Livestock on the ‘Stead

AP/Eric Risberg

In view of recent weeks’ events concerning an off-season outbreak of a new flu strain in Mexico that quickly spread around the world – and caused WHO to get all the way to 5 on its pandemic alert system before things eased somewhat – it’s a good idea for those of us in the 21st century’s “back to the land” movement to examine some issues with livestock production in general and how we get around those issues on our own homesteads. Many homesteaders avoid livestock, but many others keep chickens, a cow or more, goats, pigs, rabbits, and some pasture a few calves every year destined for the organic beef market. What does all this mean for us?

Thus far the new flu strain, which according to the CDC is a “unique” mixture of human, avian and swine flu strains, looks to have originated in the CAFO [Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation] system of swine production for human food. These operations, where thousands of animals are confined in close quarters and intensively fed for maximum weight gain in minimum time, can according to researchers and epidemiologists serve as fertile genetic recombination factories for the various strains of influenza due to lack of good waste management practices and regulation, proximity of swine CAFOs to avian CAFOs, water contamination, worker contact with infected animals. Add to that the difficulty of dealing with viral rates of mutation as well as getting effective vaccines into production from one year to the next, and you end up with a situation of concern not only to public health authorities, but also to small producers who happen to live anywhere close to such intensive CAFO operations.

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Value-Added Agriculture

…teaching farmers to be business CEOs

In these times of Wall Street collapses, banking bankruptcies, massive unemployment, homelessness and increasing deprivation, we in the rural sector are already living in Great Depression-II even as the city folk and DC denizens keep talking about mere recession. We have a new President who has promised “hope” to Americans, and who appointed a Monsanto apologist to be Secretary of Agriculture, thereby slapping every struggling small farmer and ardent homesteader in the face.

Hope is all very nice in a made-for-TV movie or light novel, but we all know you can’t eat it, live in it, pay your doctor with it or drive it to a day-job. We’re going to need more than hope and slaps in the face to get through all this piper-paying. And despite Obama’s lousy choice for SecAg, there are some people in DC who do seem to understand that while cities are where the bread and circuses are distracting the population from their deprivations, if we allow the rural backbone to disintegrate people won’t just be deprived. They’ll be starving to death.

Many of us modern homesteaders came to our lifelong labors of love from those cities and megaburbs, once living large with boom economy jobs and the whole rat race. Then gave it all up very much on purpose so we could build new lives for ourselves and our families that really mean something. Those of us with college degrees (some quite advanced), may have even taken a few courses in basic business management and/or economics and/or marketing to help us get those city jobs we left behind when we moved to the hinterlands where the farmers live.

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Is It a “Fish Farm” if I Stock the Creek?

Now that the weather’s turned officially cold and the wood stove is going all day and night, there’s time to reflect upon the year and make new plans for the future. I’m still working on how to get “free range” chickens that won’t get eaten by the many foxes and coyotes that haunt our cove, sans the serious fencing we can’t afford. Also working on finding some metal fence poles for the garden fence through our local Freecycle network, nobody’s willing to come off any so far.

I find my mind once again drifting toward renting a backhoe for a week and dredging down in the creek so I’ll have a set of three tiers of pond that I can stock with rainbow trout. So I’ve been looking into the whole aquaculture thing, the issues with pollution and antibiotics and quality of feed, cost of fingerlings from the state, etc. What kind of engineering do I have to do to my creek? What kind of pollution controls? Who gets to police my little trap-falls?

After two days’ worth of homework, I’ve decided that my plan doesn’t fall under the regulatory purview of the state beyond their “stocking rivers and creeks” section. Yes, since it’s private land I’ll have to pay for the fingerlings, but because these pools won’t be anything but slightly-dammed hold-backs the size of my back deck, there should be no issues about waste pollution or anything like that. I will probably need a permit from the state in order to get the fingerlings, but once they’ve determined the operation is so minor as to not really qualify as “commercial,” it shouldn’t cost that much. Sell a few dozen fish a year.

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Letter to the New Farmer in Chief

There is a resurgence of hope across America in the wake of Tuesday’s election of Democrat Barack Obama as President, promising a new direction of change for the future of our nation. Those of us who have been paying attention to the global financial meltdown, increasingly severe food shortages in the wake of global warming, and the outrageous poisoning of our citizens and livestock/pets by corrupt Chinese producers (a glaring example of globalization’s failures), are hoping that a new dawn in America will bring with it the serious changes to our agricultural policies that have grown increasingly necessary through decades of decline.

