I just picked up this sweet ford. It’s a 1989 diesel 7.3, four-wheel drive beast. Soon it will run on grease too. Next purchase is a trailer so we can pull all these dang animals somewhere north.
Category Nick’s Story
Feeding the Masses
Some people ask me if small farms can produce enough food to feed the world. Asking this question lets me know they’ve already been inoculated with the idea that they can’t. The current industrial food system is good at messaging, and they’ve been successful in proliferating this misconception. In addition, I’m not alone in my feelings. Most of my information comes from this report which was submitted to the UN General Assembly Human Rights Council by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter.
According to the FAO the world currently produces enough food to feed everyone. In fact, we produce 17% more food than we need right now. However, starvation and malnutrition is happening in developed and developing countries. Thus the problem lies not in production, but in distribution and access to food. It is an economic problem whereby the poorest people in the world don’t have the resources to obtain adequate nutrition. In addition, if food production were the underlying factor, if you think that we produce all this excess now because of the big corps, “The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) estimates that, even accounting for the energy value of the meat produced, the loss of calories that result from feeding cereals to animals instead of using cereals directly as human food represents the annual calorie need for more than 3.5 billion people.” (UN Report) In other words, we could feed half the world simply by not feeding grain to animals (corn to cows, pigs and chickens). Many small farms do feed grain, but the more sustainable ones don’t and don’t have to (buy 100% grass-fed beef for the love of God!).
Finally, “only by supporting small producers can we help break the vicious cycle that leads from rural poverty to the expansion of urban slums, in which poverty breeds more poverty.” (UN Report) The poorest people in the world, the ones that are starving, are FARMERS. Supporting localized, sustainable food systems around the world means funneling money towards the people that need it in order to buy food. You might think it strange that farmers don’t have access to food, but many of these farmers don’t actually own the food they grow. They work for corporations, which own the crop that is barely edible anyway for people (feed grade corn is not the sweet corn of late summer). If we buy more food from small farmers we empower them to grow a more diverse crop, increase their profit and our money comes back through the local economy in the form of jobs (construction, labor, mechanics, trucking).
Feeding the masses means getting money into the pockets of the world’s poorest people. It requires the redistribution of wealth from the few to the many. It requires the re-education of two generations of non-farmers and the establishment of a supportive farm economy. It requires the support of friends and family, community, to keep the few struggling farms we have. Go to your farmers markets, buy food from farmers you know and help feed the world’s hungry, improve the local economy and feed yourself real, healthy food. Not only that, but you will feel awesome too.
Trust Me, Bella.
I’ve been trying to train this here calf, Bella, for the last month. She was born last september and is starting to understand me. I use treats (grain) to train her, much like you would for a dog. If I can convince her to follow me onto a livestock trailer by the end of July, then we’ll take her along to wherever we go next. If not, I guess she’ll have to stay here and go back to the herd. I think she’s beginning to trust me, click the link to see for yourself. Bella, come, stay.
Our Animals
Here are all our animals and their stories. These are animals Kate and I own (or they own us). We got them all from the farm, neighbors and family.
I adopted Rudy in 2006 from my sister just before I moved out to San Francisco. He’s no good with the kiddies, likes to growl at them, so when my sister had her first baby I opted to take the silly old mutt. He’s been my best friend every since; driving cross-country twice, hiking and camping the west coast and now being a good farm pup. He still hates kids, but he’s gotten totally trustworthy with animals of all kinds.
Rocco and Billy, pictured above with Rudy, came from Elizabeth (owner of cane creek). She adopted four kittens in early winter and two days after they arrived, a farmhand found Billy in our 4×4 by himself. Rocco was the only boy with Elizabeth’s kittens so we adopted both boys and raised them on raw meat and goat’s milk. They kill mice, sleep with us every night and play outside all day.
Rose was just born last week. She is our first female, 100% Ossabaw house-pig, so we are excited to keep her around and eventually make her a breeder. Pigs are hard to keep, but we’re going to try to keep her (and maybe some others) around while we move through life. Rose’s mama lost all her siblings but two on the first day they were born. It was too cold for piglets outside. Rose’s brother lived with us for just a few days before he died too. We think he never got any colostrum.
Sweet Bella I’ve already written about. She’s over 3/4 Red Devon and I hope to breed her in a year or more, milk her and raise her calves for beef or oxen. That’s a halter she’s being trained to on her face.
