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Actually, as I posted awhile back on another thread, I knew ranchers in Gunnison who used teams of horses to feed in the winter. It saved fuel and labor, because the horses--unlike a tractor--could be trained to pull the hay wagons slowly across the pasture without a driver. That way the ranch hand could unload the hay wagon by himself without needing another person to drive the tractor while he unloaded the wagon. I also knew a couple of guys who used draft horses in their logging operation because they could log in sensitive roadless areas not "friendly" to rubber-tired or tracked vehicles.
Reminds of what I heard last week at the Colorado Renewable Energy Society (CRES). The speaker told us of a farmer in VA who sectioned off his fields in very finite squares, let his cattle eat grass (not expensive corn) and after grazing it down he'd move them to another grassy square. So, the manure ferments and maggots swarm the fragrant piles. He then lets his chickens into the manure-rich field to scratch the manure to pieces (thus spreading this fertilizer) as they feasted on high-protein maggots (not expensive corn). The cattle ate well and bulked up on free natural grass. The chickens laid excellent quality eggs. He spent zip on feed corn, seed corn, fuel and herbicides, nor did he need a tractor (powered by gas or diesel fuel) to plow many acres to grow feed corn. He had a closed-cycle, self-sustaining protein generation system. Pooh rules!
Reminds of what I heard last week at the Colorado Renewable Energy Society (CRES). The speaker told us of a farmer in VA who sectioned off his fields in very finite squares, let his cattle eat grass (not expensive corn) and after grazing it down he'd move them to another grassy square. So, the manure ferments and maggots swarm the fragrant piles. He then lets his chickens into the manure-rich field to scratch the manure to pieces (thus spreading this fertilizer) as they feasted on high-protein maggots (not expensive corn). The cattle ate well and bulked up on free natural grass. The chickens laid excellent quality eggs. He spent zip on feed corn, seed corn, fuel and herbicides, nor did he need a tractor (powered by gas or diesel fuel) to plow many acres to grow feed corn. He had a closed-cycle, self-sustaining protein generation system. Pooh rules!
s/Mike
Is Polyface the farm to which you are referring? It was prominently featured in the book The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen. Fascinating stuff!
Over in another thread, a very nice Italian gentleman was asking for advice as to where to visit in Colorado on his vacation. I, and several others, gave him our suggestions. Now, I hope this fellow has a very enjoyable vacation in Colorado, but it set me to thinking about something that is very disheartening. It is this: Thanks to our seemingly insatiable appetite for oil--the majority of it now imported (as well as a lot of other imported stuff)--and the Fed's insane monetary policies over the last several years (still ongoing), the dollar has been essentially debased against most all other currencies. Thanks to that, the currency exchange rate is now such that I would bet that this fine Italian fellow will be able to fly from Italy to Colorado and enjoy his vacation here more cheaply--including his airfare in the cost--than a person living in, say, Denver could. In other words, Colorado is essentially "on sale" for this fellow, and people in the US--including Colorado--have to pay full price for the same thing. Now, maybe I'm just a dumb redneck, but I think it's sick and wrong when the economic and energy policies of this country put its citizenry in that kind of disgraceful position. So, the next time your standing in line to buy something, think about the fact that the foreign tourist in front of you may be effectively paying only 75-80% of what you are for the same thing--you can thank our wasteful ways and inflationary Fed for that one.
Agreed! There have been times when the whole situation was reversed. Americans could go to Canada, Europe, Mexico, etc and buy just about everything at a discount. I liked that side of the coin alot better! What goes around comes around.
it is when i'm still waiting for the same predicted depression made 30 to 40 years ago and made by different permabears every decade since...
Well, in 30 more days I'm retiring at the age of 48. I didn't get to this point by being a "permabear." But I am very cautious of manias and mob dynamics. And I take a history-based and broad-spectrum approach to risk management, which is why I'm still flourishing in a period of stagflation. Inflation is a recurring and significant risk that has been largely written off by mainstream financial planners...until very recently. I've been hedging against inflation for decades now, knowing that it is one of the most dangerous and recurring risks likely to undermine long-term financial planning. Most of the financial wonks blew off the possibility until it bit them square in the ass, like it was something just discovered.