Now, politicians don’t generally talk much about agricultural policies while they’re stumping for votes in big cities. And they’re often so ignorant of agricultural issues that even rural dwellers – actual farmers – get nothing but pablum and platitudes in response to their questions. Luckily, journalist Michael Pollan wrote a great ‘open letter’ in the New York Times in October entitled, Farmer in Chief. This is a must-read for all of us committed to self-sufficiency, locally grown foods, the viability of family farms and homesteads, and the future health of an environment we all depend upon for life.

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Are You Prepared to Survive GW?

Many modern homesteaders became modern homesteaders in a “back to the land” movement geared toward greater self-sufficiency in all things the average citified automaton expects government, corporations and society to supply. As government, corporations and society have begun to fall short of those provisions – either during exceptional circumstances or generally failing to provide goods and services cheaply, safely or consistently enough to be counted upon – we left to carve for ourselves a life where we can be primarily responsible for ourselves.

Now, it’s a long-term project. Unless you’re very rich to begin with, getting your homestead up to real self-sufficiency (and fully in your own name) can take decades. Maybe a lifetime or two. We can grow some of our own food, but probably not all. So we develop relationships with farmers and other homesteaders in our regions and learn to trade and barter for consumables. We can slowly but surely develop our own power sources (or learn to do without), but will likely remain tied to the grid or some other out-supply until the technology is developed and affordable enough for us to go off-grid. Etc., etc., etc.

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EVs: Hope for Rural Transportation?

Yeah, I know. EVERYBODY is starting to dream about a whole new generation of cars and trucks for getting around in the 21st century without fossil fuels. But those of us who live in the wider countryside inventing wider, self-sufficient lives as homesteaders usually have to plan a bit farther out than city dwellers. Who, when push comes to shove (or just $5+ a gallon gasoline), can always ride the bus or take their bike or even hitch-hike on crowded roads full of mostly empty vehicles at a near standstill any time of day.

I’m a big fan of Toyota’s Prius and Honda’s Insight, but the hybrid technology isn’t really where it needs to be for my desire to somehow translate someday homestead energy self-sufficiency to transportation as well. For that, I’ll need all-electric. And something a lot more stable, dependable, useful and warmer in the winter than a glorified golf cart.

Something big enough to carry at least a couple of people, safe enough to protect us from bad drivers, fast enough to use the interstate, with enough range to get to and from the nearest regional farmer’s market – that’s about 60 miles round trip – without having to buy someone else’s electricity. Grocery store and other such amenities are in closer, smaller towns, 5-7 miles away (less than 15 round trip). I’ll need either a pickup-style bed – with sides and tailgate – or large luggage space in order to carry tools, machinery, trash (we have to haul our own), groceries (only shop once a week) and general ’stuff’. Like logs for firewood and lumber for building and… well, you know what I mean. And something that charges in a short enough period of time (whenever gas stations start offering paid by-the-hour 110 and 220 volt chargers) to get 500 miles in one day on occasion.

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Living Wisely During Hard Times

Most homesteaders know as well as anyone that the current state of the US economy isn’t very good. Are probably aware enough to see that it’s not getting better any time soon, either. Hopefully the homesteader has been wise enough to purchase his/her chunk of land far enough away from the ‘boom’ cities and regions that they got a good deal on it, as it probably represents the only real assets that family has.

Of course, there are the other assets related. The house and outbuildings, the farm and garden equipment and tools, the vehicles that get the homesteader to markets or trade-meets, auctions, etc., and the food (and energy) supplied by the property and proper investments in the property. Outside of actual transportation costs, the wise homesteader should weather the recession and coming depression better than most stuck-in-the-city folks. Our homesteads aren’t rollover investments – they’re our HOMES and security, even in hard times. Especially in hard times.

But there are some issues to be considered as the retail marketplace takes as hard of hits as the banking sector is taking. If there’s a shopping mall within 20 miles of your homestead, it’s likely to be an empty eyesore before the end of the year as retail outlets fall. So far this year the standard mall shops that have filed for bankruptcy include Linens n Things, Sharper Image, Mervyn’s (in California), Shoe Pavillion, …and ever increasing numbers of less universal retail shops.

