grandparents told you about come flooding back.  The children have left the family farm and moved off to the city in search of the "good life," an easier existence, a steady and dependable paycheck and they no longer even want it to rain as their interest in the weather is related to recreation and not making a living.  Food comes from the store now, right?

But Nanci sings that there is hope.  Even though there's trouble, if the husband and wife stick together and work hard, the rains will come in due season.  With crops fertilized by sweat and tears (and prayers), come harvest time, it'll all work out for there is love in those troubled fields!

I posted the lyrics to the song below.  If you click the arrow below the lyrics, you can hear Nanci Griffith sing this poignant song about being resolute and sticking it out when the going is rough and you have a long row to hoe!  Enjoy:

Baby I know that we've got trouble in the fields

When the bankers swarm like locust out there turning away our yield

The trains roll by our silos, silver in the rain

They leave our pockets full of nothing

But our dreams and the golden grain

Have you seen the folks in line downtown at the station

They're all buying their ticket out and talking the great depression

Our parents had their hard times fifty years ago

When they stood out in these empty fields in dust as deep as snow

And all this trouble in our fields

If this rain can fall, these wounds can heal

They'll never take our native soil

But if we sell that new John Deere

And then we'll work these crops with sweat and tears

You'll be the mule I'll be the plow

Come harvest time we'll work it out

There's still a lotta love, here in these troubled fields

There's a book up on the shelf about the dust bowl days

And there's a little bit of you and a little bit of me

In the photos on every page

Now our children live in the city and they rest upon our shoulders

They never want the rain to fall or the weather to get colder

And all this trouble in our fields

If this rain can fall, these wounds can heal

They'll never take our native soil

But if we sell that new John Deere

And then we'll work these crops with sweat and tears

You'll be the mule I'll be the plow

Come harvest time we'll work it out

There's still a lotta love, here in these troubled fields

You'll be the mule I'll be the plow

Come harvest time we'll work it out

There's still a lotta love, here in these troubled fields

Finding A Better Way

This morning while commuting to work I looked out over rice fields on either side of the road being readied for planting. I began to think back to memories of planting rice.  One of the things I hadn't thought of in a while was the practice of soaking rice prior to planting it.  The rice came in burlap bags and was pretty heavily, especially for a kid.  We had several areas in drainage canals that we'd flood with water and then throw all of the burlap bags full of rice into the water so that they would begin to sprout.

Once sprouted, we'd remove the bags of sprouted rice from the water and bring to the air strip to be loaded into Ag Cat crop dusters to be planted.  If the bags of rice were heavy when they were dry, you can about imagine how heavy they were when wet and the rice was swollen and sprouted.  It was so cold at this time to get into the water!  We would get into the frigid water and feel around for the sacks of rice.  We used a conveyor that we would borrow to get the rice out of the canal.  One end would be lowered into the water and the other end at the edge of a big truck that the rice would be loaded on.  The conveyor seemed mighty high tech at the time.  Our job would have been so much harder without it.  It looked kind of like this, except it had regular truck tires on it:
 

Image Credit

The bags of sprouted rice would be driven to the air strip and we would use pocket knives to open each sack and dump into a big bag that would be lifted by a truck with a boom and would be loaded into the crop duster for planting.  Today rice farming has changed to make things more efficient and less labor-intensive.  Rice is no longer man-handled in burlap bags.  It is lifted by tractor in super bags.  As you can see in the photo below, the very heavy bag of rice is lifted and there is a chute at the bottom that is untied, allowing the rice to flow directly into the plane.

Image Credit

That gets rid of the overwhelming majority of all the hard work.  It also gets rid of the nostalgia of remembering "how hard it was back in the old days."  Things have been made easier, faster, better by working with our minds instead of man and beast laboring with our backs.  There is a good side to that and a bad side as well, as I think about it.  Farming has gotten easier from the time that "Ike" made this memorable quote:

“You know, farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Rural Ruminations

"Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man.  When tillage begins, other arts will follow.  The farmers, therefore are the founders of civilization."

- Daniel Webster, American Statesman

This afternoon I listened to a radio program extolling the wisdom of the electoral college in that it gives smaller states a voice in the Presidential and Vice Presidential election.  The broadcaster was extolling the brilliance of it, saying that if elections were based on popular vote, candidates would focus all their campaign on winning California, New York, Texas and Florida.  The electoral college gives small states a place at the table.  He then went on to speak of the widening gulf between wants of voters in highly concentrated urban centers and the wants of voters in 'fly-over' country.  There is a cauldron brewing.

As I drove down I-10, on my right and my left was farmland, but I began to think about how fertile farmland is being engulfed by urban sprawl.  Subdivisions are cropping up (pardon the pun) on land that used to grow rice, soybeans, and sugar cane.  Even though we live in a rural area, I was surprised to see concrete being poured to erect a Dollar General Store way out in the country.

