when you speak of spam, what do you think of first pig parts or trash?

Some More Spam

       It is this time of the month I am constantly reminded of how much I am on the internet and of how much actual dependency I have on technology. I purchase a pass of 13 Gb (gigabytes) and I usually run out by the month’s end. This causes a little mini crisis in my mind as I say to myself, how am I ever going to get by on slow speed, instead of the gut ripping high speed action I am used to?  But you know what every month I get by without seeing an actual need to jump online and whip out the debit card and re-up my Gb worth of data to just make it through the end of my contract date.

       My internet provider has a contractual right to continue to provide me service till the time I need to re-up my contract, as they call it. I just don’t get it, at the speed they claim they are sending it to me normally. There is some difference between the regular speed and when I run out, but at times you could hardly tell. It still loads ads first and content later, making sure I know what there is out there for sale whether I am looking for it or not. This brings me to ponder on some points of just exactly what I am paying for. And just who in the heck is actually metering this stuff, and if they are who is watching them.

     Currently it is us the consumer who is watching the internet alone. If you are like me and consistently by the end the month always end up in the red when it comes to internet usage,  it makes you wonder if I am getting exactly what I am paying for and just what that is, or consists of. Part of it is spam, and if I had to guess, I would say more than half my internet usage goes to spam. Unwanted unused ads targeted towards me encouraging me to spend more money even on the same carrier I have already consigned to deliver me service. So in effect I am actually paying myself for spam.

    Questions like, if they know its spam then why are they still sending it to me. I get an average of 100 -200 emails marked spam per day I never open and all I do is just dump them, still am I paying for that crap coming through my mail box? Maybe if I opened each and every spam folder then I would have to pay the extra data. Still at that it is unwanted files with headings taking up data I am paying for. And how much data is needed to keep those rolling ads going, especially from your carrier and who is paying for that? Unfortunately I am for sure. If it appears on my screen then I am sure it went through the meter.

      I could imagine that in the dark belly of an Ip (internet provider) headquarters there is a thing called the meter room. Disgruntled or unfit executives are moved from the windowed offices in the top floors of their gleaming white enterprise and forced to do time monitoring the meters of each and every one of us that we must endure when we buy data from our carriers. The top executives only give them one directive and if they screw that up it is out the door to fight for another job in the Ip market. Armed with a pipe wrench and a bottle of vodka and the occasional joint one could scare up, their job is to keep the meters running. There is no turning down the meters and there is only way to go with the rate and that is up.  No daylight or union or even internet access for themselves as they roam from one meter to the next , making sure the meters are running on us, the consumers 24 hrs. a day whether we are looking at our computers and personal devices or not. It’s a tough job, occasionally turning the meters up a bit more and banging on them if they are stuck till data pours from them again eventually using up all your Gb .  And who is watching Joe the Ip guy stuck in the belly of the beast.

     No doubt it I Betty the bean counter in accounting as she constantly calling down to Joe the meter man telling him turn up the spam or tone it down depending on how much revenue the top floor needs to make ends meet. Otherwise besides us, the consumer, no one is watching or giving a damn if we are getting our money’s worth.

     Surely not the FTC, Federal Trade Commission whose job it is to assure that we are getting a fair shake from the internet companies we are dealing with. They are too busy with more important things like singling out a rogue stock investor who is acting on a stock tip he managed to wrangle a few extra bucks out of, while meanwhile the internet companies are gouging us each month for data we will never use or want, but have to take because we have no choice than to run it past Joe the meter man and Betty the bean counter whether we want to or not. There is only one way that the internet companies gauge their performance, and that is their way. There is no common standard of the business, or a congressman doing an investigation into why we have a spam box , because if we knew it is garbage then why are they sending it to us, Or looking at the issue of why we paying money to your internet provider to advertise on your own computer screen.

     No congressional investigation, or presidential action, or debate over legal implications is going to arise from our leaders on a national front and why is that? All of them in one way or another depend on the internet too, more and more. From campaign contributions to party favors of internet companies exchanging data, internet coverage, campaign contributions in exchange for basically a hands off policy towards internet regulation when it comes to raping the consumers. There is no standard and never will be among internet companies. As well there will be no special commission to monitor exactly what the consumer is paying for. Why bite off the hand that feeds you. This is a fight you never hear a congressman say is needed.

     Instead your congressman or presidential hopeful will inundate your inbox with messages of how important it is to elect him.  Even if you opt out of receiving those messages they will just send them to Joe the meter man to take care of. You will still get them regardless what you do. The internet is the easiest, less costly alternative to delivering spiel and rhetoric, wanted or not, espousing a candidates virtuous ascension to the top of the pile. At this point I would liken a politician at times to a truckload of dead babies. What is worse than a pile of dead politicians? A live one on the bottom eating its way to the top. He will stand on top of the rubble and those he had conquered and tell you how he is going to defend your rights, knowing all the while his speech is going to end up in the spam folder. Unseen unheard and quietly dispensed through the meters of Joe the meter man under the direction of Betty the bean counter.

     So really what is my concern if I don’t have that extra push, or incentive to buy extra data when I run out at exactly the same time each month?  Now if I could only have a penny for all those gigabytes I supposedly used in the last month, then  I would be a rich man. Imagine that an internet system that actually pays you to subscribe to them? What do I think I am, Google or something?

      Which brings me to my last point in all of this, imagine where you have a system where you pay them and advertisers pay them also for spreading their content into your living room almost instantaneously.  

       You, as the internet provider are in the middle with your hands out taking and never giving. It is hard for me to get excited about what any internet provider is offering in terms of public service as they have nothing but money and a unique advantage of taking but hardly giving from any source it can. Generosity is not going to be wasted on the likes of Joe the meter man who still has to buy his data somewhere because his company has few benefits for the wage earners on the lower floors. So when Google or T-Mobile  is offering to help the poor and wretched refuse, in this world a chance to  hook up to the internet in some far off distant land where they can barely afford to buy a used computer , let alone the internet coverage to go along with it . We know it’s because the internet wizards want those lazy bastards to quit drinking cows blood and start to man up and hook into the internet like the rest of us poor slobs as we contribute to the Ip stockholders success and suddenly get shoved in the front of the internet bus proverbially as we run over them in their with amazement at what technology can do, as you sit in front of your laptop sipping on some cow’s blood waving off the flies. I paint such a pretty picture of where internet usage is going. But the truth is, internet providers are not going to stop until every seal clubbing, fish trawler immigrant in the middle of the ocean is hooked into the internet and can’t live without them. As banks of computers miles long, monitor our every move as we humans suddenly become overwhelmed with technology and a refusal to unplug once plugged in.