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Tools: Get The Best, Even Used

Having posted with pride about our new honest-to-hillbilly deck, I thought this might be a good time to talk a bit more about the many tools a homesteader needs in order to keep the place in order, do the gardening and landscaping, renovate and repair home and outbuildings. I can do this because during the deck project we had a total of 4 hammers on hand, and two of them ended up without handles before we were done. Frustrating.

The very best thing you can do, of course, is to purchase the absolute, best quality, longest-lasting tools – any tool – you can possibly afford. Yet in today’s economy, getting the best quality tools is often beyond the means of those of us trying hard just to make things work. Here at my homestead we’ve got a shed chock full of old chain saws, string trimmers, handle-less shovels, pitchforks, axes, mauls, sledgehammers, pruners, etc., not to mention a whole collection of broken hammers, screwdrivers, various saws and power tools bought cheap over the years and which didn’t last long enough to get to the second job.

Worse, I’ve an energetic daughter and some grandchildren who work hard on occasion, but can’t ever manage to put the tools back where they belong. Which means I find rusted things all over the place, often with wooden handles that long since rotted into compost. It’s extremely frustrating, and having to replace the tools every time you start a project is a regular pain in the ass. Not to mention expensive.

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Desperate for Fossil Fuels: King Coal

Now Destroying Mountains Once Merely Raped

I spent a lot of time in Eastern Kentucky growing up, it’s where my paternal grandparents, Aunt and cousins lived and where we spent vacations no matter where else in the country (or elsewhere) we were living at the time (Navy brat). I’ve no more relatives there, the last of them died a decade ago and none of us siblings chose to live there for raising our own families or even retiring in our old age.

I do recall several very nasty UMW strikes in the mining region around Harlan, and I recall the black moonscape on the Green River near Paducah’s western shipping point that stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions, the coal tailings having turned a lovely rolling greenscape into utterly depressing nothing. I also recall learning to shoot my father’s beautiful pearl-handled six-guns at the abandoned strip mine near Laurel, and one touristy adventure in a no longer operating underground mine where we rode through in one of those little coal rail cars as if it were an amusement park ride.

These days they do things a little differently, as the deep seams get harder to work (and miners become more rare, having been decimated by Black Lung) and the easy seams have all been stripped. Now they’re going for the mid-seams, the last of the stored coal, by simply blowing up the entire mountain to get to it.

It’s called Mountaintop Removal mining, and it’s utterly devastating the southern Appalachians in the traditional coal mining regions of Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia. It’s a horror even worse than Mister Peabody’s tailings outside Paducah. It’s destroyed ~500 whole mountains so far, it’s polluting mountain streams that contribute to the primary water supplies for millions of people downstream, and it’s killing the abundant biodiversity these mountains are so very famous for. Most of all, for those of us who dearly love these gorgeous mountains, it’s very, very tragic. Some of the mines are as big as the Island of Manhattan.

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Farm Bill Up for Vote (and Veto)

What’s In It: Good and Bad

Here we are nearly halfway through 2008, and the 2007 farm bill is slowly but surely making its way through House and Senate disagreements on its way to the chamber floors for vote this week or next. The final compromise, USDA chair Ed Schafer bluntly informs us, will be vetoed by President Bush.

If farm legislation doesn’t directly affect many of us rural and semi-rural homesteaders, it’s a sure bet that it will affect our neighbors who do farm on a commercial scale. Thus it’s something we should be paying attention to. According to lawmakers nearly 3/4 of the spending in this bill over the next decade will be for feeding the needy. Another 16% goes toward commodities, crop insurance and disaster relief. Increasing nutrition spending (feeding the hungry) 8+% over the previous farm bill is reasonable given the worsening food crisis both in America and world wide.

This farm bill addresses biofuels diversion of food crops (like soy and corn) by providing more than a billion dollars to expand alternate use of biomass (like switchgrass and algae) and crop by-products (cornstalks, wheat straw, etc.) rather than diverting the grain itself. It also tightens payment limits, eliminating the “three-entity rule” that the previous bill contained as justification to funneling most ag payments to huge agribusiness concerns rather than smaller farm cooperatives or family farms. It limits subsidies to anyone making more than $500,000 in non-farm adjusted gross income [AGI] per year, and entirely ending direct payments to anyone with an AGI of more than $750,000 from any source. This will effectively put Big Agribusiness in the business of actually doing business instead of simply sucking up free corporate welfare as smaller family farms disappear.
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