I Deserve it

It's this writers opinion that the three words that make up the title of this post have got more people in more trouble over time than any other three word combination except maybe, "Hey, watch this !"

Of course there are different kinds of trouble; what I'm going to talk about for the remainder of this post is the financial kind. Readily available credit, rent to own, interest only mortgages and "easy" payment plans have seemingly subsumed the idea that except in rare instances, one may better put off until tomorrow that which could be financed today. Most of the things one can buy and finance today are depreciating assets. As many people have learned during this recession, even home values can depreciate. For this reason, home equity lines of credit aren't usually a good idea, because where are you going to live when real estate prices drop (!) and you suddenly owe more than your home is worth.

Even famous financial analysts talk today about "good" debt vs. "bad" debt; the idea being that good debt will either appreciate in value and/or earn more money than it costs to finance it whereas bad debt just accrues costs with no hope of salvation. The truth is that *any* kind of debt is a gamble; even the safest forms of debt can backfire on occasion.

I'm guilty of thinking, "I deserve it" myself. As most of you know, Melissa and I are building out our new farm right now. With the exception of a little bit of mortgage debt, we owe no money on any of the improvements we've made, and we have no plans to accrue more debt by making improvements before we can do it with cash. Of course, having animals on two farms with one of them under near continual construction, combined with running old, fully depreciated equipment and vehicles adds a whole other level of inconvenience to our daily lives, and I've thought many times about how "convenient" it would be to just go ahead and borrow enough to finish it out, with maybe enough for a cab tractor, some new equipment, and a nice new car to spare. It'd work too. I'd look like a genius so long as our growth curve remained in it's current allometric state and nothing went seriously wrong in the interim. Unfortunately, I know very well that growth curves seldom remain allometric for very long. I also know that having things go wrong is very much a part of life.

This post was spurred on by a friends' untimely and very surprising farm auction notice, which was waiting for me in the mailbox today. It hit me pretty hard when I got it, and when I saw who'se equipment and real estate was for sale, I knew I needed to drive over pretty quick and have a visit with him. I did just that shortly before supper time tonight. It's not my business to know the circumstances behind his sale, and I didn't ask, but I do know that whatever happened, I'm sad about it. I hope I'll see him on a tractor again soon; next time in better circumstances than he currently finds himself in right now. Years ago, my grandad said that he'd rather have good neighbours than more land. Amen to that.

Apparantly, Vegetables have rights too.

For as much rhetoric as corporate ag spews about producing the cleanest, safest and most abundant food supply in the world, maybe I shouldn't have been surprised to learn that they don't take any sort of criticism challenging this position very well at all. In fact, corporate lobbyists have successfully introduced food libel laws in 13 states in this country. (Thankfully, at this writing, Tennessee isn't one of them.)

As I understand it, what this means is that if you make a show out of talking and writing bad things about commodities that agribusiness produces in the states that have these laws on the books, and you don't have sound science to back up your musings, it's a whole lot easier for them to sue you for libel, and, I surmise, win their suit. At least in theory, if I said that eating chicken raised by corporation X made me sick due to the hormones in it, I could get sued. So much for that dratted constitution and all those soldiers that died protecting our rights; darned freedom of speech and expression and all. Big brother has spoken and he says eat it and don't complain. If you dare raise your voice, at least in any of 13 states with laws like this on the books, you shall be silenced, one way or another. At the end of the day, it's all about the money, it's all about control, and it's all about being scared to death that someone will come along and take the money and control away.

Most farmers that sell directly to the public have no fear of their consumer's criticism, mostly because we have good reputations and good products and we protect both very diligently. If someone doesn't like my food, or the farming practices under which it was grown, or the service I provide while selling it, I think they ought to be able to say so. Knowing that they CAN say so, I am going to be extra careful not to give them any reason to do so, and I believe this is as it should be. From what I read, I surmise that some sectors of corporate ag don't see it this way AT ALL.

A couple of my blog readers commented that most consumers don't want to know how their food is produced. I fully agree with that thought. More than that, I believe a large fraction of consumers don't *care* how their food is produced, so long as it's there. That's their right and that's fine with me. Some folks won't be told that you get what you pay for and it's as true of food products as it is anything else. Let 'em go buy "cheap", crappy, industrially raised, irradiated, hormone laced junk food and never ask any questions about how it might have got in that plastic container on the shelf in their local supermarket.

Me ? I'm going to the garden to pick me a tomato. ;)

The CAFO Reader

I'm reading a book right now called The CAFO Reader. It's a compendium of essays about CAFO agriculture and the alternatives that exist to it. For those not in the know, CAFO stands for concentrated animal feeding unit, and, at least in the US, this usually means some sort of large scale industrial agribusiness.

For the most part, reading the essays in the book is literally like listening to myself talk or reading what I write here on this blog. It's scary how often I and the essayist in question use the same phraseology to describe certain key situations. About the only part of the book I have read so far that I disagree with is that some of the authors get very hung up on size. As I have mentioned before, I don't believe that large is always a bad thing; the biggest dairy in the state of Tennessee is also among the best managed; indeed it's run by a personal friend of mine. More often than not, it is the mindset of the farmer, rather than the size of his farm that creates the problem. When the farmer is of an agrarian mindset, size doesn't necessarily preclude a high degree of expertise in farming. Things tend to be well run and everything stays in relative balance. When the farmer is of an industrial mindset, woe be to the animals, the workers, and the neighbourhood, because all of them are going to pay a price over time. It's like every part of their brains not concerned with growing some commodity bigger, faster and cheaper has atrophied itself into nothing.