      Sadly I have to admit that even I am dependent on technology and the ease at which I can continue to bring you awareness of how we are slipping into a large whole with nothing but glass sides as we reach out and paw for even a grip we can to keep from sliding into the abyss below, sadly a  place where everyone is connected. You are connected to Joe the meter man and Betty the bean counter as suddenly they are just a click away, where computers track your every move and consumer demand,  and then tailor a screen ad to entice you to spend your last dollar on what ? Can you eat data?

       There is an old farmer saying that comes to mind and it pertains to horses but I imagine it also applies to internet providers also. If you can’t eat it, screw it, or it keeps you warm in the winter. Then do you really need it?

dog days of summer

Today is National Dog Day

Today is Babe’s Day

 bud, babe,and zoey standing. bud and zoey have passed , but are never forgotten 

      Well she started her day out in typical fashion rousting me out of bed sympathy for her thinking she needed to go outside. Instead it w a ruse to let the kittens loose so I would feed them and then when I wasn’t looking she would come and clean up what was left. This is why Babe is so tolerant of the kittens it’s because they are new source of food she isn’t used to, or is supposed to eat. Not that she eats kittens, instead it is the dry cat food and the cans of Friskies cat food she desires.

        She gets her fair share of special treatment even though I have the cats. I take her with me in the pickup to Mc Donald’s and the store. We cruise through the drive through and can be seen eating our dinner in the parking lot. I usually grab her two Mc Doubles with cheese plain with a glass of water. If it is really hot then I grab an ice cream cone and water. I have to tear apart the Mc Doubles and feed them to her in bites she can deal with on the seat of my truck, this is usually followed by a drink of ice water.  She slowly picks through the burgers first taking the meat and cheese out and then if she is still hungry will come back for the bun, Most of the time it is wasted.

babe protecting her stick 

       The ice cream cone has to held and turned as she goes into a trance licking on it. She is not interested in the fact it may be dripping or that it needs to be turned otherwise the sticky ice cream will run down and drip off my elbow. There is no doubt in my mind she wouldn’t lick it off , still it is in my best interest to avoid a sticky situation and just hold it and keep turning it as she is licking on the cone. This works till she gets to the cone.  Then it is time for me to work on my cone as I have a couple of minutes she is on auto pilot using her tongue to lap up what is left of the ice cream in the bottom of the cone. She is usually in dog heaven by the time she finishes her cone. My only concern is to make sure I have my ice cream cone in one hand, and hers in the other and that I don’t confuse the two, and make the mistake of licking on the same ice cream cone.

that is actually one of her sticks she is carrying around. 

      Babe was a stray I found on a back road close to my house about 6 years ago. She was lying in a ditch and looked to have been hit and with sympathy since i had German Shepherds also along with the fact that as I drove by her eyes pleaded with me to stop. I couldn’t stop where I was at as it was between two hills and they were steep and if I stopped where she was I would have been blind to other drivers and stood a chance of being hit myself. So instead I went to the top of the next hill and parked and hit my flashers and exited the truck and somehow left the door open unintentionally. I started walking down the hill talking to her as she kind of perked up. I really didn’t know what I was doing or going to do if she was hurt bad. As I was about half way down the hill she jumped up out of the ditch to my amazement and ran right past me and up the hill and climbed right into the truck and across the seat and huddled and shivered as she sat as close to the other door as she could and after I huffed and puffed my way up the hill to try and catch up with her that I finished opening the door to enter when looked at her and said I guess you are ready to go. She was.

        I took her to Mc Donald’s, as a day before I saw a deer carcass that had been hit in the same location as where I had found her and figured that she had been eating on it so bought her a quarter pounder and then went on to work where I was just doing some stuff at the shop and soon I was heading home. I already had two dogs Zoey and Bud both of which I had for several years and really didn’t need another one but didn’t know what else to do with her.  Babe soon made herself a member of the pack eventually rubbing noses with Zoey in some knock down drag out fights as the two females who were both of alpha mentality continued to butt heads. This kept on until Zoey eventually passed from old age and then Babe took up a new passion barking at me while I was on the tractor. Where I had found her a family had lost their house due to bankruptcy and had to move , I saw cats roaming in that area the day before and figured like the cats babe had been abandoned as she had a collar but no tags and no way to identify the owner. I checked the local newspapers but found no lost do ads for that area.

     Bark, bark, bark, to the point of irritation is babe’s mantra while I am on the mower or anything. it could be the chainsaw , she sit and bitches at me for running the noise maker and she will bark then take her feet, paw at the ground, and throw dirt up over back or bite at the grass I have just mowed and pull a big hunk of thatch out, as if she is mad at the world. To say the least she is a trip. At the same time she is the protector, she is always with me wherever I go following me on countless trips around the field when mowing hay or plowing the field. If she isn’t with me then I have to go looking for her as it begins to worry me. She is never far away and has never missed a night sleeping beside me on the floor in the house, except when I had went on vacation at different times.

     During those times she would hang around the house, but would slip away down the lane looking for me and would wait patiently sleeping in the garage until I came back and then would let everyone know with such enthusiasm with barking and carrying on, that it makes you glad that at least one person understands how important you are. Although she is not a person, I still respect her for her love and devotion and would never think of her less than a person.