I received a telephone call from a farmer friend who is going out of business after 16 years.  The rains in August decimated his family's vegetable crop.  He grows for farmer's markets and gets no disaster payments from the government for crop loss. His kids are growing up and taking 'off-farm' jobs.  He has formulated an exit strategy to be completely out of farming in five years.

Farming is hard work.  Cows must be milked every day.  Too much rain - or too little can result in crop failure.  Or everything can go perfectly fine until the crop pest or disease robs your harvest.  On the other hand, farming is incredibly fun and rewarding.  It is an honorable profession and is truly a labor of love.  The satisfaction of growing the majority of food on your supper table is fulfilling. There are character-building lessons taught in farming each and every day.  Lessons in patience, faith, work-ethic, perseverance, gratitude, and humility are all taught in the sweat and dirt filled classroom of the field.  I always find it interesting in Genesis 2 that God created Man, planted a garden and placed Man in it.

Yes, I think Daniel Webster was right - farmers are the foundation of civilization.

Of Crumbling Farmhouses and Dreams...

I've long been told in a business setting that it is not acceptable to bring problems to others without having proposed solutions already formulated and ready to discuss. I tend to agree with a small caveat.  Sometimes people really are insulated from reality and don't recognize the problem looming. Bringing those issues to one's awareness (even if you don't have answers) can help facilitate a discussion.  That conversation allows many minds to formulate solutions and everyone benefits.  I'm not going to sit behind the keyboard today and pretend to have the answers or solutions.  Maybe, let's just talk about it.

Crumbling Farmhouses...

Image Credit

I'm reading a book right now by Joel Salatin called "Fields of Farmers."  The subtitle is Interning, Mentoring, Partnering, Germinating.  I've read many of Mr. Salatin's other books and I admire him.  His farm, Polyface Farms, was featured in Michael Pollan's book, Omnivore's Dilemma and he is a pioneer.  His farm is described like this on his website:

Polyface, Inc. is a family owned, multi-generational, pasture-based, beyond organic, local-market farm and informational outreach in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

Image Credit

This book is really not applicable to our little operation, Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  Our little farm has no full time workers.  I work a full time job away from the farm and for all intents and purposes, we operate our homestead farm on what I call the "Bluebell Ice Cream Philosophy:"  We eat all we can and sell the rest! The fruits of our labors are enjoyed by our family first.  Our farm is not successful enough to be self sustaining and requires me to work a 'real job' in order to support my family with overwhelmingly off farm income.  As a result, we could not realistically have interns.

I am a hopeless nostalgic, locked in the past, reminiscing about the 'good, old days,' but I also look to the future and ponder how to resurrect the old ways.  There is an excerpt out of Mr. Salatin's book that is written with such emotion and passion that it comes alive and lights a fire within my soul.  It also highlights a problem that I alluded to in the opening paragraph.

In Chapter 6, titled, Investing in People, Mr. Salatin states:

"Unappreciated in society, most farmers have been relegated to the edges of socio-political importance and discourse.  Numbering too few to even merit noting in the census, farmers generally have slipped into a defeated, anachronistic mindset. Growing weary on the acreage they love, many encourage their children to seek a better life.  Abandoned by an unappreciative society, most farmers have emotionally given up.  They plod along because that's what they've always done and they don't know anything better to do.  Too old to learn a new trade, they just keep planting, feeding, and showing up at the Ruritan Club until they can't get up in the morning.

It's sad.  Really sad.  I see it in their faces at the livestock auction barn.  I see it in the faces at traditional farm conventions, and too often even at sustainable farm conventions.  Oh they try to put on a good front.  They tell stories and reminisce about the old days.  Most of the stories happened because lots of people were around... back then.  Whenever a young farmer, boy or girl, comes by, their eyes twinkle as they think of what could have been on their farm.  But most of the kids are gone. They went to Dilbert cubicles to work for Fortune 500 Companies, put their kids in soccer leagues, and joined the Sierra Club in penance for all the chemicals and plowing Dad did back on the homeplace.

All you have to do is drive out through the midwest, the heartland of America, to see that heart stripped bare and bleeding.  Not one in three houses is inhabited.  Many sit abandoned and lonely, crumbling, amidst gargantuan fields of genetically modified corn and soybeans grown for animal factories. In a few years, the old houses will go ahead and give up too, like their former owners, and crumble into the soil.  Then they won't impede the plow anymore.  They will decompose back into the earth, a little spot of fertility, hearkening back to earlier days when the fertile earth sprouted small diversified farms, communities, tax bases, and livestock shows.

