Author Archives: Grumpy Old Farmer

From HandPicked Nation

This article appeared on the website/blog HandPicked Nation.  This is why The JAZFarm exists.  The disconnect between the Citiots and the world that supports them is indeed stunning.  You can walk practically any park or golf course and the only plants are a few trees and a field of grass.  The frogs slowly heating in the pan of water are the most oblivious the bigger the numbers on their balance sheets.  The meek may inherit the earth…. but those who know how to grow food will make that same earth worth living on.  Buy Locally Grown or Raise Your Own!!!

Vintage HandPicked: Joel Salatin’s Tyrant Neighbor

August 26, 2013

Joel Salatin

Joel Salatin › Joel Salatin is a full-time farmer in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

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Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on HandPicked Nation in May 2012. Like most of what Joel Salatin says, we think it bears repeating.

“What are you doing here?” the neighbor demanded, elbowing her way through the cluster of Polyface customers surrounding our delivery vehicle. “You can’t do this!” she remonstrated, into the face of her dumbfounded neighbor who was in the middle of filling her cooler with pastured chickens and “salad bar” beef.

Citing homeowners association rules and regulations about solicitations and commerce, this neighbor was hot and bothered about a local food drop occurring in her community. The very idea. Tsk. Tsk. I suppose she never receives a UPS shipment. I’m sure she’s never hosted a bridal shower or Tupperware party.

What’s the difference between a group of friends getting together to play games and the same group getting together to pick up their local food order? The face of local food has many expressions: farmers markets, community supported agriculture, buying clubs, home delivery, office delivery. It doesn’t look like a supermarket, that’s for sure.

Innovation on this ragged edge of the local food distribution network creates nuances that don’t fit neatly into zoning and other regulatory definitions. These folks clustered around our delivery vehicle had ordered their food online and were simply meeting the delivery vehicle at an appointed place. We (the farmers) were not soliciting sales, not selling anything. It had already been sold. Just like a UPS delivery. If we had used a lot more time and petroleum to deliver to each household customer, it would not have attracted attention.

“I’ve noticed that the wealthier the community the more the people who live there seem disconnected from their ecological moorings.”

But because we (the farmers) were trying to be efficient and set up a food fellowship-shindig-social setting as well, the convergence attracted attention and raised the ire of a prudish neighbor.

Rather than appreciating the food connections and relationships being established, this neighbor was incensed that something was happening in her upscale neighborhood besides gardeners mowing the lawns, domestics cleaning the houses, and children either properly occupied with electronic entertainment inside or participating in off-site soccer games outside.

I’ve noticed that the wealthier the community the more the people who live there seem disconnected from their ecological moorings. Do they just assume that no matter how expensive energy becomes, they will always be the top feeders? Few things can be more environmentally reasonable than clothes lines, downspout rain catchments, gardens, backyard rabbits, chickens, and honey bees. But these elements smack of peasants, agrarianism, and self-reliance. Too many people think they’ve evolved to a higher level of sophistication than to be bothered by such drivel.

Just last week a city mayor confessed to me that she did not even have a kitchen in her home. Having just read Jared Diamond’s iconic Collapse, I’m struck by the aloof, disconnected spirit of too many people. Apparently some folks think we’ll be the first culture to extricate ourselves from these nasty ecological moorings. They think we’ll be able to forget about our dependency on earthworms, soil, water, and air. I suppose they think we’ll all sail off on a Star Trek space ship eating breakfast in a tablet, living in a world without diapers and decomposition.

The whole crux of the local food movement depends on transparency and relationships. Too many people are far more passionate about the latest belly button piercing in Hollywood celebrity culture than what will become flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone at 6 p.m. That is tragic.

Instead of threatening litigation over a group of local food connectors and the farmer who braves expressways to bring nutrient density to town, neighbors and regulators should applaud and encourage such connections.

With all the hoopla about local food in our culture, I never cease to be amazed at the new hurdles thrown up to derail and distract this movement. The whole notion of local food is such a foreign concept that many people can’t even fathom what it looks like. And yet this community imbedded, shindig-oriented, rag-tag confluence of friends and food predates tyrannical neighbors who think they’ve risen above menial life responsibilities like food and soil.

If homeowners associations were really progressive, they’d be offering staging areas for local food connections to occur rather than using their rules to eliminate food interfaces. At some point, people need to realize that if they aren’t part of the solution, they’re part of the problem. Now go meet your farmer and get real food.