     It is funny to watch her at times when I am going somewhere with the pickup as she has pretty well trashed it and makes it her own, including a funky smell you could attribute only to a stinky dog, of which she proudly enjoys as she works constantly at infusing different scents into her coat and then transfers to the seat of my truck on our outings. Now she jumps in the truck only after making sure I am there to catch her if she doesn’t make it. She is getting older now and isn’t quite so adept at getting in like she used to. Still she is always on the ready to go. The window has to be down on her side as she leans against the armrest she tore off after someone had conveniently parked beside me with their little schnauzer in the front seat of their car. Maybe they were thinking that the two of them would be company  while we both inside shopping , instead I returned to the truck to find the armrest in Babe’s mouth and obviously terrified schnauzer in the other car apparently glad the windows were up . All I could do was just shake my head and get in the truck and go on.

some dogs have sticks,

      I will exit the truck in the summer and pretend I am turning on my security system knowing no one is going to even come close to the truck when she is in there. She is silent but deadly although she may not hurt you , she could easily scare you to death as I saw one old lady one day and fell instantly sorry for her as Babe lay in wait. The woman had parked next to the truck in her vintage old car that looked as if she had it for ages and as she exited the car she was busy paying attention to locking the doors and was unaware of Babe sitting in the truck and as I got closer to the truck I saw the woman apparently get a little close to the truck and up Babe came barking her head off, through the open window. I thought the woman was going to drop a load. Babe wasn’t going after her instead she was merely in her own way letting her know she was too close to the pickup. I doubt if that woman will ever forget again. In fact I think she now parks as far away from any brown ford pickups as she can. This is my babe and I salute her knowing I can’t control her instead she is a free spirit that takes care of her own , and I am more than glad to be in that circle.

babe has logs!!!! 

chickens and bee stings.

Update on farm

8-24 -2015

Farm to Table Food

   Or is that a Chicken on My Table   

        

     Well my original 8 chicks I had bought earlier this year had been whittled down to 3 due to coon attacks in my chicken house at night. After frustration of trying to stem the tide of chickens disappearing, I resorted to moving them to the main barn where they could roost with Whitey the seasoned pro chicken that has been here the longest and is still laying eggs. I have had Whitey from the first time I started taking retired chickens and giving them a home.

     Whitey has seen other hens come and go and in the meantime has maintained a schedule whereby you can almost tell what time of the day it is by watching Whitey as she makes her rounds. I have found her in the late afternoon fluffing and cleaning herself in the sun and dust as she burrows into the dust and fluffs it up over her back and soaks up the sunshine.

     In the morning around noon she will go and sit in the garage and lay an egg if she is up to it that day as now not every day she is laying. Currently she has a nest behind the guard that fell off the baler m which gives her a sense of security. After laying an egg, she announces to the world the remarkable miracle she had just accomplished. It is a miracle due to her age. She was an old chicken when I received her and it has been at least 5 years I have had her.

whitey and old red contemplating crossing the road 

      Well the Rhode Island reds took to following Whitey around and it has greatly increased their chance of survival. They have completely abandoned the chicken house for the garage, they still head up there in the midday and can be seen taking dust baths and eating the laying mash pellets I leave for them there, they will eat a little but instead are into the free ranging much better and must be satisfied as they have good feed available but still prefer the insects and doing it natural. This saves a lot in feed.

       The free ranging thing is being taken a bit too far at times. If the door is left open to the house, one hen comes right into the house and heads for the cat food bowl and helps herself while strolling through the house. Sometimes I leave the door open to allow the kittens in and after calling I go on about my business doing other things, only to be surprised to finding a chicken strolling through my house. Shooing her out and getting her excited only leads to her depositing a token of her appreciation in the form of fecal matter on the floor.

       This is the same hen that now is laying eggs in the animal crate outside my door. I was surprised to find an egg in the bare crate one day and after watching the crate the next day I saw the hen going about her business. It is nice and convenient to have her laying right outside my back door. The ducks have had nests there before and seem to have an affinity towards wanting to have nests close to the house. It is nice to see my red beauties starting to produce now.  The eggs are deeply appreciated.  The two other hens are borrowing Whitey’s nest and depositing their eggs there. Attempts to make nests for them in old planter pails hasn’t produced any results, instead they prefer to lay eggs on the ground in crude nest burrowed into the dirt of the barn floor. I added straw to the carrier at my back door and managed to get a picture of the hen sitting in it.

    Another subject I would like to touch on today is bee stings. I was operating the tractor helping a neighbor do some work and was just about to quit for the day, and was doing some ditch cleaning when I happened on a nest of hornets and I was amazed on how quick they swarmed onto me and attacked me violently as I was trying to get away from them and swat at them as they were stinging me. I must have been stung 20-30 times in less than twenty seconds after hitting the nest. I finally gave up on getting the tractor out of there because I needed to get away from the swarm that was attacking me so I just reached down and turned off the tractor and jumped off and ran off away from them.

    I still had a couple after me and one had managed to get inside my shirt and nailed me on my chest and arm. I managed to swat them away finally, but not before them inflicting a fair amount of damage on me personally. This is a hazard anytime you are out in the country and made me aware of some emergency items on should be able to get a hold of immediately after. The neighbor quickly offered me Benadryl and an Epi pen. I am not sensitive to bee stings, having been stung many times before. But I don’t recall receiving such a large dose of bee stings in one setting as I did yesterday. I was hurting bad and loaded up my equipment and heading home after taking 5 doses of Benadryl.

    The Benadryl knocked me out early and probably did a lot to reduce the swelling. In the middle of the night I woke up and took some more as I was still hurting pretty good and after that I woke up this morning still smarting from the stings but they are significantly better.

     The point I am trying to make of this is that I found myself inadequately prepared for that emergency without the Benadryl.  I doubt if my recovery from the stings would have been quite so quick and a heck of a lot more painful. The Epi pen is also nice and great to have around if you live in the country and could possibly save your life if you have a violent reaction to the bee stings. It is just a good idea to have both of these around to prevent a minor tragedy turning into a major one. The pain that lingers from the bee stings is a reminder of how important it is to be prepared. If I would have been home by myself when this happened I wouldn’t have been so lucky I feel as I am now. If it would have been just one sting I would probably hurt, but would be ok but one never knows how many stings you can take before they overwhelm your body’s system and shuts you down. It was a real fear of mine at the time.

     I never had to use the Epi pen but it was great to have it available.

   

most flowers are like profits, nice to have , but hardly worth eating.

So What Does it Take to be a So Called Farmer Today?

And do I really want to be one?

Conclusion

        I have briefly out lined some of my past heritage, as well as what the modern definition of farming is and now I want to share with you my thoughts of being a farmer today. I am not a typical farmer and refused to be seen as someone who follows the mold set out by corporate farming. I still believe we need  enough small farms to offset the effects of corporate farming would have, if allowed free to roam in a world market. I also believe we waste to much energy and resources sending food to foreign nations when we could better use that food at home.

