What you **NEED** to know about grain fed beef (electricity, companies, system)
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I sure do envy those people that have wives that can wade up to their ankles in cow poo, take a shower and look like they never step foot in the barn 2 hours later.
Well, BT, I always have that 'fresh from the barn' look! Fortunately so do most of my neighbors and friends... male and female! I LIKE getting hot and sweaty and shoveling horse poop and digging in the dirt and crawling after that danged chicken who insists on laying in the furthest corner of the pen or henhouse...
Your daughter is precious! Mine's almost 26 and I remember those days of her wandering around the barnyards when she was that size! Sooo much fun at that age! She remembers those days as her best ones, too...
We killed our steer (he was raised on a grass field, with some grain treats, so absolutely organic), heaved it on a truck and drove to a local mom-and-pop butcher (about 20-30 min driving). The butcher had his small butcher shop behind his main business, a convenience store. Prior to that, we had to find 3 other families in our community who each pledged a quarter. The butcher chopped the steer to each family's choice cuts. (He was adamant for each family to be present as he was cutting, he must have had his reasons).
Either it's because it's here in Canada, or maybe because of our backwoods location, but all this process was done with no agencies or stamping. If we could keep doing this, that would be ideal, selling meat to my neighbours. I can't believe the complicated rules and regulations I've read about here. It used to be so simple.
Milk used to be simple, too. As a child, I was told that the best milk was fresh milk, just from under a cow. I still can remember the udder-smelling milk, with a slice of fresh-baked bread.
Awwww your daughter is adorable, and so are the calfs! I'm glad that she's showing an interest in the critters... hope she'll be the next generation of farmer!
I totally agree about the partner thing. If one person's doing most of the farm work while the other is off doing something else... there's no time left to be together and you aren't together while you're working either. I'm sure there will be time when DH & I are working at separate sides of the farm on different projects (as our skills and talents are different)... but, in the end, we'll both be working and knee deep in some sort of muck. The big chores we'll be doing together, so if we want to stop in the middle of baling the back 40 for a little , ahem R & R, we can
Yes that is really special when stuff like that can happen. The ex-wife...she was a little more outdoorsy I think you would call it...especially when it came to R&R where as the new wife is a bit more reserved. Divorce will certainly change you, and I do try to spend more time at home when I can. I figure that comes from:
1. Age and getting older
2. Having children (the ex-wife and I had no kids)
3. Realizing farming is 365 so its going to be there no matter how much I do
The real surprising thing is that after getting a 16 year old daughter (we are foster parents) things have improved between the wife and I. Not that things were bad before, but we are closer I think now then what we were. You would think it would have caused more issues, but its brought us closer together for some reason, and having two daughter's has really made this house feel like a home.
Of course it would certainly be nice to spend more time alone with just the wife, but that is not going to happen. I typically get up when she is going to bed (midnight) so it makes things hard, and with such a disparity between ages, it means taking the older one out to the city for a night with her friends, while the youngest is too busy asking "why" to get a complete conversation in with the wife.
Cute daughter, BrokenTap. Enjoy every moment of her, mine are 4 and 5, growing way too fast.
Oh I do. Last year I waited and waited until the time was just right, and then she took her first ride on a tractor ever. I figured she minds well start out right and not on some little thing, but jump right to the biggest tractor we had (horsepower wise anyway).
But as you look at the last picture, look past the machine and the cute 1½ year old...look at her and Alfred and his grin. Its actually a great picture because you can see he is sweating, he has grease on his jeans, and yet farming has always been about much more then big tractors, hard work and low pay. It's about feeding people and the next generation.
That is the one thing about farming, it's more of a legacy then it is a simple occupation. When you own a trucking company, an earth moving business, or lots of stock...when its all said and done...you really have nothing. No one remembers that, but people remember farmers. We farm places today we call "the old Davis place", the "Hamlin place" and the "Cates Place"...all of which are farmers from 200 years ago...now that is respect and shows that people remember long after the coffin goes in the ground.
The manin the picture once told me this: "You know, when it's all said and done, and the coffin goes in the ground, it is the farmer who is the richest man of all."