Most of the Americans I know really don't understand the meaning of the term "risk." Yes, Virginia, you can lose...in fact you can lose it all. Ask the employees of Bear Stearns what their future looks like today. Ask a former Enron employee how bright their life has been in the last five years.
Will we have a Depression? Hard to say. Surely most of the econ PhDs on the planet are trying to avoid that. And thanks to statistical revisionism, we can just redefine all the measures we use for price inflation, unemployment, and other important metrics and use those inflated stats to deny a recession or depression if it occurs. Using pre-Clinton statistics (you know, the ones used to define the Carter-era "misery index") we now have inflation running at over 12%. Adjustment of unemployment numbers to reflect underemployment and "discouraged workers" now excluded from the reporting cohorts yields unemployment in the teens. Similarly, uncooked GDP numbers suggest negative nominal GDP growth at something beyond -2%.
Just ask Mr Joe Sixpack on the street how things are going. Ask a resident of Detroit how they'd define "depression." Those folks have, by many objective measures, been in a localized one for a while, and it's not going to improve for the foreseeable future. If GM goes under, which is a distinct possibility now, that place is gonna look alot like Kinshasa without the warm weather. Then shift your gaze to California, land of fruits and nuts, and behold the self-inflicted pain being heaped upon that misguided, overspent, uncontrolled, and near bankrupt tribe.
The storm that's still brewing is nothing like anything seen in the last 50 years. Fifty years ago the US was the world's largest lender. Now we're the world's largest debtor. Our banks, were they forced to reveal the full extent of the bad paper stinking up their smoky back rooms, would be insolvent in large numbers. We have ratings agencies carrying bond insurance outfits at AAA when the entire world knows that they are really somewhere way south of bad cheese. We have the Fed contaminating the $900B reserves it took them a century to accumulate by taking secret side-door loans on dodgy securities that no self-respecting old-school banker would wipe his behind with.
There are days when I conclude that a 30s-style depression might be the best-case scenario. Something like the utter collapse of Weimar Germany is more ominous still than the "D" word.
Hopefully it won't come to that. But we're far from out of the woods right now. Listen to the controlled panic in the words of the FDIC chairwoman, Fed governors, or 100-lb brain guys like Paul Volker. Then decide whether to buckle down, pay down debt, and get your finances under control...or just throw caution to the wind and go lease a new Hummer H3.
Is Polyface the farm to which you are referring? It was prominently featured in the book The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen. Fascinating stuff!
That must be the place. What an amazing operation, doable at a reasonable scale for many farms, just needs water to grow the grass, and there's plenty of rain back east for this happen on a much wider scale.
The Shadow Government Statistic charts paint a picture that more accurately reflects reality. In this case the Shadow is real. They very graphically explain why the economy numbers proclaimed by our government always seem like numbers from some mythical planet where no one actually lives.
Another good read outlining risks in the current economy, this time from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. It's not "sky is falling" fare, but definitely refutes the "worse is behind us" crowd.
False Dawn (http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.28069/pub_detail.asp - broken link)
Another good read outlining risks in the current economy, this time from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. It's not "sky is falling" fare, but definitely refutes the "worse is behind us" crowd.
False Dawn (http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.28069/pub_detail.asp - broken link)
So, basically the deal is this: We have gotten ourselves totally ****-faced drunk on debt, overconsumption, and mis-investment. Our dear government is now left with two unpleasant alternatives to deal with this situation--kind of like a person dealing with an alcoholic, drunken spouse. The government can choose to give us a big slug of the "hair of the dog" of "stimulus" and keep us "likkered up" for a while (like maybe 'til after the election) and hope we don't run into or break too much stuff--or kill ourselves. Or, the government can close the bar, haul our sorry ***es home, and make us sober up--with all of the withdrawal, pain, anger, and monstrous hangover that will engender. And hope that we have learned our lesson. So far, the government appears to be favoring the former course--which, of course, only postpones the suffering--and will likely cause a bigger hangover when the party finally ends. An act of true bravery would be for the government to pursue the latter strategy, and break our addiction to debt and non-productive investment. I personally think the Feds will eventually have to pursue that latter strategy--raise interest rates, tighten credit--and make us go through the inflation-breaking pain of a vicious recession, but I think they will delay doing that as long as possible with the result being that the cure will have to be even more painful and radical when it comes. Oh well, people usually get the government they deserve.
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