This article originally appeared on flavormagazinevirginia.com. It is re-posted here with permission from the author.

Would your neighborhood support a local food drop?

Photo Credit:  Craig McCord

Pulled Out Of The Mud By an Industrial Ag Tractor

After almost two weeks of being completely stuck in the mud and high centered, the truck has been freed!  Brad, the farmer we are leasing much of the property to, is almost to the planting stage for winter wheat.  He came by and saw the truck in its mud grave.  He was driving the same tractor that plowed out our driveway this past winter.  Using my heavy chains, he pulled up, hitched up to the truck’s trailer hitch and inside of about 30 seconds the truck was out!  A tractor with 8 five foot tall tires – pulling out a Dodge 2500 Ram V10 Long bed….. now there’s something you don’t see at the golf course or the mall!!

It runs and still drives but it isn’t a 4 wheel drive anymore.  Either the transfer case is busted or the front differential.  Oh well.  We decided not to renew the license plates and they expired August 31st.  I have a thirty day grace period to get some things I need to do done, then it is off to sell my soul to the Dodge dealership for a new truck.  This one was purchased when Aaron was 5, has taken us to the top of the world and back dozens of times, more archery tournaments than I can count, hunting camps galore, hauled thousands of pounds of gravel and topsoil, white out blizzards in the high country, is on its second transmission, needs a third, and now has differential issues.  Thank you big truck, The Make A Wish Foundation will appreciate your contribution.

While we may be in a drought, the monsoons sure did a number on this place.  Here are a couple of pictures of the drainage and truck.  Two weeks later, the lake in the back 30 is only now subsiding.  Hopefully, when it goes, so will the mosquitoes!

We have also begun work on the garden fence.  One project gets finished and a dozen more get started.  I am fencing in about a half an acre and will also electrify it to keep out the deer, coyotes, antelope and rabbits (especially rabbits!).  I have laid out the posts and corners for the front facing section.  Saturday, Zina and I took the newly freed truck up to Greeley to the Tractor Supply Company and picked up a tractor mounted post hole digger.  As there will likely be close to a hundred posts I didn’t want to have to do them all with the hand held gas auger I have now. That thing will shake the life out of you.  The holes need to be 30 – 36 inches deep.  The power washer, to soften up the ground, and the auger, are going to get quite a work out.

Once the fence is up, then the JAZ Farm can kind of officially be deemed functional.  The construction projects will slow way down and the work on the beds, the irrigation, and the soil amending will take the place of lifting, sawing, screwing, nailing, cussing, ……

The 32 chickens are all over a pound a piece now and we have identified the three roosters we ordered as well.  The hens are supposed to start laying eggs around 20 weeks of age and that will put them somewhere near the first of the year.  As the days are shorter then and they need long daylight cycles to lay consistently we may not have many to speak of until spring.  At this rate, I will have the garden fenced and ready to do at least some planting in the spring, the chickens will be laying eggs, I will have built the second coop for the meat birds, brooded the meat birds, and have produce, eggs, and meat by early next summer.  My goal was to build the place out in a year.  Knocking on wood, it looks like that will happen.  Guess no one can accuse us EVER of being lazy…. although some have tried.

Happy Labor Day All!

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The Harvest Is Beginning

We have been very focused on getting the chicken coop finished and making sure that all is well with the birds, the farmhouse, dog, and a kid going off to college.  We haven’t posted much about why the farm even exists!  FOOD!

Despite the blistering schedule of trying to balance two jobs, a high school graduation, kid off to college and a farm, we managed with the help of grandma to get the urban farm planted this year too!  It has kind of been left to its own devices though.  The birds took the onions and a squirrel took a bunch of the corn (my squirrel repeller being at the farm and not in the city).  In a moister part of the yard we had some slugs in the tomatoes.  BUT! We have had a great harvest of broccoli all summer, we have had strawberries, kale, herbs, lettuce, cucumbers, green onions, a year’s worth of garlic, beans, some corn, and a bunch of peppers.  Not bad!

Today, I got up early to beat the heat here and went out and picked stuff.  I got through most of it but I got stopped in my tracks with the tomato harvest.  My Roma saucing tomatoes lost their minds.  I picked over 100 lbs of tomatoes thus forecasting what the rest of my day was going to be like.  I froze 25 lbs of whole tomatoes and as I type, have 3 stock pots of tomatoes boiling down to sauce consistency on the stove.  This one day will provide us with all of the tomatoes we will need until fall 2014!  Due to time constraints I am freezing it all instead of canning.  When the beans come in they will need to be canned as we have found no good way to freeze beans that doesn’t make them taste like bicycle inner-tubes.

