OT: Sustainable Farming

[Guest guest]

Paula

 

I was a member of Michigan Farmer's Union for years and bought health

insurance for myself and my staff. So, we did have health and life insurance.

 

Yes, I was at the mercy of Ma Nature.... but that's a good choice. I just

played her game!

 

If you choose to NOT participate in government support programs and the

payments that they provide to farmers, you are not at the whims of those who set

prices. You make your own market. You can do this is you choose.

 

Been there, done that.

mjh

 

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 14:37:11 -0500

" paula coon " <paulacoon

Re: OT: Sustainable Farming

 

as much as I hate to, I have to agree with you. You don't get health

insurance on the family farm and you're at the mercy of Mother Nature and those

who

set the grain/milk prices. Unless you have a few hundred acres, you usually

have to have another job off the farm. Unless you're near an Amish community,

you find many people willing to render lard. The only fat I render now is the

fat DH saves me from the deer he processes during season. But it has to be a

large amount or I won't give the time and trouble it takes to do the

rendering.

Paula .......... in Michigan

I used to have super powers but my therapist took them away

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

as much as I hate to, I have to agree with you. You don't get health insurance

on the family farm and you're at the mercy of Mother Nature and those who set

the grain/milk prices. Unless you have a few hundred acres, you usually have to

have another job off the farm. Unless you're near an Amish community, you find

many people willing to render lard. The only fat I render now is the fat DH

saves me from the deer he processes during season. But it has to be a large

amount or I won't give the time and trouble it takes to do the rendering.

Paula .......... in Michigan

I used to have super powers but my therapist took them away

 

Hey y'all,

 

Might be that the idea of the continuance of successful family farms is

not all that realistic in the world today. Having been brought up on a

farm and having escaped that life after graduation from high school, I

can look back at how it was to owe a good part of your crop to the bank

and to pay that off each year afore Christmas .. and hope you had a bit

of money left to get some store bought things. ;-)

 

I left and joined the Army .. spent 30 years in that life .. got a real

good education in many fine civilian universities and Uncle Sugar took

care of most of the bills .. while my buddies back home stayed on the

farm. Many of them got degrees in Agriculture .. some even learned a

good bit about economics .. but almost all of them failed. Competition

is great in the Ag industry and cost of production is a main issue when

you figure out the annual take. A combine or good tractor can cost the

same as three luxury cars .. a Mercedes, Lincoln Town Car and even a

slick ferin model .. and unless one has more than 100 acres or so they

can't justify the cost of this machinery.

 

Crop rotation is a good thing .. ideally .. but you can't sow soy beans

if the forecast for soy bean prices is lower than a snake's belly .. so

you might sow corn or milo .. both of which suck up a lotta nitrogen so

you gotta add nitrogen fertilizer .. or go into the red. Few family

farms are as concerned about organic as they are survival.

 

As for rendering lard .. we still have smoke houses back home in KY and

most farm folks smoke bacon, hams, shoulders and such .. but I know of

no farmer who renders lard anymore. Might be some but all the folks I

see when I go back home each year are not into that now.

 

I did about every kind of work that can be done on a Southern farm and I

can tell them that ain't been there that its not a great life .. we can

romanticize it .. but we can romanticize coal mining too if we want to.

 

One of the many thoughts that sustained me while I was serving multiple

tours of duty in the 'Nam .. and in Somalia .. and in some places I

won't even mention here .. was that I was not in a tobacco patch. ;-)

 

Y'all have a gud'un .. and keep smiling. :-)

 

Butch http://www.AV-AT.com

 

 

 

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[Guest guest]

Hi Jan,

 

> Butch,

> I miss the country life, not the 24/7 of it, no holidays off.

 

Yep .. same here on missing the good parts .. but I don't miss milking a

cow in the early morning, seven days a week .. then feeding the hawgs ..

then walking a long way in the dark in winter when the school bus

couldn't make it up our road and we had to catch it on the main road.

 

Don't miss the dang tobacco patch or raising tobacco .. a 10 month job

if you count burning the plant beds and sewing seed, then planting and

replanting and hoeing and worming and suckering and cutting and hanging

and firing and stripping and taking it to the loose floor .. then we

started it all over again and we had little to show for our efforts.

 

I don't miss having a hoe become one of my extremities or bailing and

loading hay .. don't miss picking cucumbers every day for a contract to

a pickle factory .. don't miss cutting fire wood so my grandma could

boil water in a big kettle and then pour it in her wringer type washer

cause the water lines didn't reach to the wash house. ;-)

 

I also don't miss seeing folks work their butts off and never get ahead.

 

I do miss fishing and hunting and exploring woods and caves and finding

arrow heads and such .. I miss swinging over ravines on wild grape vines

and swimming in the creek naked and hoping girls wouldn't (or maybe

would) sneak down and watch us. ;-)

 

> I do not miss the " organic " fertilizer or the manual (me) removal of it!

 

Like I've often written .. there is therapeutic gain to be had from

manure hydrosol .. or just a pile of manure .. if one is a city folk now

but was raised in the kuntry. ;-)

 

I don't regret having been raised in the country .. or having spent half

my life in uniform. Both did a lot for me. But like living in Turkey

and dealing in essential oils .. I do both because I like it .. if I had

to do either I would not like it. If I had to live the farm life now I

would not like that either .. but being a gennelman farmer with 10-15

acres appeals to me .. no milk cows (7 day job) and no dang chickens ..

a garden and a pig or two .. maybe a few guineas .. and definitely a

horse. All that would appeal to me a lot and its likely to be where I

wind up afore I go under snakes .. but I'll be a gennelman farmer and

not have to depend on it for a living.

 

> Hugs,

> Jan S

> www.sweetprairiesoap.com

 

Y'all keep smiling. :-) Butch http://www.AV-AT.com

 

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