Divorce will certainly change you, and I do try to spend more time at home when I can. I figure that comes from:
1. Age and getting older
2. Having children (the ex-wife and I had no kids)
3. Realizing farming is 365 so its going to be there no matter how much I do
You know BT, this got me thinking... I wonder if it's a sickness of our modern times that we continually feel like we have to work ourselves to death to get everything done "right now"? Whether that's farming or working in a big penthouse office. So often we don't stop and take time for ourselves and our families... even though the work will still be there when we're done, and the world won't end if we do it tomorrow instead of today. I'm not talking about slacking off all the time, just stopping to take time to enjoy your life and family.
When you're on your death bed, no one ever looks back and says "You know, I wish I'd worked more."
We killed our steer (he was raised on a grass field, with some grain treats, so absolutely organic), heaved it on a truck and drove to a local mom-and-pop butcher (about 20-30 min driving). The butcher had his small butcher shop behind his main business, a convenience store. Prior to that, we had to find 3 other families in our community who each pledged a quarter. The butcher chopped the steer to each family's choice cuts. (He was adamant for each family to be present as he was cutting, he must have had his reasons).
Either it's because it's here in Canada, or maybe because of our backwoods location, but all this process was done with no agencies or stamping. If we could keep doing this, that would be ideal, selling meat to my neighbours. I can't believe the complicated rules and regulations I've read about here. It used to be so simple.
Milk used to be simple, too. As a child, I was told that the best milk was fresh milk, just from under a cow. I still can remember the udder-smelling milk, with a slice of fresh-baked bread.
Nuala, some states allow just this sort of thing through a CSA (consumer supported agriculture) because, since the neighbors pledged (paid for) the animal while it was being raised. Technically, that makes the animal their property, so they can slaughter and eat it themselves because they "own it". So, the producer isn't really selling the meat, their collecting a fee (up front) to raise the animal for the owner. This can work with milk sometimes, too. But, alas, not all states allow you to circumvent "the rules" in this way.
You know BT, this got me thinking... I wonder if it's a sickness of our modern times that we continually feel like we have to work ourselves to death to get everything done "right now"? Whether that's farming or working in a big penthouse office. So often we don't stop and take time for ourselves and our families... even though the work will still be there when we're done, and the world won't end if we do it tomorrow instead of today. I'm not talking about slacking off all the time, just stopping to take time to enjoy your life and family.
When you're on your death bed, no one ever looks back and says "You know, I wish I'd worked more."
It is a sickness. Think about all the time spent worrying, planning and speculating on how people were going to turn their earnings into savings for the future. Now with the DOW in the toilet, people realize it was just material things that was taken away in a days time when the banks began to topple.
It's not an issue to make light of I know, and I know of many in the family who have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars from the crash, but now as people return to their roots, they may look at their old farms, their families and their food supplies as never before. Suddenly the glamor of those bright city lights fades and the simplistic nature of their rural roots may not seem so bad after all.
Myself...I have the pleasure of being here for my entire life and thus I can remember things back a long time (It is indeed a blessing and a curse). Anyway, I was trying to figure out some acreages the other day on some fields and I got to thinking what the old fields looked like, and what they are like now. Over the last few years I have constantly toiled to try and make the fields go back to the stone walls. Over time they have just grown in with trees...in some fields to the tune of 30-50 feet! When I get the time I go out in these fields and cut the brush and trees back and then push everything over with my tractor. It's not a rush job, just a few hundred yards here and there. But anyway, as I sat down to try and figure out how many acres they stand at now, and what they were, I realize just how much I have accomplished over the years. I have gained at least 10 acres and that's without trying.
As I mentioned in the post to encourage SCGranny, those fences looked pretty daunting last year, but in 2 months time I managed to pay out of pocket, and install about 4 acres worth of grazing. Once the snow goes, I'll hit it again and get even more up, and so it is surprising how much you can do...a little at a time and one dime at a time. I think that is the biggest issue today with farms. People just don't want to start small.
The real question is...can they farm small and make it?
I figured it out once that in order to farm full time with sheep it would take 600 of the wooly critters to make it. That sounds like a lot, but 10 sheep are equal to one cow so you really are only talking 60 cows...that's pretty darn good. Add in some off-farm income and a small farmer might be able to make it. You certainly aren't going to own a Lexus, or even a John Deere for that matter, but if you were patient and let your flock grow from within, you could do quite well in 30 years...who knows maybe better then the Dow's return?
