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PORTER HOLLOW, Kentucky - A rooster's crow, out behind the barn, launches the day at The Jerrys Farm, nestled amid rolling, green-shaded hills in western Fleming County.
In the field below the barn, the young pigs snort around the grass in their mobile pen, impatient for Jerry Neff to fetch the morning rations.
Up on the hill, Jerry Hicks is riding the clattering old mowing machine, pulled by the big Belgian draft horses, Ted and Alice, slaughtering weeds - and being careful not to hit the solar panels collecting energy from the morning sun.
The first time you visit The Jerrys Farm - that's what Hicks and Neff call their place - it's easy to get a mite confused as to just what century these guys are living in.
Those solar panels certainly say 21st century. But the draft horses and the antique mowing machine could suggest that the two Jerrys are stuck smack in the middle of the 19th.
You can blame Neff and Hicks for the confusion. On their little farm here they're trying hard to combine the best of the old and the best of the new.
They do rely on solar power to pump water from the spring-fed pond into a gravity flow system that distributes the water around the farm. And they recently added a Web site to tout their products to the wider world.
But when it comes to cutting weeds, mowing hay or moving heavy stuff, Hicks and Neff hitch up Ted and Alice.
"My grandfather farmed with horses, and I always said that if I had a place of my own I wanted to work it with horses," Hicks said last week.
"When we moved here, some of our neighbors thought we were Amish once the word got out that we were going to farm with horses. Some of the others probably thought we were crazy."
Nowadays, the Jerrys Farm produces grass-finished beef and pork, grass-raised broiler chickens and free-range eggs, as well as honey, for a small but loyal bunch of customers in Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia.
Some who might have looked askance at Neff and Hicks and their oddball ideas and their antique farm implements are beginning to think there might be something to their madness.
Even their ideas about farming with horses in an era of mighty tractors - and mighty gas prices.
"Some people have started to come around and ask what we'd charge to cultivate their tobacco with the horses," Hicks said. "With the price of gas, I really think there's a growing interest in horses as a supplement to tractors."
Just a few years ago, Neff and Hicks were city slickers with day jobs in Lexington. Hicks was a woodworker and cabinet maker; Neff worked in sales for an engineering firm.
Hicks, is a native of Carter County; Neff grew up in West Virginia. But after meeting through mutual friends, they found that they shared a yearning to be in the country, on the land.
Eventually, they decided to go partners in a farm of their own. After scouting areas of Kentucky and West Virginia, they found land they loved on Three Mile Creek here and The Jerrys Farm was born.
From the beginning, Hicks and Neff operated it in a radically different way.
They not only refused to buy a tractor, but they also put no chemical fertilizers on their land. And instead of trying for big volume and big profits, they aimed at small-scale, sustainable agriculture.
Some of their ideas came from books by Joel Salatin and the late John Seymour, two gurus of self-sufficient agriculture. Other concepts they dreamed up themselves.
"We sort of look at the farm as a small country, and that we have to balance the exports and imports so that, hopefully, we come out on the positive side," Neff explained.
"We take organic sustenance away from the land when we produce cattle and hay. But we try to put back just as much organic value as we take away and ideally put back even more."
All the various activities on the farm are designed to mesh and work together.
All of the rich "natural manure" produced by the livestock goes back on the land, either directly or as compost.
Hicks and Neff raise their pigs and broiler chickens in large mobile pens without bottoms, so the animals actually are on grass at all times. The pens are placed in fields and moved twice a day, so the animals always have fresh grass to explore.
Hicks and Neff say the system makes for healthier animals, while all that rooting and pecking kills insects, clears weeds and improves the soil.
"The pigs do a really good job of converting brushy areas," Neff said. "They kind of disc and cultivate the soil for us, and we sow grass seed behind they as they go."
There's a goat named Whitie, who loves to eat weeds, and whose milk supplements the pigs' food. Natural dewormer, Hicks and Neff say.
The cattle eat only grass - "They're leaner and healthier because they're eating what their bodies were designed for," Neff says - while replenishing the soil with their manure.
All that organic matter is paying off in increased fertility and productivity. This year for the first time, the pair have produced all the hay they'll need for the coming winter.
"That's a really big deal for us," Hicks said.
The Jerrys let weeds and bushes grow along their fence rows, creating habitat for rabbits and other small mammals, which then become food for hawks. In return, the well-fed hawks refrain from eating the chickens, Hicks and Neff say.
By installing a solar-powered water system that pipes water to the cows, the Jerrys are able to fence off their largest pond to keeps cattle out of the pond, so it stays cleaner. Letting bushes and weeds grow up around the pond provides a kind of biofilter, which helps control algae blooms on the water.
Then, there are the draft horses. Hicks and Neff actually own five, including two Percheron mares named Kate and Liz who are on maternity leave after recently foaling.
The horses do the farm's heavy lifting, fertilize the land and hold down costs. They're slower than a tractor, but they don't burn gasoline.
Hicks and Neff say that all of their various farm enterprises make money, although profits are limited because they're still paying for their land.
Now, the partners are considering new enterprises, including a solar-powered kiln that would let them cut, dry and sell their own timber. They also plan to get heavily into produce and may start turning up soon at Farmers Market in Lexington.
"When we lived in town, we were both stressed out with our jobs, always running around and always busy and never getting anywhere," Neff said. "Now that we're out here, I wouldn't change anything."