The Honeybees were purchased, hive and all, last fall and have since been seen eating molasses out of pig feed, drinking sugar water and buzzing about on the warm days. I hope they provide us with honey when the spring blooms come around.
Hurt-Leg-Chicken came to us from the farm. As her name implies we found her unable to walk and popped her into our shed with a heat lamp to keep her warm. Everyone suggested we kill her, but she didn’t seem to be in pain and we didn’t mind keeping her around. She finally healed, started walking and is now one of our best layers. She also tends to hang around the house, trying to come in from time to time.
The Chicken Flock came to us from the farm. We bought some, rescued others and raised a handful. The roosters become meat at about 6 months and the hens lay eggs and a couple broody ones hatch chicks to replenish our stock. With 20 chickens we get more eggs than we can eat so we sell more than 3 dozen per week.
I could never raise all these munchkins without one very loving, obliging, caring and competent girlfriend.
Biodiversity and Food Efficiency
I’ve been toying with some ideas about food production here at the farm. While there is much discussion at a national level about energy efficiency in industrial food production, there is little debate about the differences between food production methods and wasted food. In addition, there is typically little value placed on biodiversity in these discussions, which undoubtedly results in proposals to farm corn from fence-row to fence-row. I’d like to propose two inter-dependent concepts to help guide consumers, farmers and chefs toward a more sustainable food system; biodiversity and food efficiency. Thanks to my brother for helping me to flesh this out.
Biodiversity is difficult to quantify and thus can only be treated in a qualitative and conceptual way. However humans and animals can survive on a limited source of nutrition (currently corn and soy in the developed world), I (and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, quoted below) believe reliance such as this invariably leads to instability, disease and ultimate self-destruction. “The erosion of biodiversity for food and agriculture severely compromises global food security. We need to strengthen our efforts to protect and wisely manage biodiversity for food security. Its sustainable use is central to achieve a secure and sustainable food supply system.” One pest, one string of bad weather, a new bacteria or fungus could wipe out an entire nation’s food source in a system like this. In addition, a limited source of nutrition provides just that to it’s consumers, contributing to the staggering rise of diabetes and obesity. And, concentrated manure, fertilizer and pesticide use has destroyed habitat beyond saving in many of the world’s waterways and arable lands (see dead zones). This system is eroding soil “…10 to 40 times faster than it is being replenished, destroying cropland the size of Indiana every year.” (Cornell University Study) It has driven farmers to bankruptcy and even suicide through corporate control of seed and genetics. Yes, we can survive for a time on industrial corn and soy, but not for all time and certainly not happily. That brings us to Concept 1: biodiversity is immeasurably important for food security, health and environmental stability.
Now, if you believe in Concept 1, consider having a truly biodiverse landscape. We have grasslands, forests, mountains, rivers, lakes, cold and hot climates and in each of these places a variety of food sources can be found. Instead of fabricating one unstable super-crop to grow in a handful of environments, we can allow natural selection to develop ever more resilient and diverse food sources for each environment. This has essentially been the natural plan for all history, until we started fixing nitrogen and mechanizing farming. Now we can discuss real food efficiency.
Food efficiency does not only consider the human or fossil fuel energy input to food production, but it must consider all energy while retaining biodiversity. It takes much less energy to graze a cow on pasture than to convert that pasture to corn, mill the corn, truck it to a CAFO and then have to deal with all the manure afterwards. Instead the cow grazes, returning much of the vegetable matter back to the pasture, building up the topsoil while making healthier meat. The American Bison, over millennia, made all that topsoil we’re currently eroding. So the cow eats grass, produces milk and meat for the people but also produces a bunch of stuff we don’t normally eat like bones and organs and tough cuts of beef. Those can go into animal feed for our dogs and cats or get ingeniously turned into human food through adventurous cooks. The pasture stays pasture, the cow eats grass and all the product gets used while creating a healthier environment for all. The same can be said for chickens eating bugs and grass, pigs eating rotten food, nuts and roots, goats eating brush, sheep eating leafy weeds and grass on rocky pasture, etc. Concept 2: Feeding animals a natural and appropriate feed creates a significantly healthier product and environment, promotes biodiversity while reducing food waste and increases food efficiency. Waste not, want not.
Of course, there is one glaring problem; food production like this won’t make enough food for an infinitely increasing population. A topic for a future post.