How do we get the life back?  How do we create hope in these seemingly hopeless situations?  Only families that have vision, singleness of heart, magnanimous spirit, and optimistic hope can realistically..." (I cut it off in mid sentence, because Mr. Salatin goes on to explain about how having interns on the farm can turn things around.  They most certainly can, but I'm not in the position to start an internship program and I'm ruminating about other solutions.)

Image Credit

I don't know if you appreciate that writing like I do, but it was like poetry to me. Gripping, emotional, evoking a visceral response.  How do we get the life back? Great question.  I don't know if we can. We are a different society now.  We've moved from the Agrarian age, into the Industrial Revolution, and now into the Information Age.  According to ag101 demographics here are some noteworthy statistics that give you an indication of where we (Agricultural folks) find ourselves:

• Less than 1% of Americans (based on the 2007 Census of Agriculture) claim farming as an occupation.
• Only 45% of those farmers claimed farming as their primary occupation.
• The vast majority (87%) of farms are owned and operated by individuals or families.  
• In spite of the predominance of family farms, there are markers showing concentration in ag production.  A mere 187,816 of the 2.2 million farms in this country (8.5%), accounted for 63% of sales of agricultural products.  (Get big or get out?!)
• With the advent of productive farm equipment, improved crop varieties, commercial fertilizers and pesticides, the need for human workers has declined from 27.5 acres per worker in 1890 to a whopping 740 acres per worker in 1990.  (This seems great at first glance, but is it really?)
• The average age of the principal operator of a farm stood at 57 years old in 2007.

Those are some startling statistics and they are 7 years old.  Think about that for a minute.  So, back to the question.  How do we get the life back?  First, I'll say that the majority of people don't want that life back because they never were connected to the land and even if they were, they don't feel a calling to the agrarian lifestyle. For those that do want to either engage in or support local farming, here are my thoughts and brainstorms on how to start:

1. Start somewhere - regardless how small.  The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  Plant some herbs in a pot on your patio, plant a tomato plant, some cucumbers in a row you pull up in the backyard.  Get your hands dirty tending for the crops.
2. Harvest and savor the flavor. Homegrown stuff tastes better than candy and is fresher than anything from the produce section at your grocery store.  You'll also enjoy the sense of pride and satisfaction of eating stuff you grew.  Enjoy your own food and the benefits of building a healthy family and then sell the excess.
3. Get your kids or grandkids involved.  Introduce them to the land.  Help generate a love for growing plants and caring for animals.  Let them experience the excitement in watching the miracle of plant growth. Share memories of your family's agricultural heritage to help them see the legacy of the land.  Young people love to be involved in a cause. Enlist their help in healing and building healthy soil. Let them raise some chicks and then collect the eggs.  Chickens are so much fun to watch and care for.
4. Shop Local.  Support neighboring farmers at farmer's markets or roadside stands.  Talk to them. Encourage them.  Learn from them.  Keep the dollars circulating in your local communities, helping local folks.  Work with like-minded folks to develop a market for your produce & meats.  Once they taste the difference, they will be hooked!
5. Read, experiment, expand, learn & grow.  Let your love for the land grow and see where it takes you.  Find a niche and fill it.  Perhaps new family farm enterprises could be incubated.  Maybe you could figure a way to make the farm support itself without requiring off-farm income.  Rediscover your love for the land and the joy of the simple life.  Slow down and take time to enjoy things we've taken for granted in our fast-paced, rat-race world.

These are all minor steps, but very do-able things - not rocket science.  If we did some of this, we could make inroads, and begin to re-ignite/reinvigorate family farms and slow or reverse the advancement of crumbling farmhouses and dreams. It is a noble goal and one that will leave a lasting legacy.

Going Back to the Start

I really enjoyed watching the little video clip entitled, "Back to the Start" I posted below.  Click on the arrow and watch it.  I think you'll like it, too.  It is an ad of sorts for Chipotle that was created by Johnny Kelly. You'll recognize the singer's recognizable voice as Willie Nelson singing a Coldplay song called, "The Scientist." Apart from the creative cartoon and singing, the importance to me was the message conveyed in a very simple way.

In the cartoon, the farmer converts the family farm into an industrial-type farm, converting pastures into confinement operations, heavily dependent upon herbicides, pesticides, and antibiotics.  The farmer is probably more profitable than before, but there are costs and unintended consequences.  The farmer is likely dangerously leveraged and stressed.  His farm is creating lots of waste products and the fertility of the land is being depleted.  He is no longer outdoors, but works in a factory.  His animals are full of antibiotics, hormones, and drugs and that goes directly into the food supply.

In the end, the farmer has second thoughts and goes 'back to the start' and goes back to a what I call a more pure form of agriculture.