© 2008 The Lexington Herald Leader
57 Comments so far
Show AllI am one of the Jerrys of Jerrys farm and I found I needed to join and comment after this article. First I am amazed at how much interest and emotion was stirred up by this article. I thought it was a good article and we have received a lot of interest after it. However, I was not prepared to have my life referred to as bullshit and a fairy tale. No where in the article did I advocate for everyone to farm with horses. I farm with horses because it works for me. I have never driven a tractor, and right now I have no interest in having one. I could care less if everyone farmed with horses or not. I do and I will as long as I can make a living doing so.
I also saw the reference to the "back to the landers" of the sixties and seventies. I am not a back to the lander or a hippy looking to get back to nature. I grew up farming, raised by farmers, and after college and a 15 year stint in manufacturing, I went back to doing what I have always wanted to do, and that is farm, and to farm with horses. I farm in as sustainable way as I can, I refuse to register as organic, because I do not want the government on my farm. I currently see the USDA as the biggest danger to small farms. I do not support NAIS. I refuse to accept any government aid or subsidies in order to operate my farm. Every project on the farm supports its self or I don't do it. I have cut my living expenses as much as possible by living as simply as I can. I realize that many would not like nor want to live as I do, nor do I think everyone should. I have not watched a television set in over 7 years (I have no interest or time to do so) nor do I miss television.
I do work hard, but I enjoy my work! If I die at 63 or 43 or 103 I will die farming, doing what I love, and I will die happy!
I think it is an honorable profession, a great way to live, I have no desire to ever attain wealth, or be seen as a huge success! My intent is to do what I love, as long as I can, while making a comfortable living doing so! I am not telling others how to live, and would not want others telling me how to live.
Thanks, kman, for so kindly enlightening me.
As a clueless leftist, I assumed that farming involved a flurry of activity when planting and harvesting and not so much the rest of the time. Observing the field next door reinforced my beliefs. (It is also leased and I don't know how many more acres the leaser farms.)
But, as a lessor, you know that if you farm 7500 acres, you can divide the planting and harvesting equally among the days of the year. Interesting.
That doesn't explain the people I know who work full time as wage laborers and manage to farm on their days off. And, yes, I realize that the reason they work for wages is that farming doesn't pay enough.
And even though of all the people you know, no one, zilch, nada, etc. wants to go back to horses, the article we're commenting on is about people who happily farm with horses. Perhaps you don't know everyone. Or everything.
My grandfather quit farming in 1901. He opened a lumber/hardware store in the small Iowa farming community I was raised in. I'm sure he saw it as progress. His life was not spent toiling physically.
We knew all sorts of farmers: some were rich, some not so much. They worked hard--no doubt about it. I can still visualize their sun-burned arms and necks.
But Iowa even back then was pretty much a mono crop--corn or soybeans. Most farmers had cows and pigs, chickens and a vegetable garden, for sure. It was a much more humane, healthy way to farm. Kids got jobs detassling corn.
Probably in the future, everyone will need to have a garden. I read that one family in Pasadena grows most of their food in their front yard.
I commiserate with Kelmer who cares about the animals: I, too, don't like to kill animals for meat. But some do. Maybe we can educate people to eat less meat. In a future without oil, we will certainly need to stop eating so much meat.
Few have mentioned the biggest problem we face: too many people. And, this discussion gives one an appreciation for the amazing amount of work a gallon of gas makes possible.
A guy in Mendocino has built a solar tractor. There are solutions and everyone needs to be heard because we all hold a piece of the truth.
It always amazes me that there are such rude people who post anonymously. Just because someone has a different opinion than you, why does that give you the right to act like you have the only access to the Truth and, oh, btw, you can act like an a-hole to boot? Come on.
I think we can uphold everyone's right to speak their piece of the truth and respond to them with respect and intelligence.
greennerthanthou said "I'm not a farmer, but I'm surrounded by farmland. Come on. The 10 acre soybean field next to me takes the farmer less than 2 days a year....Backbreaking 365 days a year? I don't think so"
Oh come on. 10 acres? That's not enough land to piss on. You think because you drive by a 10 acre piece of land once and a while that it makes you an expert on the use of farming labor? what a joke. I am just shocked at how clueless leftists can really be.
The guy who rents my small farm has 7500 acres he farms total. He is always working!!!
I for one think back to all the people I know/knew who were around when farmers went from horses to tractors. Absolutley no one waxes poetic about going back to horses. No one. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Null.
I'm not a farmer, but I'm surrounded by farmland. Come on.
The 10 acre soybean field next to me takes the farmer less than 2 days a year. One day he sprays roundup and plants soybeans. It takes just a few hours.
In October he comes and harvests it. It takes about 3 hours.
Backbreaking 365 days a year? I don't think so.
The field down the street is mowed for hay 2 or 3 times a year, depending on the rainfall.
One day it's mowed, one day moved into piles, the next it's baled. Small bales, and they are out of there the same day. That's 6 or 9 days a year.
"Let us study more permaculture and how that works with human culture. Let us advance our technology by studying nature, the answers are out there and they are humane. No doubt."
Toby Grove,
I'm with you. We don't have to reinvent the wheel - the wheel already works. Permaculture is one way to model the wheel.
The latest issue of National Geographic has pictures of soils in different parts of the world. Wherever the soil is left alone or built up by natural means, it is dark and deep. However, wherever it is abused and sprayed and poisoned and over-farmed, it becomes thin and arid. Civilizations have crumbled on arid soils.