      Literally and physically, corporate farming and the ideal of the American farmer is being shoved down our throats as we eat more processed foods made from genetically modified organisms or GMO’s, and these are being produced by the American farmer today to the rate of 80 percent of our corn and 90 percent of our soybeans are derived from a GMO process. GMO’s are designed to work with glycol phosphate , a weed killer and also 2-4 d , one of the so called safe weed killers that made up agent orange and manufactured by DOW chemical corporation. It is big business for them and the equipment manufacturers like John Deere who manufacture equipment specifically designed to monitor production of field crops and application rates of pesticide and herbicide rates. An exclusive contract specifically ties you in to reporting field results to them, as well as limits your ability to reuse any of their seed. GMO’ S are banned as well as glycol phosphate in Europe because little is known of the long term effect it will have on plants and animals or the environment and most assuredly us somewhere in that food chain.  Still you cannot pick up a package of food here in the United States and see where soy beans or corn meal is not used in processing somewhere down the line. It is fed to our chickens, beef, hogs, and then shoved down our mouth till we could scream enough. But all you would hear is gargling noises as we would  choke on the stuff if we think about what all goes into it.

      Is this the kind of farmer I want to be to poison my neighbors, friends, and family and subject them to a slow lingering death as they grow masses in their body for unknown reasons? Not hardly. All the while, farmers are competing on a world market to shove our products down unsuspecting third world markets. Though they are not as ignorant and backward as we would like to think they are. China one of the world’s largest markets just recently rejected a shipment of our corn known to be of a GMO variety and it was sent home supposedly.  Leaving the exporter with the tab of transporting it there and who knows where afterwards, probably Vietnam or somewhere else as I doubt they brought it back to the United States.

     Still if you look at what they sent them, they sent the best part of our fields; the grain is where all the nutrients of our production process lies. It is fertilizer the herbicide, the soil that makes it up and sunlight and water it took to grow it. It also represents the fuel oil and machinery costs, labor, and the right conditions to make it all possible. What do they give us back for our effort except cash? You can’t plant cash, and you can’t eat cash , where are we going to plant in the future when our fields are just plain worn out. It has happened before in the cotton fields down south as year after year they planted cotton till he cotton wouldn’t grow no more. It is going to be the same here with our fields. We apply high cost fertilizer the same stuff used to blow up the Oklahoma Court house by Timothy Mc Veigh , and that is Ammonium Nitrate as one of the key ingredients of providing the necessary nitrogen we need to grow crops. What happens if we have a disruption in the process or can’t find the necessary ingredients to efficiently produce these crops? We will have a total melt down of our food supply here at home and abroad , because we became dependent on corporate America to provide all our food for us.

      We will be scouring landfills and recycling the human waste we buried there when we burned it in incinerators because we felt that it was unsanitary to reuse it. Human waste is also part of the resources we are providing foreign countries when we sell them our grain. Do you think a Vietnamese farmer who grows tilapia in a pond somewhere in Vietnam cares one bit where his waste goes when he takes a dump in the floor of his hut perched over the pond as he chows down on a corn dog? He has been doing it that way for years and has no inclination to waste anything. He knows his waste will go to feed the tilapia fish he eats, and soon he will sweep his catch up in a net and sell it at the market where it will be packaged for resale back to the U.S.. Oh yeah the third world countries are giving us back something, a load of crap , we eat heartily when we head out to Crapshack Joe’s and have the seafood platter. In fact when our soils are depleted we will be buying off of third world countries who utilize the human waste as a resource, because there food will be cheaper since it is grown more organically. Do I want to be a part of this world market? I guess I would if I was chairman of ADM –Archers Daniel Midland corp.,  as they know what is most important to their success and that is consumers eating their crap daily. Archer Daniels Midland also owns Mc Donald’s as one of its subsidiaries and provides a substantial amount of corn and soybeans to the food industry and to companies under its umbrella plus to a lot more that isn’t.

      Look at the fuel costs for something like dog food where we can send the corn to China and process it into food that makes our pets sick and kills them and ship it back to your home town, and stock it on shelves in your dollar store for you pets to eat. Every step of the way we are using fuel to make a twenty pound bag of dog food, so what does it take 5 gallons of fuel to send it that far and bring it back and still sell as cheap as they do. I can’t understand why they would want to do it except dog food manufacturers over there in china are the cheapest around, if you look at the grain costs plus all he ingredients and figure in thirty percent profit per bag, still you can hardly afford to sell a bag of dog food for 7. 50. Still they do. The only thing I know is the Chinese must work for a quarter a day and all the dog food they can eat. Do I want to be part of this madness called farming? Not hardly. Somewhere on Wall Street and on Chicago market of trades and in the boardrooms of capitalist America this all sound good as long as their profit to be made. But I can’t eat profit when our fields sit fallow because it doesn’t pay to put seed in them no more, as we have created drought conditions burning fuel to make food for ourselves and our materialistic needs.  That is not the farmer I want to be.

      So to be a so called farmer is not really something I desire to be in any way. To be accused of being one even pisses me off more. As I don’t really care to become part of this rat race, I never have. I enjoy my life as it is. Yes I eat some foods I know or question how good it is for me but I still need to eat. And since we have all bought into this world market thing, we are limited to our choices at the local grocery stores. It’s not like we have a local butcher shop specializing in home grown food anymore. I grow some of my food but like you and as a single person it is easier just buying into the scheme of things and as there are few choices for organic and it is much higher in cost. Head to the Raisin Rack and see what I mean. So I will do what I can and learn to eat in a more healthy way the best I can, and hope for the best just like the rest of us. That and grow my own berries for sale to the public. Healthy naturally grown berries right here on the farm in a pick your own plot. This is the type of farmer I want to be. 

for every 10 farmers leaving , one is becoming a farmer

So What Does it Take to be a So Called Farmer Today?

And do I really want to be one?

Part 2

    So when I was ready to go to AG school, the common theory and supporting evidence said that for every one farmers going into farming in 1974, there were 10 farmers leaving the business. This was enough information for mom to prove to me that her choice for my future career was the right path.

    Numbers are misleading and surely this one was. The farmers leaving the business were a lot of old school farmers who had been doing the same thing year after year with limited success, making a living the hard way, and the only way they knew how.  Technology was ushering its way into farming where it required you to accept and understand new technology to increase yields by managing your farm in a different way where you tried to maximize every acre under your charge by the latest of technological advances.