I'm not anti-progress, but I am a decidedly old-fashioned nostalgic.  Critics of "old fashioned" farming (or sustainable farming - I don't like that term) complain about lower crop yields or an inability to feed the world. Maybe, just maybe, farmers aren't supposed to feed the world.  Perhaps we are supposed to feed our families and neighbors and local communities or at least people in our local region.

In my opinion, we are to be good stewards of the land.  I particularly like the term, husbandry.  It means: 1. the care, cultivation, and breeding of crops and animals and/or 2. the management and conservation of resources. By no means am I an 'environmental-wacko,' but I believe we should take good care of God's creation, so that we pass down to future generations thriving farms stewarded by a multi-generational families.  There are few things as self-centered as using something up completely without concern for what you are leaving for those who come after you.

Not only should we be conserving the land, but we should be conserving what I call peace of mind.  It reminds me of something that I read about a gentleman named Earl Butz.  Mr. Butz was the Secretary of Agriculture under the Eisenhower Administration.  He was famous for telling American farmers to "get big or get out" and "to plant fencerow to fencerow."  This type mindset is credited with the growth of the major Agriculture conglomerates and the decline of the small family farm.  Those that remain are largely in lots of debt and don't seem to have the quality of life that prior agrarians enjoyed.  And most of those require off-farm income (a "real" job) to keep the family's finances afloat.  I don't see that as progress.

I love farming.  I love the outdoors.  There is something about the smell of the soil when you turn it over, the sweetness of the taste of peas or corn that you eat seconds after you pick it standing out in the garden, the gentle glow of the sun sinking beneath the horizon on a Fall day as the cows moo and the chickens hurriedly head for their roosting place, the gratitude for a meal completely produced off of the land right outside your back door, the good night's sleep and contentment after working a hard day on the farm, and the simplicity and satisfaction of doing what you enjoy much the same as the first Man that tended the Garden thousands of years ago.  That, in part, is why I love the agrarian lifestyle and why I aim to go back to the start...

A Family Legacy

Do you ever stop and think about what type of legacy you'll leave behind?  About what your kids will remember you by once you're gone?  About making memories and a creating a family identity that sets you apart and makes you different?  About what work ethic, values, integrity, and character traits that you've deposited in your children that will hopefully be passed down to theirs.  I think about this stuff a lot.


Benjamin fishing by the bridge at (Cub Scout) Camp Edgewood in Gillis, Louisiana  (One of my favorite pictures!)

I always wonder what steps I can take to instill in my kids timeless virtues and therefore, leave behind something of value that will carry forward those things our family cherishes.  Many of us are standing on the shoulders of our fathers.  Our lives today are shaped greatly by what our fathers gave us - and theirs by their fathers, and so on and so forth.  Our identity, in many cases, was largely determined generations ago.  Likewise, our kids' future is largely dependent on us and what we do.  That's a sobering thought.  It only takes one broken link in the chain and the work of generations of men and women can be brought to a screeching halt.

I'm not saying that it is all up to you, because it's not.  A child, and then a young man or young woman, has free will.  Once they are out from under your roof, they can make their own decisions - good or bad.  Sometimes things go awry despite our best intentions.


Foggy morning fishing

Faith, Hope, and Love.

First off, I want to pass along my Christian faith to my kids, fully aware that I can't make the decision to follow Christ for them.  That decision is theirs alone, but I have a great responsibility in conveying the message.  Just as Moses gave the commandments to the Israelites, we should teach (AND LIVE) the Gospel of Jesus Christ continually.

Deuteronomy 6:6-10
⁶ These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. ⁷ You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. ⁸ You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. ⁹ You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Secondly, as dark as this fallen world is, there is always hope and we should never give up.  There is hope in Christ.  There is hope in our fellow man.  There is hope in justice and that goodness and virtue and honor will prevail over evil.  I want my kids' eyes to be open to the evil that is in the world, but to never give up, never be complacent, never be pessimistic and never be apathetic.

Finally, there is love.  I want my kids to experience the love of Christ and to radiate that love to others in their path.  I want them to be considerate, thoughtful people that genuinely love other people and treat them as they expect to be treated.  Love never dies.

As a post script, I want them to share my love of the land, the smell of dirt, the enjoyment of watching things grow, the challenge of tending for God's creation and experiencing the joys (and sometimes sorrows) of that relationship with the land.  I want them to know how to work with their hands, grow healthy food, and enjoy a standard of living not measured by dollars, possessions, or other luxuries, but measured in love, peace and satisfaction that while they are living out lives of purpose on this earth, their real citizenship is in Heaven.

Our Maker's Acres Dirt!

  What kind of legacy will we leave and what can we do TODAY to shape that legacy?