I am not a farmer by any means, but a part of our family is engaged in small scale dairy farming, so I have seen and heard of their struggles to keep the farm. One older uncle is wracked by disease, but told me he sometimes stops the tractor in the middle of the field and looks at the fields and hills and knows he is where he belongs.
In the 60's a lot of idealistic but unqualified people went out for romantic farming. It did not last. As GwNorth and others have noted, family farming is backbreaking 365 day a year work that requires a community. (Who will do the work if you are laid up for 2 weeks?) It requires an array of skills. To survive you have to do all of your own building and mechanical repairs rather than pay professionals. You have to be an agronomist and an animal health scientist. That being said, the intentions of these guys are admirable and I hope they find the way to continue.
Family farms that now exist have weathered many problems over the years and stayed in business. They are the tough survivors and should be helped. They must have some devotion, because there have been big cash offers from real estate developers and smaller offers from the government to sell out. (Government was willing to pay dairy farmers to kill their cows - which I now see as a way to decrease local farming and privilege industrial farming.)
Instead I prefer judicious help to established family farms that are trying to survive. Subsidized solar panels or windmills would be one helpful move. Then plug in the electric tractor and there you go.
estebandido, I would say do a google search for things like the D.C. 7th Street Garden, Riverdale, MD Master Peace Community Garden or the stuff going on around a lot of major cities like Chicago (http://www.cpdit.com/resources/community_gardens/). There is a new youth gardening movement on campuses and beyond, and not just the Agricultural Science and Soil Science kids.
Been there and done that for twenty years, me and family and many friends......would mainly only say that OXEN are much to be preferred to horses for serious daily work, much more economical and safer, easier, less hassles all the way......BUT, gotta say how ya gonna keep'em down on the farm after they've seen TV?
Yeah, our farm commune petered out for most of us when we got older and needed non-existent help in the fields....Nowadays here in CA can't get field help with the communal gardens either....what a shame that with our youth addicted to comfort and videos we can't gettem to come and help harvest watermelons.....!
(quietly awaiting the next famine.....)
Robert Conklin this is quite a busy and passionate thread I agree with you and all that you said. It reminds me of harmony. With so much energy invested in our passions let us not forget that it is after all Nature that holds the answeres to yes even humanities issues. Harmony. There are people in government, people in corporations, people everywhere in all walks of life in between and yes serfs are people too; when people understand the science of people then..Harmony. Let us educate ourselves continue these and many other conversations so that we may one day all understand to the best of our mental well-being that life for people on earth is sustained best with the greatest respect and nurturance for the Earth, People, and Money...let's give our egos the slip and care for our mentally ill.
Let us study more permaculture and how that works with human culture. Let us advance our technology by studying nature, the answers are out there and they are humane. No doubt.
Love Toby
Thomas More August 11th, 2008 5:52 pm
"This is a beautiful fairy tale. Farming by the old methods can be quite charming and satisfying for the individual.
These guys are speaking about lifestyle, not a business or a sustainable production."
Man, you are so out of touch.
This is _exactly_ what is needed and what is happening. This is the kind of life that is sustainable. Now, it's not sustainable if the produce from such small farms are trucked across the country (is that the kind of business you have in mind?), but getting back to cities and towns ringed with small farms run organically and sustainably is precisely what is needed and where we are headed.
Thomas More, you remind me of the Dementors from Harry Potter - those creatures that suck the life and soul out of everything they come in contact with.
I guess I am passionate about the family farmer because thats how I grew up. :)
My cousin that farms much of our home place is very well educated. He received a degree at the University of Alberta in Agriculture and his crops are always the highest yielding in the area.
He does not use pesticides at all. He is opposed to it. He uses little in the way of herbicides. He practices sound old style methods, turning land to pasture for many years rather then feeling forced to put it all into crops.
He talks passionately against the modern industrial scale farm, corner to corner planting, how the Government tries to encourage the small farmer to knock down more of the woods on their property in order to bring more land into production.
His father was like a second father to me and loved the cattle he raised. He had a name for everyone in his herd, could recite thier history and would have been applaed to live today to see how new factory farms raise cattle.
I personally think that Governments in hand with Agri-businesses are trying to drive the family farmer out of business or force them to the point where the family farmer is little more then a share cropper.
It my considered opinion after years of reading this, that Agri-Businesses seek total control over our food supply just as they seek to control our water, and once they get that will be able to manipulate prices at will.
It my sincere hope that the consumer stop purchasing everything based upon the lowest price when it comes to things like food, and that support for the family farmer grows at the local level.
I believe that the people that post here have the best of intentions when they speak of protecting farmland, the overuse of fertilizers, mechanization and the like. I just feel we have to look at the issues practically.
pk
By the way, KY has opened the doors to hemp farming. With hemp, you can replace petroleum 100%. Oh yeah, the DEA ! Now when will you stop supporting BIG GOVERNMENT ?!?
Well, yeah.
I pretty much agree with everyone, for once. Farming without machinery is back breaking work and will not produce as much food as we do now. And more people will have to go back to farming to make it work.
Industrial farming as we know it is unsustainable. We're losing topsoil, polluting ground water and rivers, creating a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, pumping out irreplacable aquifers, poisoning farmland with chemicals and irrigation, AND we're near the end of the cheap fossil fuel that made it all possible.
Yes, since fossil fuel farming the earth has gone from 2 billion to over 6 billion people.