Fried Chicken
I brought three of our roosters to slaughter on Monday. We
had five which is too many for our small flock of fifteen chickens
so we had to eat a few. They took four months to get to about 3.5
pounds (industry meat birds get that big in 8 weeks). I butchered
one today and fried it up. Can’t wait until the next
batch…
Mmmmm
Our new baby – #038
Kate and I have grown our little menagerie over the last 6 months to include chickens, bees, pigs, goats and cats. As farming goes, on top of the livestock totem rests the cow; which we have just finally added to our little family. Her name is Bella. She caught pneumonia during that wicked cold snap two weeks ago and was rescued by one one of the farm hands. She is about 3 months old, is over three-quarters Red Devon and very sweet. I bottle feed her twice a day and hope to raise her as a mama and milk cow.
Loves the milk replacer
Red devons originally come from Devonshire England but were all sent to New Zealand as those kiwis love them some grass-fed animals. From NZ Charles Sydnor (part owner of our farm) purchased 12 pure-bred embryos a number of years ago and essentially started the breed off in the US. Red Devons have never been fed grain throughout their genetic history. This means that their rumens are bullet-proof, their beef marbles well on grass, they don’t get as monstrous as some other beef breeds and they are known for a very friendly disposition. Bella should get to about 1000 pounds and be able to breed once a year.
Old dogs can learn new tricks
My 9-year old pitbull used to chase cats. He doesn’t look
that happy, but he’s trying so hard to be ok with this.
He's a good pillow
Squirt and Oscar
First, I must apologize for taking so long to write this, but Squirt is alive. Turned out he was too small to go to slaughter. I took him back to the Spring pen to live with all the other youngsters this week. Again, apologies for the drama and the late catchup post. Thank you for the sympathy and love.
Second, I have bad news. Everything was back to being ok, and then we had a wicked cold snap and Oscar died. It happened rather suddenly, although we had noticed some funny behavior in the days leading up to his death. He didn’t come eat to eat in the morning, he didn’t get up much for two days. This could have been normal, many pigs just chill out for a little while when the weather’s terrible or for their own reasons. Kate noticed he was really thirsty. We both spent some time rubbing his belly as he lay on his side (his classic snuggle move) in the days before his death and he didn’t let on that anything was wrong. Then, last monday morning, Kate found him cold and stiff, looking alive but clearly not.
Unlike Squirt (or what I thought was going to happen to Squirt), Oscar’s death came without warning. Honestly, it was less painful for me. Most likely because I didn’t know he was going to die and didn’t wrestle with the opportunity to prevent it. Now we mourn him like a lost loved one. Van Gogh, his best pig buddy, seems depressed as well, but is starting to come back around and has been doing a new trick. Now he lays on his side and lets us rub his belly. These pigs are incredible creatures.
Van Gogh getting the Belly Scratch
Squirt
Squirt is the first pig I ever met. He was a ‘house-pig’ like Oscar and Van Gogh, only about two months before their time. When we first arrived at Elizabeth’s house here at Cane Creek we were greeted by a few-week-old Squirt who simply looked to us for more food. He was a demanding little pig, very curious and loved spending time with the dogs and nibbling our ankles to remind us he was hungry. Unfortunately, Squirt is a boy and the farm has enough studs around, so he has been growing with the rest of the market pigs in a big pen for some time. Since I pick the pigs most weeks that go to market (get slaughtered) I’ve lately been avoiding Squirt; he’s getting pretty big. He knows me (I also became immediately responsible for feeding him after we arrived) so he always comes to hang out when I work in his pen catching his friends, feeding and fixing huts. Being so friendly and thus catchable I knew that one day he’d end up on the trailer heading for market when I wasn’t working. That day is today. He is right now snuggling with the other 5 market pigs in our barn, waiting for this week’s trip to our processor (slaughterhouse) tomorrow. Squirt is also the first pig I could recognize by voice (like a dog’s bark, each pig sounds different). When I approached the barn tonight to check on the market pigs, I heard the ‘whan, whan’ I know so well. I reached into his stall and scratched his head, running my hands over his eyes and around his face. The other pigs hadn’t noticed me and Squirt just enjoyed the friendliness. Tomorrow he will be shot in the head and butchered. Pigs like him are the highlights and the lowlights of this job; the first job ever to make me cry.
He will be missed