I'm just getting started on reading the solutions part of the book right now. It comes as no surprise to me that some of the essayists in this part of the book are featured heavily on my bookcase. Like me, many of the authors seem to believe there will exist two or more parellel systems of production for a long while yet, barring some unseen pivotal change. Industrial ag will continue to produce "cheap" food for the masses, while well run regional and local producers will continue to direct market a series of differentiated products targeted toward higher end consumers.

One of the most glaring differences between industrial farms and what I and other direct marketers do is the level of transparency we provide our customers. Perhaps more than anything else we do, this is what consumers are happy to pay for, and for some reason, this seems to be the hardest thing for industrial ag organizations to offer up. Several essayists touch on this, but I think there is perhaps room for more exploration of this topic.

However the book winds up, at the end of the day there are only two decisions I can really control. The first is what goes on right here at home. After having experienced and participated in both commodity ag and enhanced value, direct market ag, I have made my bed firmly in the "value added" camp. The second involves where my purchased food dollars go. Alone, neither one makes a hill of beans worth of difference to the system. But when we start making real choices together on a larger scale, I believe we CAN have food production systems that feature healthy farms and prosperous rural communities instead of what we have now.

Getting There !

When they aren't grazing quietly, you'll find the horses literally arrayed in a semi-circle around the building watching the crazy humans run like mad while moving all over the exterior of the building like ants! Looks like the horses are going to have to find something else to do after tomorrow ! All we lack on the exterior is doors and shutters; both easily remedied. Now to tackle the INTERIOR ! :)

An Uneventful Move

Just a quick update for all who asked. The move was the biggest non-event I've ever seen for a large group of horses. It took us a half hour to load everybody on the semi this morning and they spent another half hour enroute. They got off and ran around the new place for about five minutes, then they put their heads down and started to graze. When I left eight hours later, they were STILL grazing ! I'll be surprised if I hear differently before I go down there in the morning.

The Day Before the First Big Move

Tomorrow, we move our first group of horses to the new farm. To say that we have been busy this week is an understatement. Melissa has been coordinating things at the College Grove farm while I have been in charge of things at the Lynnville farm. At the end of the workday today everything was workably complete at the new place which is going to have to be good enough for now. Although it is reasonably proximate to our current location, our new farm is a few miles farther from the bright city lights than where we are currently. Everybody working with me at the new farm also farms themselves; we're fortunate that they understand what we're trying to do without us having to explain it forty seven times. Special thanks go to Locke Brothers Fencing Co. for putting a hurry up on the fence around the barn and the barn itself and to Foster Garrett and his crew for pulling ALL their trucks away from whatever they were doing to haul crusher run for me today. If there are better or more honest folks than these to work with in northern Giles County, I don't know who they would be. As we have been everywhere we've lived, we are again blessed with good neighbours.

To any of our Lynnville neighbours reading this....I hope the Richland FFA Benefit Truck and Tractor Pull didn't get rained out tonight, and I hope the crowds were big and that everyone enjoyed it ! Given that it was being held in the park downtown, the whole town participated whether they attended or not ! LOL ! Although I find tractor pulls a little noisy for my poor old head, I believe in and support 4-H and FFA where I can. I'm sorry I couldn't be in attendance this year.

View looking toward the barn from the driveway. We're still lacking the porch across the front of the barn, the barn doors, shutters, and, of course, the cupola. :)

View toward the run in shed from the front of the barn. Each pasture has a 16 foot drive through gate and a 4 foot walk-gate with water troughs and a hydrant located between the gate openings. This should make it easy to monitor everything while feeding. We may eventually add a place right at each walk-gate to store blankets and sheets.


We had a FULL crew of guys working today with vehicles, trucks and trailers parked everywhere !

View of the barn area from the rear. That's our neighbour Terry Locke leaning on the railing of the scissor lift. :)

Rural Reality

Just to prove that one never knows how animals will react to certain stimuli, this evening we had a covey of hot air balloons land on a farm (with the farmer's permission, as I took the time to find out) a few miles away. Melissa and I were in the back finishing up chores in the Big Boy's Field and we watched the whole show. The balloons weren't close and as far as our horses go, they never even noticed; one or two lifted their heads momentarily while the rest just kept grazing, completely unperturbed. But the whole non-incident got me to thinking about just how out of touch with rural reality some people have become.

Mostly, our immediate neighbours do a pretty good job of not treading on our property rights and in that respect we are pretty lucky. What many in our community don't get any more is that the pretty cows and horses out in our fields actually do more than enhance the landscape...they are how I earn my living. This is a working landscape filled with working farms. It is NOT a public park. Our fenced fields full of livestock are most certainly NOT somewhere we want you walking, riding your bicycle, drinking, landing balloons, hunting without our permission, etc. When something, someone or some nearby activity has the potential to seriously disturb my animals, I take it as a direct threat to my ability to continue to provide a living for my family and I promise that when I confront someone involved in doing any of these things, I react very strongly to it.

There is truth to the Robert Frost poem, "Good Fences Make Good Neighbours". Many of the folks in this neck of the woods that farm for a living (me included) keep excellent, sturdy boundary fences, if for no other reason than we can't afford to have our livestock running amok over the neighbourhood and/or up and down the road. I take boundary fencing so seriously that checking fence is the first job I impress upon ALL of our help, and all of our boundary fence at both farms is checked, and repaired if necessary, each and every day. Just as I don't want the neighbours using my farm as their unauthorized personal park, I don't want my horses and livestock dallying in their geraniums if I can help it.

Hope everyone is having a good week. I am sure enjoying spending my days at the new farm. With as much work as we have to do down there to continue building and finishing it out, I ought not to complain very much about being bored in the next little while ! :)