Yes, the US produces much more food than ever. Actually, much more than we need. Since Earl Butz changed the farm rules, many US farmers lost their land, while the remaining few produced far more grain than we need, leading to an epidemic of obesity, as Americans bravely tried to do their patriotic duty and eat more than they needed.
Now we're burning it in cars.
The whole thing is unsustainable and will change.
Relating to the other thread I've been hanging out in today, the health insurance crisis, I think that the over population problem will be solved when the ruling class cuts health care to all Americans. Obesity, lack of exercise, and chemical exposure will take care of the rest.
First of all, while clearly there are some trend differences between Democrats and Republicans, clearly there is also variation in perspectives within each party. I don't see why each person can't try to find out the complexities of an issue he/she is passionate about to enlighten him/herself instead of being pigheaded, one-sided or ignorant. It's about smart solutions that make sense and take account of the local AND global situations. As much as I love green technologies, I'm not going to try and tell someone they're a bad person because they use gas or coal or chemical fertilizers. Most people are just trying to do good and we should treat other people's opinions the way we'd treat our brother's opinion, our neighbor's opinion, or our mother's opinion.
GwNorth, at first with the term "bull shit" I was a bit against you but after reading a great deal of your comments, I must say that I admire you for your knowledge regarding practicality and global affairs (re: Sudan). I agree that mechanization has been revolutionary and I take a compromise approach to the whole ordeal: Just like a lot of farmers try to be as organic as possible but DO use chemicals in small amounts to control pests and the like, I don't agree with people who say everyone should go back to just using animals and hands for work. It's just not possible to do that and have the kind of yields we see today. However I would agree with some others who make the point that Jerrys Farm is not trying to compete in the global market, but the two are just sick of their old jobs and want something more natural that can put food on their table, at least.
farmwife, your testimony about the new farm regulations and insurance and life on the farm in general really touched my heart. Having been raised not on a farm, I am really out of touch with the average life of the American farmer and I thank you for speaking out about the issues that plague you. I am set to do a lot more reading on farm insurance and I would love it if you knew some resources where I could best start.
CAfarmer, you stress that we should feed our communities through local efforts. I am in total agreement that there should be more stress on initiatives like CSA's, local urban & suburban gardening and the like to produce more food, milk, etc. However, it is important to consider that this strategy doesn't work around the world. Just take the example of Egypt, or Saudi Arabia -- look these countries up on a map and ask yourselves if you think they can provide all the food they need for themselves with the amount of arable land they've got. The answer is NO! The only reason their populations are so high are because upscale in technology and global food markets allow for it. If you read up on the food crisis we are currently ALL in, with food prices skyrocketing around the world, you'll learn about all the complex systems of fertilizer prices, oil prices, export & import restrictions, global conferences, the EU, UN, and what-have-you that make the situation much more multifaceted than we would like. Just an example, in an article I read today, a man in Ethiopia trying to raise a huge family says the price of a lamb has gone up from $15 to $45-50. It's inaccurate to assume there is any simple solution to all this, whether your would-be solution is "liberal" or "conservative" (I hate these labels because conservative is usually Republican, but plenty of Reps want massive changes, technically they are then liberals).
I would like to direct everyone to a quote by Pascal Lamy, the director general of the World Trade Organization, and United States trade representative Susan C. Schwab.
---
Rainfall and other limits make it prohibitively difficult for some countries to grow all their own food. "If Egypt had to be self-sufficient in food, there would be no water left in the Nile," Mr. Lamy said in a telephone interview.
"If every country in the world decided it wanted to produce its own food for consumption," Ms. Schwab said, "there would be less food in the world, and more people would be hungry."
---
Anyway, I appreciate everyone's comments as they have really broadened my mind. Best to you.
Urban sprawl in Alaska..who woulda thunk it..
And no one has even mentioned yet one of the worst problems facing small farmers -- urban sprawl --
The oldest and most successful potato farm in Alaska, down by Palmer, is slated to be eaten up by a road construction project. The owners held fast while all around them good farmland was sold and subdivided
and turned into cul-de-sac developments. Then this spring they found out that, since their land was all
that remained in order to provide better vehicle access to said developments, it was going to be turned into
a four-lane highway. Absolutely nothing they can do about it. Money talks louder than potatoes.
The hayfield we manage is prime property, south facing, gentle slope, good access, close to town, great view of the Alaska Range to the south. We get calls from realtors all the time. The classic one is, "I am thinking of going into growing apple trees (yeah right, like they grow up here and even if they did the moose would demolish them) and I need a nice piece of prime property, oh say about 80 acres or so, for my orchard, and was wondering if you were interested in selling that sort of worthless hayfield of yours to me ?"
All the people who have moved in around the field are like, "please don't sell, we love your field" and they especially love us taking care of their 80-acre front lawn for them . . . But this year our first cutting of hay hardly covered fertilizer costs, even with the exorbitant bale price we had to charge . . . we only get two cuttings a year, and the fall cutting is iffy at best . . . factor in personal time, equipment costs, etc. and it's definitely a losing proposition . . . I make just about as much money with only a fraction of the input of labor, equipment, etc. growing bedding plants on about 1/4 acre of land and perennial cut flowers on another 1/4 acre of land . . . I love raking hay and would definitely miss that but the day is coming when we will no longer want to deal with it . . . The rest of the hayfields in the immediate area (about 300 acres) are owned by an elderly man who can no longer manage them, none of his kids (naturally) are interested, and for sure the realtors have big plans . . .
