I finally had enough down time this past weekend to watch a movie I've been wanting to see for quite some time - Food, Inc. As an Ag Business major in college who has worked for some of the countries largest agricultural companies, who was married to a production farmer for 15 years, and who has since turned agrarian homesteader I was impressed with the information given in the movie.
It was also sad to see how far we (farmers) have fallen. Saddened because this is an industry that I fell in love with almost 30 years ago, grew up with really, and have since separated from because I can no longer identify with or condone many of its practices.
It was just past my 9th birthday when I spent the summer at a cousins farm in a small town in the middle of Missouri. Joe had a few hundred acres and raised cattle and hogs, corn, wheat and alfalfa. Each morning I would go with him to "take care" of the animals. My job was to sit in the back of a flatbed truck and throw flakes of hay over the sides for the cattle. This was no feedlot operation, but cows on pasture with hay as a supplement. When we finished we would pick up a load of feed and fill big hoppers in the pig pens. Even though the pigs were not on pasture or rummaging around wooded areas they were out in the sun with plenty of mud holes to wallow in.
When the time was right we cut and baled alfalfa. Because I was not big enough to stack hay on the trailers I got to sit on the tractors wheel covering and watch the whole thing like a bird high up in its nest. The view was great. I loved being outside, the smell of fresh cut hay, picking corn off the stalks to take home for dinner. Even when the occasional animal died, a fact of reality on a farm, I was not put off by the experience. Not even a little.
Every few days we would stop by the farm next door, a dairy, full of black and white cows munching on cool green pastures. We'd stop just after the afternoon milking was finished, I'd take our stainless steel milk pail to the cooling room and out of the biggest tank I'd ever seen I would pour us a gallon of milk. Fresh and ice cold, milked from the cows just moments before, I had never tasted anything like it. I couldn't drink the milk right then, we had to wait for the cream to separate so it could be skimmed off and made into butter. This was the full on, unadulterated, unpasteurized real stuff - smooth and creamy.
Once a month Joe and I would go to the sale yard to sell hogs or cattle that were ready for market. When we weren't at the yards we were taking grain to the mills or visiting other local farmers either on their farms or at their local gathering places, small cafes or coffee shops where locals would meet to talk shop, farm subsides, politics and the like. It was here, between the summer chores and the small town talk, that I fell for this world of farming. I loved the people, the places, the smells, the work. You name it I was hooked.
At night, Joe and I, would listen to farm radio programs for weather updates, market prices, harvesting info and news. Even at nine I was beginning to understand that there was more to getting food to my table in California than just stopping by the store, there were people I'd would never see, places I'd never visit, trucks and trains involved in the whole process that I didn't know anything about. But, on that farm in the hot humid mid-west summer I knew I wanted to know, wanted to learn, wanted to be one of them. I wanted to be a farmer!
Over the next years I honed my skills raising livestock in 4-H, managing the sheep unit at the junior college I attended and eventually majoring in Ag Business. I had dreams of living on a farm, speaking out for the culture that I so admired and most of all teaching people how important it was that we all understand how food gets from the fields to our dinner tables.
But, after I met and married my farmer I realized that the quaint picturesque farming world I had in my head, that I had experienced as a child was far from accurate. I was stunned how stewardship of the land was set aside in favor of increased profits; how simple organic solutions to fertilizer and weed control was met with contempt and ridicule and how farm workers were treated with disrespect. All the while people in the ag community of which I now belonged praised themselves for being modern productive producers, able to push their land to higher and higher levels of production and returns.
It was during these years that I realized what I admired about the industry didn't exist. It was a figment of my imagination. I also realized that what I did admire, what was impressive to me were the growers who had abandoned conventional ag practices for a holistic approach. One that respected the land from which our food came, protected the water sources that fed crops and livestock and those who thought highly of the people working to feed our country. I realized that the kind of agriculture I admired was organic.
From what I've experienced I felt the movie was dead on, educating rather than scaring. And even though I enjoyed it I felt that it was preaching to the choir, and the people who really needed to see it probably never would. If you haven't yet seen it I encourage all of you to find a copy and watch it, for no other reason than to add validity to what we are trying to accomplish as small suburban homesteaders. I think you'll enjoy it. It's well worth you time.
It’s that time of year again. The time we (on California’s Central Coast) wait impatiently for, dream for and drool for (literally). It’s strawberry season!! Red, juicy, plump, little red hearts bursting with flavor. I’m lucky enough to live in prime berry country. Hundreds of acres in our county are planted in these beautiful red gems. And the nearest berry stand is only a few miles away, so when I buy berries they are fresh from the field that morning. No shipping. No cold storage.