This evening I am going back out to pick Basil (not the dog), Kale, green onions, and peppers.  I will be able to make and freeze all of the Pesto we need for a year.

Corn, cherry tomatoes, cucumber salad and Italian sausage for dinner!  Yum!  Total distance to plate …. 40 feet.  Chemicals used….. ZERO.

I am completely amazed that the city garden did so well this year even though it was kind of treated like a nuisance.  Next year it will likely be mostly summer food with the homestead growing the storage foods for the pantry.  I love growing chit! ; )

Happy Labor Day all!   Given that labor is now treated like an evil step-child, we need to remember the people who really built this place.  Working and laboring to build a farm and all of the construction work it has taken, they have my undying respect.

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Off To College Despite the Truck

What a week it has been!  Our one and only is off to college!  Mom and I are officially empty nesters.  The transition has been a little muddy and so has the farm!  We had a week of some pretty serious monsoons.  The week prior to Aaron’s departure to engineering school, JAZ Farm was hit with two deluges.  We got close to 4 inches of rain in two days.  Well….. at least we found out where the low spots on the property are.  One is in the front (right on the drive) and the other is out back….. which is now a shallow lake about the size of a baseball diamond.  Because of the rare occurrence of having standing water, we have had a chorus of toads and a nursery for breeding mosquitos.  Because of the frequency of West Nile virus out here we have been limiting our outdoor activities.

I was at the farm during the rains.  Wanting to get back to spend time with the kid prior to going off to school I went against my own best judgement and attempted to 4 wheel drive it through the swamp in the front yard.  I got into the water and high centered the truck front and back.  I hoped and waited for the ground to dry, but it never did.  As I write this a week later, it is still out there.  Evidently, the front differential is broken. The front wheels won’t engage and the rear wheels spin freely not even touching the ground.  Oh well.  The truck is 14 years old and has been through an unimaginable number of adventures since Aaron was five.  We are planning on having someone come out and winch it out and then donate it to charity.  A fitting end to what has been one tough beast.

Fortunately, we were already leery that the truck would eventually leave me stranded by the side of the road (especially since it didn’t like to shift out of first gear without a secret incantation).  So to take Aaron to school we rented a mini-van.  We got him there without any trouble, classes started today and I have received emails and text messages that all is well.

I am usually pretty grumpy about technology.  It seems that anytime you need something to work it is the perfect time for it to crash or have to load updates.  It is intensely impersonal and I would be just as happy in a world without it.  However! I am now a big fan of texting, emailing, and Skype-ing.  Unlike my days at Michigan State {not like my dad would want to hear from me anyway –  more for mom of course : )  }  Aaron has been texting and Skype-ing us.  It is great because it is just enough to let you know he is ok. Both the parents and the student can connect.

I am fortunate that most of the hauling needed to be done for projects at the farm are pretty much caught up.  As we just refi’d our house in the city we have to wait a month before we can go truck shopping.  In the meantime, the half-acre organic garden fence needs to be staked out and the post holes dug.  We are hoping for some astronomy observing time in September as well as getting into the fall routine…. yet again waiting for the markets to collapse.

So to all who have been following this project of ours I hope the rest of your summer goes well and that you have found some time to recharge.  Two pictures below:  Basil the college therapy dog, and one that looks like we just slowed down, threw Aaron’s stuff on the curb and wished him the best of luck! (haha!)  We are very proud parents.  We look forward to some of our own new found freedom, hearing stories from the college front, and getting to be friends with a very cool budding young adult.

Sincerely, We JAZ Farm nuts!

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The Truly American Philosophy That We All Seem To Have Forgotten

We live in a culture today that makes feigned reference to the rugged individualist when in fact our country wasn’t built on the Marlboro man cowboy fantasy but as a nation of communal barn builders where neighbor helped neighbor.   Our politicians implore us all to take personal responsibility for our lives and if somehow  we are not successful that we are to “blame ourselves” (to quote Allen West).  There is a philosophical war that has been fought in this country since before the civil war and it has to do with the nature of humanity and how we care for one another.  The Puritans evidently came to this country to live an even more oppressive life than they were allowed to live in Europe.  My grandparents were hellfire reformed church preachers.  As today, they believed that Man is wretched and we are all scum in the eyes of God.  Some are ordained to be saved, others to be damned.  As this theology of its originator, John Calvin, has morphed and been perverted, it has become the foundation of a vast swath of our American culture to justify greed.   The true American philosophers, however, were those we called the Transcendentalists;  The most prominent and well known (at least by name) were Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau.  I think that if we were to understand and take to heart more of what these great thinkers espoused and how they stood in defiance of inequality, oppression and greed, we would be able to have a more intelligent conversation of what it means to be free.