    Fertilizer and pesticide were your friends. The old cultivators for growing corn were on their way out. Larger more modern equipment capable of plowing hundreds of acres in a one pass scenario saved fuel and increased the tilth or texture of the soil, and when you combined these tractors and implements with herbicide and pesticide tanks you reduced your passes over the field even more. Reports of farmers combining planters with these units in open fields where you were doing thousands of acres of planting made these units ideal.

    All this technology was costing money, the farmer of the year for the state of Ohio said he never expected to get out of debt in his lifetime. He expected to keep turning over any profit he made into buying larger farms and improving his technology so that he could farm more acres with less labor. This is fine in theory but in reality, you hope that your health holds out, that interest rates don’t rise and your wife doesn’t file for divorce. So along with this interest in bigger farms the banks were requiring you to incorporate your farm which offered many benefits including tax benefits not normally granted to farmers and offered the banks a way to consolidate their investment as now it was much easier to take back the farm and when your wife took the kids and ran away with Earl the mechanic, and you had a really bad year trying to plant and harvest.  Your father in law was soon out the farm he had worked for the last thirty years having put it up for collateral in order to get an operating loan you had to default on because you had no crop insurance at the time. That was all right, because the bank already had plans for your property to be taken over by the corporate farmer down the road who needed the acreage to expand his dairy operation.

      Foreign trade deals with China and other third world nations allowed the U.S.  to become a leader in exporting grain to other countries. This in turn required farmers to become even more productive as technology again increased as equipment manufacturers like John Deere and Case saw that they could add more features to their tractors and began refining their designs, at the same time tractor prices began to climb till now an average tractor you could buy for around 100000, almost as much as  farm. This isn’t a low end tractor instead it is a tractor you would need to provide yourself with a comfortable living today.

     It would be enough to farm say 300 acres in a grain operation. it is by no means your only piece of equipment as you would also need today a high boy sprayer worth around 60000, a planter equipped with sensors and tied into your GPS on the tractor to monitor planting rates and fertilizer being applied to the seed, increasing or decreasing the amounts to as it relates to the planters positon in the field and recording the results to be coordinated with the combines record to see if you need to increase fertilizer usage for the next year. It takes a tech engineer to trouble shoot all the problems that can go wrong with setups like this. Proprietary contracts are being written by equipment manufacturers that now require you to contact the manufacturer for the keys to unlock the computers on these machines, making them so that farmers can no longer work on their own equipment despite how old the machine is.

     A price tag for an operation like this where one man can operate and own an operation by himself would be around 1.5 million with over a half a million in equipment alone and cash renting the land as opposed to owning it.  So what are your payments on 1. 5 million and then you add seed and fertilizer costs of which they are using genetically engineered (GMO) varieties designed to be used with herbicide specially designed to maximize yields on your varieties of corn and soybeans specifically selected for your growth requirements and land use.  As well fuel on a yoyo price where one year it is up and next it is down, and then couple that with your household expenses. No wonder your wife wants to run off with earl the mechanic after all he makes more money fixing your John Deere and the equipment, than you can farming 300 acres. Suddenly you find yourself a slave to technology and no longer a farmer but just a piece of the puzzle equipment manufacturers haven’t figured out how to replace just yet.

     But there is hope even in the worst case scenarios of a bust year, and that is if you signed your land up with the government and have all the production figures for your land and if there is a declaration of federal assistance available. You can have crop insurance to pay you a minimum amount so that you can continue making the payments and hope for a better year. This is what farming is all about today and if it sounds confusing there are agricultural advisors out there who can point you in the right direction and look over your shoulder and into your bank accounts to maximize your yields and profits , of course for a price, and of course,  no liability if they are wrong.

        I can remember looking at a farm over the hill from where we are now and we thought about expanding our operation when I was younger. Boy in some ways I am glad we never did as then I would have felt compelled to stay put doing what a lot of farmers do today, working daylight to dark trying to make a buck to pay the mortgage and live another day. It can be lonely as hell sitting there in the cab of a tractor worrying about how all of it is going to work out in the end. Whether when you sum up your life’s work whether you will be satisfied with what you have accomplished.  

       And as far as that 1 farmer going into business for every ten leaving goes, well technology has in the same time replaced 100 farmers for every one going into business.  Huge corporate farms will be the order of business in the future as more and more small farmers will be squeezed out of farming to make way for more technologically advanced equipment the small farmer can’t buy. I seriously doubt that if a person wanted to go into business today could hardly find the financing available to let him get started on an operation large enough to provide him with a substantial income . You would have to come up with a sizeable down payment so large it is beyond the scope of the normal man when applied to today’s standards of farming in the United States. This is sad and a poor reflection on our country in the land of opportunity where many a man has made a fortune first by owning a farm. This is one opportunity that is quickly being further out of reach of the common man.

been called a lot of names maybe so called isn't so bad.

So What Does it Take to be a So Called Farmer Today?

And do I really want to be one?

Part One

     I was recently accused of being a so called farmer and it kind of got me thinking, and I came to some conclusions that if I was supposed to be a farmer today that depended wholly on farm income to exist , would I want to be that person? I would say most assuredly not. With most professions, things change as technology improves and given enough years the profession of your choice barely resembles the same practice years before, when my great grandfather and my grandpa were farming. This is no different for farming than any other profession.

     My great grandfather was a road tender and farmer and a sawyer to make ends meet in Monroe County in southern Ohio. He had the first steam engine tractor in Monroe County and would travel from farm to farm threshing wheat. Back then one neighbor would help the other on major jobs like the threshing of wheat. Usually the owner of the power plant would be paid for his services and after the wheat was threshed, the thresher would hook his thresher to the steam engine and move to the next farm and start again. You knew who your neighbors were as you worked with them daily in the summer during threshing times and ate dinner at their tables and told stories till dark, then took team of horses, whatever family you had brought along to help with threshing and wagon and went home , did some chores and was in bed early to get up early the next day and be back  in the field throwing shocks of wheat that were heaped in piles drying in the sun on to wagons to be taken to the thresher.  The thresher would separate the wheat from the chaff or straw and pile the straw in a huge mound while the wheat would be bagged for seed next year or to be ground and used to make bread for the table or to be fed to livestock. This also worked for oats and other cereal grains.

these pics were taken at algonquin mill , petersburg landing.