Farmwife thanks for your post. I know my family that still farms face the same pressures as you do. While they are not mandated to buy insurance, they too speak of how the Corporate type farm are in fact milking the system for those subsidies.
The subsidies in fact hurt the family farm as they are pressured to put more land under cultivation then they want to.
As much as I grumble about the back breaking work of the farmer on the farm *I* grew up on, I would not have wanted to grow up anywhere else.
There really is no life like it and I think the Consumer needs a fundamental rethink of how much they take the farmer for granted.
There are far too many middlemen profiting off the work of the farmer.
(The people who labored on the farms were serfs….little more then slaves)
Actually slaves had it better cause they were worth something. Serfs are completly expendable since they have no value.
Permaculture!
http://www.youtube.com/user/earthactivistas
BTW just for some perpective. America has one of the largest shares of "arable land" in the world.
There are slightly over 400 million acres of arable land in America. this means on the order of 1.8 acres per capita (In 1800 there was around 100 acres per capita).
In 1825 the typical farm laborer could bring in around 80 bushles of grain per year. Back then cattle were not as widespread as today. While this in places like Russia, the example of Russia used because they were mostly grain farmers and were not as industrialized as other nations.
(The people who labored on the farms were serfs....little more then slaves)
80 Bushels can provide a subsistence diet for some 4 people.
Thus if the US returned to non mechanization practice they would need some 80 million farmers just to feed their own population. If each farmer had 1 horse that is now 80 million horses. A farmer will have to feed his horse and gain a living off on average 5 acres of land. You need about one acre of land to feed a horse.
You could have course use human labor rather then a horse as the Serfs of Russia did in 1825. They had it real good.
People talk about a vegan diet and how cattle produce methane and eat grain etc. Horses need more feed then do cattle. Not only that but with cattle at least you can eat the cow if need be. You can not eat the horse if it is providing you the muscle needed to farm your land.
You now have to think of where the horses will be kept. Buildings on the farm. The Storage of food on 80 million 5 acre farms. How much health care can a person buy off 5 acre sof land and or other goods we take for granted?
It is called subsitence agriculture for a reason.
The population of the US continues to grow as does that of the world, The amount of arable land shrinks. Not only that but Arable land vanishes to development at a rapid pace.
One of the primary causes of the massacres in Rwanda was the size of farm plots. In Rwanda the land was divided into smaller and smaller plants until the typical farm was less then 1/10th of an acre. This made it impossible for anyone to make any sort of living off that land. As a basically agricultural economy with little in the way of industry, this not only left those with farms with barely enough to feed themselves, it left tens of thousands totally landless.
In an analysis as to the various factors that led to the massacres, this was concluded to be a major reason for the genocide. It would "free up" hundreds of thousands of acres of land and alow farm sizes to grow.
BTW i am NOT a farmer. I merely grew up on the farm.
farmwife August 12th, 2008 1:16 am
GwNorth August 12th, 2008 3:13 am
I appreciate your telling it like it is. Real life experience as opposed to the dream world is always preferred.
Anyone that has ever worked a field knows that horses may be lovely, but reduce production. That old farming methods wouldn't come close to feeding even our nation. I believe right now only 3% of population is involved in farming. I think.
Agri-business is another matter entirely.
An admirable experiment. The issue is not that the old ways or the new ways are better. It is that they can be melded in a fashion that is good for all. Modern farming practices produce a lot of food, but at what costs? Depelted soils, chemical contamination, reduction in biodiversity, and the heavy use of fossil fuels are just a few. Sustainable agriculture is a must if we hope to survive as a species. A reduction in quantities of food produced you say? If the amount of food produced decreased so would populations, which would then reduce the quantities of food needed. Cruel sounding but biologically sound. Current world populations are in part due to the availability of food. Populations spike and in many areas the local soils can not sustain the levels of production the land initially produced (utilizing modern farm practices that require the $ to buy fertilizers, pesticides, etc.) . Famine results.
In Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan talks at great length about Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms. Check it out. http://www.polyfacefarms.com/
Many strong feelings about this topic.
We need to first understand that the U.S. doesn´t and never has fed the world. At best the U.S. has been a primary exporter of feed, not food. Anyone who cares to take the trouble could visit the loading docks of any large U.S. supermarket and see where most of the food is coming from, and it is not the U.S. Americans eat more bananas than apples. I´m not an ag statistician but I would bet that the net dollar value of agricultural imports exceeds the value of exports. I hope to be corrected on that one.
Another point. To grow food, in even larger quantities than at present, neither horses nor tractors are necessary. Technology offers alternatives, new and creative ones that don´t depend on petro-chemicals or petro fuels. As long as agriculture is business those alternatives won´t be developed. Who benefits by keeping things as they are?
As long as land continues to be an economic product we can expect it to be abused.
Agriculture itself is abusive because it is a business, subject principally to the demand of turn a profit, quick. A parking lot is often a better business use of a piece of land.
Romance aside, we learn from physical struggle to accomodate our bodies and minds to a physical world of biological realities. Dirt farmers can help disabuse us of our fantacies.
Appropriate technology is about technology, not running away from it--though it usually means running away from technologies foisted on us by business people pursuing their own benefits.