Too often today, Calvinism forms the basis of religious and political thought – that capitalism is the measure of human worth and that you can know who is divinely chosen by their wealth.  Those who believe this, even though they don’t even know anything about the Calvinist origins of their thinking, have chosen a pseudo-intellectualist and sociopathic author, Ayn Rand, as their champion.  If one stands against this, the quick McPhilosophy or mindless response is to label someone a socialist (most these days not having one clue as to what that really means).

If we could resurrect the deep thought of those who taught that all people are one and that no one is superior in any fashion to another, perhaps, like Thoreau, we would spend more time caring for one another and sit amongst our bean fields contemplating the deeper thoughts of life.  Indeed, it seems likely that we would learn to sit still and quit running east looking for a sunset.  Our country is badly off course and inequality of wealth is being hoarded at the very top as though they did anything legitimate to earn it.  We don’t need to look to Stalinist Russia for a scapegoat.  We simply need to understand that there is another way of looking at true American Freedom and what that really means.  Our philosophers are still  here and now, unfortunately, to hear them requires that one put down the remote and read.  If we agree that America has lost its way and that our founders never wanted us to become an empire in the way the Romans, The Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Soviets and the English all have tried and failed, the Transcendentalists of our own land and our own history point us in the direction that could restore us to a peaceful and pastoral land.

When you have some time, this is a 6 part series on Emerson.  The Calvinist/Baptist offshoots all have the megaphone of these ridiculous “church” monstrosities that have sprung up in the past 30 years.  Because we don’t value philosophy in our education departments anymore and religion is too concerned whether or not we are descended from apes, the greatest minds this country has ever produced are being lost in the cacophony of nonsensical noise we call consumerism.

Think local, think community.  Think peace.  Re-learn how to share and care.

From The Basement, To the Coop, To the Real World

It is such a sense of accomplishment to see the coop now being used by the birds it was built for.  Last Friday the chickens embarked on a rather bumpy ride to the farm from our grow room in the city.  I am happy to say that the one who’s foot was caught under the cage (we’ve been calling it “Hoppy”) is now starting to put weight on it again.  It looks as though she/he will make a full recovery.

Today, I hooked up and activated the automatic chicken door and the little teenagers got to come outside for the first time and experience the entire coop and run.  As of this writing (which is 5:30 in the afternoon mountain time), they have been running around, scratching and pecking and dust bathing and having a righteous old time!  You can always tell if they are content because they will make little trilling sounds.  When you hear that you know all is right with the world.

They are certainly cautious.  Their world just got infinitely bigger than the galvanized water tank of their brooding.  They heard a couple of wild birds outside the coop and they all, as if wired together, stopped and looked up on command.  It happened again and they all scurried for the interior of the barn area attached to the coop.

I don’t yet know which ones are roosters, as they are too young yet.  But there is at least one bird standing watch.  I heard a couple of warning barks in the afternoon and the rest ran to congregate next to each other as though there was strength in numbers.  As they figured out that they weren’t in mortal danger, they slowly spread out again to do whatever it is they seem to like doing.  So far it seems like a pretty simple life:  Eat, sleep, scratch n peck, drink, poop…. with a few little temper skirmishes along the way.

It has been fun to watch them grasp just how big their playpen really is.  They have all been trying to do running take offs and stretching out their wings.  I am thinking that although I put the netting cover over the run to keep out hawks, it may serve as good a purpose to keep the chickens IN!

All has gone extremely well with this mind-bogglingly long project.  I sat there for awhile watching them thinking, “this is all good”.  Proud construction manager/farmer.

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But what about MEEEEEE????

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The Storms Keep Coming

An interesting thing about being out here on the plains is the ability to see storms build and move on.  The other day I watched a storm develop where lower level clouds were blowing west while the upper level clouds were headed south and east.  I was convinced that it was going to spin up a tornado.   Fortunately it ended up being just a severe thunderstorm.  While we are in a drought (especially south of us near Colorado Springs) we seem to have entered into a period of monsoons.  For the past month, every afternoon around 4 o’clock the thunderheads build over the mountains and seem to pick up steam as they head east over us and then out into Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska.  We are getting some badly needed rain but of course that means that using the telescope has been out of the question.