I wonder if it's a sickness of our modern times that we continually feel like we have to work ourselves to death to get everything done "right now"?
I do think it's a sickness of our times, and the correlation between happiness and posessions is not straightforward after we provide basic living needs. Since I'm not a writer, I thought of posting this excerpt. It comes from an article by Silver Donald Cameroon, a local writer (Silver Donald Cameron):
I stumbled across this information in Bill McKibben’s provocative book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. In it, McKibben asks a simple question: "Is more better?" Do objects and possessions really make us happy? If not, then why pursue "economic growth," which really means the creation of still more objects and possessions?
These are heretical questions – particularly to economists, whose odd semi-science rests on the assumption that we can tell what makes you happy (or "maximizes utility," in econo-speak) by looking at how you spend your money. Economics assumes that people are rational and make rational choices. If you’re buying a leaf blower, then, presumably you’ve judged that of all the things you could possibly be doing at this moment, buying a leaf blower is the most satisfying.
Buying stuff makes you happy. The more stuff you can buy, the happier you’ll be. That’s the fundamental assumption of economics.
But it’s not so in the real world. In 1991, McKibben reports, "the average American family owned twice as many cars, drove two and a half times as far, used twenty-one times as much plastic, and traveled twenty-five times farther by air than did the average family in 1951." The economy had tripled since 1950, and the size of new houses had doubled since 1970.
So those families were two or three times as happy, right?
Wrong. The proportion of Americans who say they are happy has slipped steadily since about 1950. In all the industrialized countries, increasing prosperity has been accompanied by decreasing happiness. Japan and the UK have seen huge increases in per capita incomes, but no increases in happiness. The New York Times reports that people born in the world’s wealthiest countries after 1955 are "three times as likely as their grandparents to have had a serious bout of depression." Between 1955 and 1988, British national income rose sharply – and so did rates of crime and divorce.
And we have so much junk that a whole new industry has arisen to take care of it. One of the fastest-growing businesses in North America is self-storage.
Another whole series of studies has come at this question backwards, asking people to describe the factors that contribute to a high quality of life. About 70% give great weight to such intangibles as family life, equality, recreational opportunities, job satisfaction. The best predictors of happiness include robust health and a good marriage. Money and possessions rank very low.
So how did we get mesmerized by the notion that happiness comes from steadily rising incomes and a steadily expanding economy?
Because it’s true – but only to a point. Money and possessions do bring happiness – but (says the research) only up to about $10,000 per capita. That’s $40,000 a year for a couple with two kids, enough to provide decent shelter, an adequate diet, all the basic amenities of life. Beyond $10,000 per capita there’s no reliable correlation between money and happiness.
But our perceptions haven’t caught up with reality. We’ve become rich, but we behave as though we were still as poor as the novelist Hugh MacLennan, growing up in Glace Bay during World War I. One of his most beautiful stories, "An Orange from Portugal," conveys his joy and wonder at the sight of a single fresh orange at Christmas.
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I certainly don't think that a small farmer is going to get rich in cash money terms... but cash money is a demon slave-driver as Nuala's quote states. If a small farmer could produce enough food to keep his family fed and keep things going, with a little extra for necessary upgrades/repairs and an occasional splurge... I'd call them pretty rich in life. They're getting everything they need, some of what they want, and they're doing it on their own terms... well, if they started small and improved incrementally without taking on debt. If the Tax Man and the Bureaucrat keep their nose out our business and their hands out of our pockets, I think most small farmers could easily produce enough to get by comfortably. In fact, I'm intentionally trying to structure it so that I only earn enough cash income to pay for enough that I stay Tax-Neutral and Debt-Free... I'm tired of funding a defunct and corrupt system with my sweat and taxes!
Possession of things just for the sake of having them will never make you happy. Selling your life to earn money to acquire things that aren't really going to make you happy is insanity... why not just do what makes you happy, even if you earn less, as long as your real needs are covered? It took me a while to deprogram the brainwashing, but now that I've realized this I can't ever go back.
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Fortunately so do most of my neighbors and friends... male and female! 
I LIKE getting hot and sweaty and shoveling horse poop and digging in the dirt and crawling after that danged chicken who insists on laying in the furthest corner of the pen or henhouse...