    When the threshing was done then they would be milling lumber for building houses, barns , covered bridges , or stores, as wood was the most commonly used building material and readily available in the hills down there in Monroe county where money was tight and jobs even harder to find. Grandpa used to take a team of horses out into the woods and cut down a tree and haul it up out of the woods and back to the mill where the steam engine would now be parked on the hill above the old farmstead  at a sawmill it would power.  After a pile accumulated they would spend a day sawing them into lumber for sale to neighbors or the county for different projects going on.

covered bridge at lanternman's mill 

    All the while every farm had a couple of cows, a team of horses, chickens , pigs, and  a couple of cats and a lot of kids to help with all that needed done to keep a family going in those days just before the depression. The only major difference the depression had on those back then, was that you traded more labor for those things you didn’t have, money was tight an little to go around , instead labor was plenty as most were out of luck and in a hard place , so bartering allowed them to get by.  An old friend recently told me that he never knew they were poor back then as he said everyone was in the same shape so being poor was normal.

    My great grandpa also tended roads back then for the state of Ohio. There were very little paved roads and the automobiles were different and rugged, used to the hard dirt roads that would jar them till they would squeak and squeal as they went down a road bouncing from rut to rut with fenders a flapping. Today’s cars would hardly last if faced with driving on some of those roads back then. It was nothing to climb down in a creek and cross it as opposed to driving over a bridge, in some places down there in Monroe county, you can still find crossings like these people still use. High water would make the crossing obsolete and forcing you to return to where you came from, or forcing you to detour.

      Mud holes were a common place feature of roads back then and my great Uncle Dewey told me a story about how him and a friend of his thought they would play a trick on this old guy who would sit by a mud hole waiting for cars to pass by charging them a quarter to hook up to his team of horses before crossing the mud hole , or if you felt lucky you could venture on your own with your car into the mud hole and hopefully you could make it to the other side with your old tin Lizzy and pay nothing. But if he had to hook on to you in the middle the charge was a 1 dollar, a lot of money back then.  

      Folks kinda thought he was slow, including my uncle who thought he would play a trick on the old guy by asking him if he was going to be around later that night when he came back through. My uncle and his buddy had planned on doing some celebrating, and they were going over into the other county because Monroe had been a dry county for years. They really had no intention driving drunk, even back then, and had planned on spending the night in the town they were visiting. My uncle asked if he would be there at the mud hole to pull them on through.  

     The old farmer looked at him and spit a wad of backy juice on the ground and asked suspiciously how long it would be before they came back through as he was hooking their vehicle up to pull them through the mud hole.

    My uncle said “Maybe somewhere between 10 and 12 at the latest.”

   The old farmer took his quarter from my uncle and eyed it suspiciously as if he had just made it and after assuring it was real said; yes for sure he would be around. The old farmer at that said “Get up there Sadie.” And at that the horses took up the slack in the chain and the horses and car started slogging through the mud to the other side.

       As my uncle sat there comfortably in the seat of his car, he started wondering, just what it was that this old guy was going to do till midnight to keep himself busy.  After reaching the other side of the mud hole and as the old farmer was unhooking the chain and just before my uncle pulled away, he asked the old farmer just what he was going to do between now and later on tonight to keep himself busy till they supposedly returned to the mud hole to be pulled through again. The old farmer looked at them, and leaned his dirty sweaty body up against the fender of his car and smiled a backy juice toothless grin and said.

     “Haul water.”

      This joke was a time capsule of what the roads were like back then, and it was my great grandpa’s job to drag the roads with wooden drags smoothing out the humps and making it so that cars could pass as well as horses and carriages or the old farm wagon. The roads were still your main system of transportation in areas like this. It was the way to town. How the doctor came to your house when you were sick. Or how the neighbors would come to help at threshing time and keeping them passable even in the winter was still a very important job, as it is today.

     Even back then to be a farmer meant you had to do a lot of things to just make a go of life and have anything. Course back then almost everybody was a farmer to an extent as very few people lived in the city and even those that id still had a chicken coop or a pig sty in the back yard. What one farmer didn’t grow like hogs or cattle, another did and traded him for eggs or corn his family didn’t. Stores only sold the staples of flour, lard , sugar and items like that you needed,  or those things you couldn’t grow on your own , or tools and seed to grow them with.

    Farmers worked from the time they could walk till the day they died, and many times it wasn’t that long as compared to today. Farmers would come down with pneumonia or other diseases for which there was no cure then and soon the whole family structure was in peril. Many times kids were parceled out to other family members to finish raising them after the head of the family or the mother was wiped out from disease.

this pic and one above is of lanterman's mill youngstown , oh. 

      It wasn’t easy being a farmer back then any more than it is now. Only now it is whole lot different. Technology has allowed us to live longer and to plant smarter with machines costing hundreds of thousands of dollars planting seeds that are also of a smart technology. Tomorrow I will go into more of what it takes to be a so called farmer of today. In fact this will be part one of three part series I intend on writing , with the last part exploring why I could care less if I am a so called farmer.

myodb

Response to Comment

    Yesterday I received a comment regarding my treatment or lack of treatment of my animals . I believe the commenter needs a response because for sure they are understandably agitated by my decisions to have and care for a cat. The commenter said :

Anonymous said...

I sure hope your going to be a responsible pet owner and get those kittens fixed.Nothing pisses me off more than a so called farmer that has cats running around fighting, breeding,and spreading disease. It's very sad.

August 16, 2015 at 5:26 PM 

I take offense to so called in the first place, being a fourth generation farmer and having grown up on a farm and at times milking cows and spraying milk into the mouths of our cats as a youth, to living and working on different farms where cats have always been around, and the fact that I have forgotten more about farming than this person has ever done in his/ or her life. I believe I deserve a little more respect than being referred to as so called .