One clear message from the forty or more comments is the intensity of concern about land and its relation to people, animals, and the earth. Can we begin to pull this energy together to develop new, healthy, more expansive rural communities--and farms that entertain as well as exhaust us?
Sometimes we see old steam tractors - moster things- at ag fairs. They were coal fired and have HUGE boilers like a locomotive. There PTO's of course were leather or synthetic belts that powered other equiptment. Coal, although dirty, is a very effecient fuel - and lets face it steam is a workhorse an absolute workhorse.
GWnorth - tellin it like it is.
marc melchiori:
I am not denying that old-time farming was backbreaking work, and had a lot of drudgery. It has been overly romanticized. However, there is a huge reason to start incorporating some aspects of pre-twentieth century farming practices into our future farming, along with solar and wind energy, and other modern technology.
That reason is peak oil. Some will argue that point is in the future yet, but I believe we are there right now. From here on, the amount of available oil, and therefore diesel, pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizer, will be decreasing. Whether farmers want to or not, irrespective of environmental concerns, agriculture will gradually be forced to use a lot less fossil fuel inputs during the next 10-15 years. Somehow, things must change, to adjust to smaller available amounts of ANYTHING based on fossil fuels. So, farming practices will forcibly be altered, not from environmentalists demands, but from the world's oil wells running dry.
If someone invents an all electric tractor, and herbicides/pesticides based on something other than oil, than it will be possible to carry on the way you do now. But, don't count on it.
>>BTW, GW, by my calculations and your figures your family was putting up 800 tons of hay per day 32 truckloads. You must have had quite a few hundred acres. A farm this big and wiping your rear with catalog pages? Sounds like your kind of farming is not so prosperous either!
First my apologies as I mnade a typo. The 20000 bales of hay was per year.
We farmed 640 acres and My Uncle nearby farmed 720 acres and we shared equipment and "laborers" (read children).
When My grandfather came over he was given gratis a half section of land by the Government. The land was all bush and had to be cleared to turn into farmland. After about 12 years here he acquired another half section.
None of the "kids" but one inherited any land. Th eland was all left to the youngest son. MY fathe rand the other 8 brothers, all who wanted to farm had to buy their own land.
That means BORROW money. That means a lifetime of paying farm credit with whatever cash you could get when you got it.
Currently there are 245,000 some odd farms In canada...these feed some 32 million candaisn plus export food the world over> Canada is on eof the largest exporters of food in the world.
If people really think they can raise this amount of food, and feed that many people using horses , then they really are out to lunch.
My father and grandfather farmed with horses. They could raise no where near the amount of food a farm can raise today with far fewer laborers and farming more land. It was simply not possible.
They used to have threshing crews that would travel town to town with a single thresher to seperate the grain from the stalk. farmers had to wait for these guys to come around, then pay them in grain or money to do the work. If they were late on the list they might watch their crops be damaged in a frost.
yet these threshers saved a tremendous amount of time. They were machines...but could do the work quicker and more efficiently then the methods used before...
That method was hundreds of women coming from miles around to beat the stalks flails.
I suggest that everyone here check out Weston Price and see the reserch that he did regarding diet and indigeness populations.
Also I would recomend, for thoese of you who eat meat and have a conscience, yes that is possable, a book called Omnevors Delema.
And this has nothing to do with the subject, howerever, Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakouer is an excelent book!
The problem IS farmers emulate Monsanto, Cargill, Pioneer, Syngenta... and the world does starve.
Congratulations to the Jerry's for stepping off the tractor. And, for stepping off the security corporations hoodwink on farmers with a blindfold of YIELD BIG technology.
Tractor or not, farms need to own their own seed. The tractors don't mean much to a terminated field.
Stop seed privatization. Learn about GURT technologies, and other genetically engineered pollutants. Support CSA's, and give farmers the profits first. Break the shipping chain, and build local rails. Rebuild lost granary elevators.
Feed your communities first.
I am reading a lot here about what your folks use to do and how it was better. If it was better why are you not on the farm trying to make a living? I have been married to a 4th generation working farmer for 22 years. Most of america has no idea of what it is like to make a living on a family farm these days. Skyrocketing fuel and equipment costs are running us out of business. We can't even purchase a decent repair part. The last thing we fix is the next thing to break.
And thank you Thomas for saying if we all farmed like the Jerry's half the world would starve.
Not all of america is a corporate farm that can borrow huges amounts of money, declare bankruptcy, and then reform under a new name next week.
The backbone of this nation use to be the family farm. True innovation came from these hard working families.
Have you read todays article about how the Dems answer to health care problems is to make everyone purchase health insurance? Did you read about the new farm program? Do you know the new farm program says we HAVE to purchase crop insurance on every acre of farm land? Government ag money goes to the insurance companies, not the farmers. Big insurance gets the farm program money and then we HAVE to buy their insurance. It is a no lose deal for the insurance companies. It is breaking the back of the american farmer.
We quit growing cotton because the only way we could stay in business was to lie and cheat the insurance companies that were getting the farm support money. Our insurance man told us it wasn't a moral issue it was a matter of staying in business. Since when is lying and cheating not a moral issue we asked?
Sorry, I know this post is reactionary and not very well organized, but like a pimple under the skin these issues are getting painful and coming to a head. We have no health insurance, we can not send our kids to college, we have no retirement.
Monsanto and Cargil are our enemies too. We can not keep our own seed. We have to pay them for every seed we plant every year. We know our soil is dead from using chemical fertilizers. We are trying to be good stewards of the land because it is our greatest and most expensive resource. But what to do? We get paid just enough to grow our crops, not enough to live our lives or invest in our future.