As new moon is this week, I had thought seriously about bringing the scope out and leaving it up all week.  I am here acclimating the chickens to the coop and had some time on my hands.  Fortunately I didn’t get to it.  Yesterday we had at least 40 mph sustained winds out of the north.  It had the potential of laying the VLT flat and I would have been a sad puppy.  So I am watching the weather and the charts to see if there is a chance there will be any clearing into this next weekend.  In the meantime, here is the gift we sent to Kansas this evening!  Auntie Em, Aunti Em!!

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The JAZ Farm Has Livestock!

Friday morning Aaron and I got up and rounded up the little birds from the brooder at the city house.  It was entertaining trying to catch these little critters as they can now run and kind of flutter fly around.  We ended up using the top of a tupperware storage bin to kind of herd them into one place and then grab them up.

We rigged one of Basil’s old puppy crates by taping some cardboard around the sides to keep them from slipping through the wire sides.  It seemed like the perfect option.  After all they are birds…. birds should go in a bird cage.  Of course, there is thinking its the right answer and it BEING the right answer.

We got them in the cage and got them in the car just fine.  There was the expected cheeping and freaking and all I could do is keep driving.  Much about the crate didn’t hold its integrity while en-route.  At a stop light I looked back and the cardboard had all dislodged itself from the sides.  The birds all had their heads stuck through the bars and as I started to move again, noticed that a couple had escaped.  I was now on the highway doing about 75 mph and there wasn’t anything I could do.

Upon arrival at the farm, I took a few deep breaths.  After all, this is just a bunch of birds right?  What could have gone wrong?  Hmmm.

Evidently the floor of the crate slides in and out for cleaning.  On the road it slid and that was how some of the birds were escaping.  I left the escapees in the hatch of the car and pulled the crate out that was housing the rest of the birds.  The spacing of the bars under the plastic tray are bigger than the sides so about a half a dozen of them fell out onto the ground!!  I quickly closed the car, set down the crate and scrambled to pick up multiple birds that were involuntarily free ranging around outside of the coop!!!  Fortunately they were a bit disoriented and were fairly easy to grab.

I then opened the car back up and my heart sank.  Three of the five chickens were fine.  One was running around with Duct tape on her wing, but one had evidently been crushed by all of the jostling around in transport.  I had to break her neck to put her out of her misery.  Things happen, but I was sad that it had to be due to such a malfunction.  Next time we will use simple boxes.  I had seen the crates used and thought it would be great….. not so much.  The one with the duct taped wing evidently has a bruised foot too.  We are watching her and may put her in a small brooder to let her heal.

The rest of them (32) are going gangbusters!  They love their new home and have been scratching and pecking and hopping up and down the roosts!  They seem very content and have been loving the treats we have been giving them to spoil them into their new abode.

I food-milled a bunch of our tomatoes yesterday to get them ready to make sauce.  This leaves nothing but seeds, skin and a little bit of pulp.  I took two paper plates full out to the coop and the party was on!  At one point they had surrounded the plate so completely you couldn’t see it.  All that was visible were brown butts.  It didn’t take them an hour to completely pick the plates clean!

So I guess, as it should be, the introduction of livestock to the farm was not without incident.  It was only one fatality and all the rest are very content.  I am wrapping the run with chicken wire to make the holes smaller and when completed we will be able to let them have some small introductory ventures to the outdoors!

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Basil Got Traded In On A Chocolate Version

Living out here on the plains, the one incredible thing you get to see are the storms develop and then move in.  Last night we had some incredible storms (think Wizard of Oz) blow in.  There were flash flood warnings, tornado Warnings, hail and thunderstorm warnings, and all manner of deluges.  We watched the storms build to the west, come overhead, dump buckets of rain, and then move off to Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska.

All is well though.  The next morning, of course, it was quite muddy.  We got up to go check on the chickens who are now inhabiting the coop.  Basil is not allowed in there for obvious reasons and was somewhat jealous of us spending all kinds of time in there.  I had to hang the nesting boxes and we have one who has a hurt foot that we have been obsessing over.

Evidently said puppy child decided that if she wasn’t going to be given the attention that all princesses evidently deserve, that she was going to find her own fun.  The fun…… was a mud puddle.  She might be a dumb blond in real life, but today she was a horse of a decidedly different color.  Spent the morning showering her off.

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