      Nothing pisses me off more than someone who can’t wait for the rest of the story to come out or who has evidence that I in fact am responsible for the negligence I am accused of. I do in fact have Lily right now at a veterinary clinic in Minerva being spayed. When I brought Lily home I wasn’t prepared to have her spayed but nature being what it was , soon she was in heat and then pregnant. Don’t know about you but for me it is hard to have a cat spayed when I know she is pregnant. She had the kittens and I have faithfully been there to help her through the delivery of the first one and subsequent delivery of all six, and have helped provide clean beds and have fed the kittens 3-4 x daily since they have been eating on their own. They have never wanted for food, and although they have pushed me to my limits at times, I find them to be a source of great amusement at others.

     Regardless of who you are my cats will grow and each will be spayed or neutered as the case may be until all six are fixed. I thought about adopting them out but didn’t want to take the chance that someone would get them and end up a fertile stray somewhere. I will take care of the sterilization of them prior to adopting any out.

     Besides being good company, I also expect my cats will keep field mice and rats at bay. I am tired of chipmunks. Field mice coming into my house, and I have seen rats in the barns before having the cats around. They were taking over, and finding mouse feces in my drawers is more than I can take. So it is a choice, have cats or deal with mice and other small vermin. Personally I would rather have cats around. Lily is a good hunter and tries to provide, now more for sport than necessity. I think she understands I will provide for her. Hopefully she will teach her young when the opportunity arises. If I have to keep all six plus lily till they die, it is of no consequence to anyone else but me and is my problem. Well-meaning individuals who feel it is there moral duty to admonish me can basically shove it up their ass, because they have no idea about me or what I have in mind besides what I share on my blog. It is all a work in progress much like my life. I care about all animals and not just cats. And maybe I am a so called farmer only to the extent I do care about animals and don’t eat them or abuse them, I feed, care, and respect and enjoy their company, all of them but at the same time let nature do its thing in the process of natural selection. Now humans are a different story. 

timeless treasures for the taking

Just When I Thought Knew Everything

     I had the occasion to slip out yesterday and put behind me a project way past due and that was a haircut and trim. I doubt that being able to present myself in the most favorable way will be of any consequence to anyone but me and my mirror , but still I have no intentions of disappointing either  as a consequence of inaction.  So I hopped into my car and made an appointment to have both done at a place in New Philadelphia, Ohio I know of.

      On my way there in the town of New Philly as locals have been known to call it and coming upon the courthouse on the left as I drove in town, I was stopped by traffic as is usually the case. I think the town of New Philly likes to have you sit in front of their courthouse, as it seems this is always the case when travelling through town. Streetlights out of sync so that one cannot just fly past the county square without taking the time to drink in the beauty of small town life.

    At times you could swear it was ripped right out of a Norman Rockwell painting of small town life. in the winter the courthouse is adorned with white twinkling lights sparkling in the clear night air lighting up the majestic dome adding flavor to the season,  and on the front steps leading up to the main entrance from the square , a display is set up on the now vacant steps to symbolize the number of domestic abuse complaints, drawing attention to the plight of families as they go through the Christmas season when tensions are the highest as families let their tempers boil as they try to make ends meet.

     Not far from that a veteran took his life in the front lawn where a Vietnam veteran memorial now stands. He was looking for help but couldn’t seem to find it that day as he took his life. I glanced at the memorial and something caught my eye from across the street where a mural takes up a whole wall with symbols of Tuscarwas county history, I noticed and old man and woman waiting on the corner for the light to change before they cross the street.

       When I speak of old I am merely suggesting with more years than I , but at this point I can’t really tell someone’s years. I am finding some friends I went to school with age faster than others and some look as if they are caught in a freeze frame, not having aged much since youth. This man because of his appearance and being bent with time, and as well his companion, or I assume his wife , who was dressed in a slightly unkempt manner herself as she fidgeted and pointed to this and that until the light changed and she grabbed his hand as if to help or tug the older man across the intersection to the other side. At times brushing up and almost leaning on each other to struggle their way across.

     I was sitting at the light and had the window open in a midday sun. A warm to hot breeze blew through the car, but not nearly as hot and dry as it was out where this couple was crossing the square under the shadow of a courthouse dome. I watched them intently at times feeling sorry but glad they had each other to lean on as they get older.

     As they neared the other side I could see the older woman’s enthusiasm seem to ratchet it up a notch as something most assuredly had caught her attention as she tugged on the old man’s sleeve and dragged him toward a planter at the end of a park bench. At one point she dropped her grasp of him and begins to bend over and then I could see what she was going after. A rose so perfect its red beauty showed itself to me sitting across the square. I watched as she bent even closer and cupped the whole flower between her two hands and stuck her whole face down and inhaled the beauty of that rose. Drawing the essence of the moment along with its aroma deep into her lungs and holding it as long as she could drinking in the euphoria of simple life , and simple rewards to living a full life.

    I then watched as her husband, boyfriend or whatever he may have been to her at the time and most assuredly her partner in crime appreciate the moment and force a crooked smile to his lips that suddenly bloomed into near laughter at the sight of his woman. Not laughing at her but instead with her, as he also drank in the moment regardless of whether he had smelled the same thing. Instead he was drunk on her reaction to such a sweet gesture by the woman who was undoubtedly reliving a moment of life .

      One would not smell a rose so deeply as her if you didn’t know what a rose smelled like , she had been there before and was going back again. As she let that sweet aroma linger on her lips and past the tip of her tongue on the way out of her body, her wrinkled face made a smile that smoothed out even the deepest furrows in her face, so that her youth shown all over in place of what had been there before.

      I sat in the car and noticed their smiles were so infectious as I too was smiling inside as I watched them interact in such an impish way. I suddenly realized I was handicapped as I sat there in the car being denied that chance, of a moment of happiness they were experiencing as that couple together in the big little city. Also my initial reaction to them was one of pity, feeling sorry for them as they leaned on each other to just cross the street. But oh the rewards for instant youth they had gathered in their smiles as they stopped and smelled the roses, and here was I now being denied that chance and I was envious of them. Knowing full well my experience would not be so welcomed if I were to exit my vehicle leaving it sit in traffic where it sat till the light turned green.

     It may be ok till the light turned green as assuredly people would just gawk when I left my vehicle , but for sure they would be bitching and yelling when I stopped to smell that rose for myself after crossing the square on foot. I know what a rose smells like, and I also know what those guys in the black uniforms are for. They like to write out tickets for such stunts with enthusiasm as great as the old woman’s to the smell of a rose. Any words I could use to try and express my desire to be there with them and enjoy that moment would be lost on deaf ears.