GwNorth and the other modern farmers out there: If enough people emulated the Jerry's local systems throughout the world could feed their own communities. The system of the great U.S. of A. feeding the world is wasteful of every kind of resource - including manpower!
BTW, GW, by my calculations and your figures your family was putting up 800 tons of hay per day 32 truckloads. You must have had quite a few hundred acres. A farm this big and wiping your rear with catalog pages? Sounds like your kind of farming is not so prosperous either!
I bucked plenty of bales in my day and our 100 cow dairy was a much healthier place than the giant farms here in California today. We drank and sold raw milk from the bulk tank because it was CLEAN. These big dairies won't even let their workers drink the stuff they produce now because they might get sick.
Farmers and consumers need to look at food quality instead of trying to be "the low price leader" in the world (with the help of subsidies). Cheap food has brought us to childhood obesity, childhood diabetes, and now childhood high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
Wake up Americans!
GwNorth August 11th, 2008 7:41 pm
Speaks for me and speaks the truth! Chopping cotton sucks!
But we should be able to do better than factory farms.
djnoll August 11th, 2008 9:18 pm
The problem is, if everyone emulated the Jerry's, half the world would starve.
OH I quite agree that my father and grandfather owuld frown on many modern farming techniques.
Burning the land out with fertizlers is not something they would have supported. factory farms would have left them appalled.
Yes we were a mixed farm , growing grain, rasing cattle and chickens and pork, but all these animals were farmed without mass doses of drugs or being shoehorned into littl epens and corrals where they walked belly deep in their own manure.
THAT stuff I am opposed to.
None of my relatives farming use modern factory farm methods. But no way in the world can you convince them they will be better off using a horse and pulled plow over a tractor. :)
All of them despise the Mosantos...and Cargills. When you say "You guys have been conned" you have no idea of what you talk of. They are far more informed as to how these conglomerates operate then you are and have as little to do with them as possible.
As a Kid we used to do our bailing with small square bails and pull them off the back of the bailer one by one , stack em on a rack , haul them home and stack them again. We did about 20,000 bails a day.
This was working all summer from morning to night virtually non stop..these bails weighting to 80 pounds.
When I left they came out with this round bailer...big round bails that hold 30 of those smaller bails. A Forklift can lift it and put it on a rack then lift it off again.
THAT makes sense.
My mom before me used to do the old stooks...not even bails...they would go out in the field with a pitchfork and looad the lose hay onto a wagon..even more work.
I really do not think those that advocate non mechanization really know the amount of work that was involved on farms before we got those tractors and bailers and combines.
GWnorth is right on. We used newspaper cut into 6" x 6" squares for tp all put on a stick for our three seater.
RT drury - I don't get it?
Alaskamaid - mmmmmm - you ain't kidding about horses. Vet bills kill me.
thomas moore -your right. MOst folks here want to be gentlemen farmers with the romantic lifestyle. Come to think of it I would to - but it don't pay the bills.
Good to hear at least 50% are thinking correctly about this.
Nobody ever said that farming using old techniques was easy or something that most people today would want to do. We have become too lazy and too industrialized to want to do so. Unfortunately, we have also become too ignorant to do so. These guys have taken some of the best of new technology and put it together with old skills and made it work. They will only feed a small portion of the population and will probably never be millionaires, but they are part of the solution of sustainable living. For those farmers who have written here about the joys of industrial farming, unless you have large agribusiness contracts that lock in your production, which will be shipped out of this country or at the very least 1500 miles from where you are farming, you are barely making it without government subsidies. If you dislike what you do so much - then get out and sell to guys like the Jerrys who only want to feed a small local market. If more of you did that, maybe we would not be importing more of our food than we export. You guys have been conned by Monsanto, Pfizer, Conagra, and all the rest of the chemical freaks. The fathers and grandfathers you refer to would be appalled at how your production has decreased, your quality has disappeared, your dependence on their products annually, and your profits are committed to debt to these predators. They understood that self-sufficiency and supporting the communities food needs were their jobs main purpose. You have forgotten the role of farmers in developing and building this land. You have only seen the almighty buck, and thanks to your selling out to corporate agriculture, this nation and its security are at risk in this volatile world! HOORAY FOR THE REAL FARMERS AND THE REAL PATRIOTS OF THIS NATION, like the Jerrys!!!!
And just for the record, as a PhD student in sustainable living in the 21st century, the Jerrys will offer better solutions to community survival and economic growth than any of the "pity party" farmers who have posted here. This has become a proven fact through considerable research and practical application around the country. So get on the bandwagon, or sell out to those who understand.
marc, the best thing you can do for Kentucky is convince the people to become much more selective in who they do exchange with. They can keep the far-flung corporations out. The fossil merchant from Texas - out. The chemical merchant from New Jersey - out. The grain buyer from Chicago - out. The machine merchant from Minnesota - out. When the capitalist drives out to your farm, you stop your plow, walk over to him, ask him what he wants. When he tells you he has a new input for your production, ask him to let you see the recipe, the ingredients, the formula, right here, right now. When he laughs and says he's going to make the stuff and sell it to you, you laugh too. You start rolling on the ground laughing hysterically. Then you get up and say "no, you can eat cake" and you go back to plowing your field.
