is a little boy’s playground
Rafe spends hours scooping up and hauling around spilled chicken feed.
My dad was nice enough to bring his tractor and soil saver over on Sunday to widen the garden for next year. This past summer I discovered the joys of growing drying beans. I grew soldier beans, which are white with a burgundy spot in the middle. Drying beans come in so many fun colors I wanted room to plant a number of varieties. I also want to start growing herbs.
So we had Dad bring the edge of the garden to a lawn mowers-width from the edge of the new fence we’re building. The fence will create a big area in the backyard for the dogs to run free. This is mainly for Ike’s benefit. Abbie stays put, but Pyrenees believe that whatever land they can see is theirs to guard. Unfortunately one of our neighbors does not appreciate this gesture, so we have to keep him tied up or in the house. I can’t wait until we don’t have to tie him anymore!
For some reason, fields of cornstalk bales as far as the eye can see are just eerie to me. Maybe it’s because they’re made in the fall, when everything is stark and gray and damp. They are the last product of the fields before winter drops her snowy blanket over the land.
Hay bales made in the summer are happy, green, warm, bright things.
This field belongs to another farmer, one who doesn’t have livestock. So he agreed to let us and one of our neighbors make bales from his stalks. We got 75 bales between the two of us.
Cornstalk bales are much cheaper than hay – $15 versus $40. We use them for bedding and also feed them to the cows and bull, along with grass hay. They get the nutrition they need from the hay, and extra energy (to keep warm) from the cornstalks. The calves that we feed out to sell get the good alfalfa hay and corn.
And here’s a picture of the corn coming out just over a week ago. Nothing eerie about this.
As promised on Friday, I’m posting pictures from our trip to a local farm to buy pumpkins.
First a ride out to the field, in a wagon pulled by a couple of Howard & Mable’s draft horses.
Then back to the yard to ride the cornstalk horse.
A couple of weekends ago we took the kids to Howard and Mable’s, a local farm with a giant pumpkin patch. They drive you out to the field in a wagon pulled by a couple of their beautiful Belgian draft horses. They sell pumpkins, squash, gourds, broom corn and Indian corn. Later this weekend I’ll post some pictures from that outing.
So Matt got to talking with Howard, and I’m not sure whose idea it was, but the result was that after Halloween we ended up with 2 wagon loads full of pumpkins for free.
We throw several to the livestock each day, more as a treat than a meal. The pigs and chickens go crazy over them. The cows wouldn’t eat them at first, but now they’ll munch on them if we give them the very soft pumpkins. They eat the seeds and pulp, then Matt takes the pitchfork and pitches out the rinds when they’re done. They should compost nicely.
Pumpkin seeds are supposed to be a natural wormer, although I think they’re more effective if ground or chopped rather than eaten whole. Of course my dad and my brother think this is bunk and are having a good laugh at my expense. Story of my life.
A firefighter, a nerd, and a pirate this year. Scary, aren’t they?
My mom’s a Halloween baby. This was a few years back when she dressed up with Madeline & Olivia for trick-or-treating.
(Man, how tiny and cute were they just 5 or 6 years ago?! And how happy am I that our house doesn’t look like this anymore?!)
Happy birthday, Mom!
A couple of news items from The Organic Consumers Association. These just make me so so angry.
INDUSTRY SNEAK ATTACK ON ORGANIC STANDARDS RAMMED THROUGH CONGRESS
Despite receiving over 350,000 letters and phone calls from OCA members and the organic community, Republican leaders in Congress October 27 attached a rider to the 2006 Agricultural Appropriations Bill to weaken the nation’s organic food standards in response to pressure from large-scale food manufacturers. “Congress voted last night to weaken the national organic standards that consumers count on to preserve the integrity of the organic label,” said Ronnie Cummins, National Director of the Organic Consumers Association. “The process was profoundly undemocratic and the end result is a serious setback for the multi billion dollar alternative food and farming system that the organic community has so painstakingly built up over the past 35 years. As passed, the amendment sponsored by the Organic Trade Association allows: Numerous synthetic food additives and processing aids, including over 500 food contact substances, to be used in organic foods without public review. Young dairy cows to continue to be treated with antibiotics and fed genetically engineered feed prior to being converted to organic production. Loopholes under which non-organic ingredients could be substituted for organic ingredients without any notification of the public based on “emergency decrees.” OCA will work to reverse this rider with an “Organic Restoration Act” in Congress in 2006. http://www.organicconsumers.org/sos.cfm
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DISASSEMBLING THE FAMILY FARM: CONGRESS CUTS MORE PROGRAMS
A big thanks to all of you who responded to the Organic Consumers Association’s Alert two weeks ago regarding impending agriculture appropriations cuts in Congress. The original proposed Budget Reconciliation bill would have cut $3 billion in conservation programs and food stamps to low- income Americans. Your letters helped stop Congress from cutting food stamps. Unfortunately, corporate agribusiness lobbyists got most of what they wanted, slashing funds for sustainable agriculture and farm conservation programs, while maintaining $20 billion in annual taxpayer subsidies to the nation’s largest chemical-intensive and genetically engineered farms. According to Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), the Conservation Security Program, which helps family farmers protect the land and reduce pollution, received the bulk of the cuts, while the 2006 Federal Budget “authorizes additional tax breaks of $70 billion – the lion’s share of which will go to the very wealthiest Americans.” http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/agbill102105.cfm
And in our case it’s not who we know in high places, but who we know in the not-so-high places. A friend of Matt’s from high school left his career as a highly-paid software engineer and moved back here. Now he spends his days scrapping metal from farmers’ groves and barns. Fun and income all rolled into one 🙂
Sometimes he finds treasures like these Pride-of-the-Farm pig feeders. These babies are hard to find – new or used – in today’s age of confinement hog raising. We’ve been looking for a year. We got three of them for the sum of one hundred dollars. Plus the farmer threw in some flat metal hog feeding troughs and a rotating hog feeder. Having these 3 big feeders means we’ll be able to have the elevator deliver our feed in bulk, rather than having it bagged. So we’ll be saving the cost of the bags.
As Garth sings, “I’ve got friends in low places…”. They’re the best kind!