      The light turned green and I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the anxious look on the driver behind me and I wondered if he too had witnessed this miracle of human life. If he did it was lost on him as it seemed I could see his relief as my car passed the old couple on the right now and everything sped up as I now had to concentrate on my driving. Still I was left with an emptiness and filled with envy of those folks back there withering in the distance where all that is left of them is my memory of that moment.

    My biggest envy of the moment was not having someone so simple as to be able to stop and smell the roses , but instead having that person in my life to lean on to get there, and then to have the time in this busy world to actually be able to do it. Lest we not forget the memories of times before to make it want to happen again.

    So in the end I will never look at a rose again without some thought to how beautiful life can be when you take time to bloom with someone you care about. And I must remember to stop and smell the roses along the way, if for no one, but for myself.

starting to fill in

Vertical Wall in the Greenhouse

Or Are You Vertically challenged- Part 2.

 this was taken on 8-7 -2015 and is even more green now and the lace vine is blooming will update pics in a later blog 

         Well the vertical wall in the greenhouse is finally coming along and filling in quite nicely.  Also today, I will be drawing some attention to my rhubarb I planted earlier this year giving you an update of where I am going to go with that also. In fact I will be giving you updates also on my berries and how it is going with transplanting of them.

       Let’s talk about the vertical wall around the swimming pool and it is going great. The lace and trumpet vine I planted in these huge pots are performing quite well after a major cut back on the lace vine as I trimmed it hard to transplant it into the pots I had. This was done in an effort to get the vine where I wanted it, which was around the pool. There used to be two vines and they just went wild shooting roots in the pea gravel clean across the greenhouse. Then when I trimmed them I had to cut 10- 15 ft. of a root system going wild completely off the original vine. I did this on both of them. One made it the other didn’t. So instead I planted trumpet vine instead to fill in the lattice I erected. The lace vine is just now starting to bloom. The idea was to separate the pool from the rest of the greenhouse. It looks as though this is going to happen. It is starting to shape up. I will include some pics of how it is coming along. All this is done in pots and could easily be done on your patio or anywhere you want an instant green wall. Lace vine usually takes about a year or two to establish so if you want results now then the trumpet vine would be better. I had the lace vine I have about 3 years in a pot to let you know how long it takes to get a good start on them.  Also one must remember they are considered to be a noxious plant if allowed to be planted outside. Inside the greenhouse it can be contained. Outside it would spread and could easily crowd out other beneficial plants if not trimmed on a regular basis. The combination of lace vine flowers and trumpet flowers should make for an interesting green wall. I expect the wall to be even better next year as I doubt that the trumpet will be established enough to have flowers this year.

     Next up is the rhubarb. And this I will plant in a bed and will have about 25 rhubarb plants going into the bed. I could have forced these into better plants, but at times was lucky to get them watered. Some I repotted and they are doing great and are almost a foot taller than the former pot size. I know these pots are root bound and hope when I plant into a bed they will be able to snap out of it and store some food for the winter yet. Some plants look like I could start harvesting off of as soon as next spring. These were started from seed and grown in small pots. Except about 12 I have transplanted into larger pots. So far I have about a 75 percent survival rate, which is pretty good. The rhubarb is fairly hearty plant and this rate of survival reflects the nature of the plant. It seems to have customer appeal and is in limited quantities when harvest time comes around making it a popular pick of the season. I am starting a bed of them for pick your own. This bed and the bed for the berries will be in our old pasture along the upper side of the lane. Water can be accessed from across the lane and a storage tank I have will be located up the hill and filled with well water by a hose and then be able to gravity feed back down the hill to the berry and rhubarb beds and drip lines will be established to allow the new plant to have plenty of moisture when needed.

     Mowing will be accomplished by a finish mower allowing a smooth surface and wide rows to accommodate foot traffic from consumers on a pick your own basis. So far it will be berries, rhubarb, and berries, the berry varieties will be black berry, dew berry, black raspberry, and red raspberry. All these can be grown naturally and organically requiring no chemical fertilizers and will be grown in hay mulch that has been composted. The rhubarb will be grown in heavy straw mulch in an effort to prevent weeds and reduce labor. Asparagus may also be added depending on how much I can accomplish.  It also depends on the quantity of mulch or compost I will have available. So today I am going to mow this area off and prepare by discing in the area of the beds to eliminate weeds an break up sod. Considered plowing but doubt it will sink in ground due to dry conditions. and try and lay out these beds so I have an idea of how much compost I will need. Over the hill I have taken the hay from the first cutting and just piled it up to compost it where it sits. Need to let it compost down some so I can move it over the hill to the berry beds where I will need it.

that is a quarter laying there

     Being located next to the lane will bring back some memories of when I as a kid had to take pruners and go out and clear brush and can remember working in that same area cutting vines so huge that they hung into the drive and would scratch the cars as you went in and out. It has been a pasture field for a long time, and at times it was plowed. I made hay on it this year once, but now it will be converted back to berries and rhubarb due to its location, being located along the lane. I can harvest the hay early and park cars in the field directly across from it. I will just need a stand at the y where the lane splits and someone to collect money during picking time. I have berries I just potted up to transplant from behind the house. Also I plan on going through our red raspberry patch and thinning out the plants and re mulch those also. It is a well-established patch that would be much better and yields huge berries if well taken care of. I have been slacking the last couple of years. There is just so much to do. But I finally came to the realization that berries have yielded the best for us for absolutely no investment but our time to pick them over the years. Traditionally they have also been seen to do better when mulch and organics are applied to them to help hold the moisture and have it available in springtime when its needed to make huge berries.

      I looked at my resources and figured as I did years ago when I was starting to chainsaw carve. What can I do with what I have and make something more out of it, to be able to utilize my resources to my best advantage. Back then I had artistic talent wood and chainsaws and still have that but also now I have hay I can’t sell that can be easily converted to mulch, berry vines all over the place. I have berry bushes that were bought. But I believe if I was to transplant wild varieties also and if given the right conditions I believe they will produce as heavily as store bought varieties. With the wild ones I know they are winter hardy for my area as compared to the store bought. They say they are but you never know.

     Anyhow I have all the perfect storm components of a pick your own farm outlet for berries and rhubarb. Just need to get it done now.