This is exactly the definition of "appropriate technology". We've just been too bamboozled by bigger, better, faster, more. Here is a link to a place the studies appropriate technology: http://www.dcat.net/
Farming by the old methods without mechanization.
Yeah that worked well. My dad grew up in a family of 20 kids..10 boys 10 girls and they were out from 5 in the morning until after the sunset during planting and harvest.
My dad had to quit school at grade six because all hands were needed on the farm. They shoed their own horses, had their own Blacksmith shop, built the barns, the House and buildings on their own. Dug their own wells, hauled their own water.
It was backbreaking work for very little reward.
If you asked my dad if he would wish this lifestyle on anyone and see people go back to "The Good Old days" he would think you were a looney.
One of his ten sisters managed to get secondary education. Thats all the family could afford to have away.
As to myself , I grew up with no phone, no running water an outhouse some 100 yards from the house to relieve oneself in. Trust me, when the winters hit 50 below, it was not romantic or getting back to earth to have to go out and sit on that wooden platform.
Nor was it any great joy to wipe ones backside with a page torn out of the Eatons Catalogue (Tho we did save the toy section and ladies underwear section for last)
Give me that old wasteful indoor flush toilet anyday along with hot running water.
PK
Hey all you are missing is the field negro. They were part of traditional farming too.
But back in the real world, these sorts of stories exist so that lazy so called liberals with fat bank accounts can feel good about themselves without actually doing anything. Its easy to be against war--just dont go and fight. But if you really cared about the planet and social justice you wouldnt buy into the worst parts of the system.
Instead of saving water and resources for poor people the way Frances Moore Lappe has advocated vegetarianism since the late 60s(I am all for the animal rights argument, its ethically a brick wall of logic that cant be debunked http://animalvegfaq.tripod.com but some narrow minded folks claim human issues are more important so there's that side of it--wasted resources, global warming etc )
just go out and buy "organic" meat from farms where they have horses doing manual labor like the good ol days,-and feel better about yourself in your narrow world bubble. Yeah, that's ethical and socially responsible. Not.
So selfish and irresponsible. Human rights. Yeah, its easier to talk than to walk isnt it.
Pigs do make great rototillers, as long as they can be contained, they are about the only thing short of very toxic herbicides that will keep our quackgrass under control, since they eat the roots . . .
Maintaining draft horses is very expensive itself, great if you're into it and can afford it and horses are a very nice animal to have around, but you can't just turn them off in the fall and go on vacation in the winter either.
I am always VERY impressed with how much work our farm equipment (medium sized Case tractors, skidsteer, etc.) can do on not much fuel. . .
anbaric_lite August 11th, 2008 6:24 pm
That sounds like a great commercial....now if you can just get Paris Hilton........
That's great-more animal slavery and unnecessary killing.
Go vegan--it saves water, land, prevents wildlife from being killed to protect livestock.
Do the math--you cant feed billions of humans with small farms like this.
Its just a "humane" meat fairy tale.
You care about people and the planet? Read the UN report on food scarcity and global warming.
Then go vegan.
Stop being so selfish-care about how others are treated, human and otherwise.
There will always be war as long as there are slaughterhouses.
Tolstoy
Three cheers for my homies Hicks and Neff!
Three jeers for you wizened, unhappy farts who never have anything good to say no matter what.
This is a beautiful fairy tale. Farming by the old methods can be quite charming and satisfying for the individual.
These guys are speaking about lifestyle, not a business or a sustainable production.
Thank you Common Dreams for printing more positive stories lately. I feel like I can breath again
Link to their site:
http://thejerrysfarm.com/
I'm surprised they didn't mention Wendell Berry who has been farming his family homestead in Kentucky(and writing about it) for many years. Three cheers for Hicks and Neff. We need more of them.
Great day in the morning . . . .
The new beginning of an sustained way of life.
Mother Earth News is full of these kinds of stories for those that might really be interested.
You do not need to try to feed the world. Just work on feeding yourself and some for your neighbors. Producing for a consumer society is not the solution. People must learn to live on less and work with each other. This may not be for all but it sure is working for some.
As a third generation KY famrer from MT Olivet KY this article is a lot of bull shit. before anyone makes any judgements about farming or KY please com and see me, we can sit for a spell and talk about how us farmers feed you and the rest of the world. Don't believe everyting you read. It romantic to hitch horses to a sickle bar and cut hay the way my grand dad did, then again he was feeding only his family and selling some of the rest. Grand dad was amazed when he saw the work a horseless tractor could do. PS he did not live past 63 - he broke every bone in his body becasue farming was so intensive on the human body. Please folks - get out of your homes and see how the other half lives before making a judgement call. Thats all I ask.
Water pumps were once powered by the wind.
That's a great step. Now, to stop Big Government from oversubsidizing agri-business and let the small farmers compete with Big Agro. And also, to make solar more accessible by reforming those Big Government zoning gag laws designed to politically restrict people's rights to install solar panels on their roofs.
Best news yet! Best wishes for these fellows, I hope they plan to have classes to educate those who have forgotten how hard work and reverence for the earth can provide sustainable living conditions.
Nothin' like bitter people venting on the Internets.
Keep it up kids.
With these two fellows combining old methods and new energy approaches and are willing to do the work necessary to build their dream then give them a pat on the back. Nobody said it was easy work, but I imagine that they get a good nights sleep knowing they are not contributing much to the degradation of the earth with tons of petroleum based products. You go, Guys!