This isn’t a post about life on the farm. It’s a post about life. Just like everyone else around the world I’ve been thinking about what happened in Newtown on Friday. I know I can’t share this experience with them; it is theirs alone. I was in New York City on September 11: I looked up to see the first tower on fire, my husband escaped the city over the Brooklyn Bridge and watched the first tower fall, I talked to my mom on the phone, saying “Mom, if this is terrorism, you are in the Pentagon,” to which she replied, “I have to go, there are people pointing at the outside of the building.” For me, for a while, it hurt for the entire nation to share September 11. It seemed to take something away from the people who lost their lives on that day. As a nation we cannot share the tragedies of those who lived through them. But we can learn. We can make change. The thoughts that have been going through my mind haven’t been worries for my children (I know this is not likely to happen in their school), or even sadness for the parents (I can’t let my mind go there). I’ve been thinking about the adults who tried to stop this crazy murderer: maybe they tried to tackle him or grab him; maybe they hid their students and confronted him themselves; maybe they kept a class full of innocent babies huddled and hidden and calm enough to live through this horrific event. And I wonder, could I do that? In that time of crisis would I be that kind of hero? How would I react? Most of us have the luxury of never knowing. I have decided to honor their bravery with the only thing I can: my own simple acts. To love and respect every human being I encounter and expect no less of the people around me. Why are we put on this earth if it is not to love one another?
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I participated in the viral 30 Days of Thanks that people were doing on Facebook. I liked the inspiration of seeing what my friends were thankful for and the challenge to find something every single day in my own life to be thankful. Of course we are all thankful for our families and our health, but the 30 days let us get a little silly. “I’m thankful for owning a vineyard….for the obvious reasons,” one friend wrote. Or even my own “I’m thankful for pony noses” while I was spending some time in the barn. We also were serious: “I’m thankful for the power of prayer.” “I’m thankful for the right to vote.” “I’m thankful for all who serve.” It was when I wrote my own “I’m thankful for my husband who goes to work EARLY in the morning so we can have good health insurance,” that I realized we were maybe missing the boat a bit on the thankfulness. I realized, after I posted, that I hadn’t actually said those words to HIM. In fact, I should say it every day. I’m hoping that our 30 Days of Thanks has put us in a habit of thinking about what we are thankful for every day, and now let’s go out and be ACTUALLY thankful instead of VIRTUALLY thankful. Tell people every day: your family, your friends, strangers. Do something nice to show your thanks. And that will put us all in the holiday spirit more than any shopping trip or holiday party ever could. This “Small Business Saturday” I’ll be shopping local -- just not in Granby. Just like last year, I’ll be doing my “virtual” local shopping for friends and family all over the country: A mani/pedi for my niece in Wisconcin, a dinner out for my parents at their favorite local restaurant, tickets to a ball game for my nephew in a Chicago suburb. (Don’t worry, these were last year’s gifts…..) With Google as your tour guide, you can order anything online these days, so before you type in Amazon.com to you web browser, Google some stores local to your far-away friends and family. Of course I’ll be making my own list too. Here are some hints to my loved ones….err Santa.....
Instead of….. I’d rather have…… Harry and David gift basket Lost Acres Vineyard gift basket Mall clothing store gift card Top Drawer Consignment gift certificate Big chain beauty products Neal’s Yard Organics or Lyric Hill Farm soap Chain restaurant meal Dinner for two at Metro Bis Grocery store gift card Granby Village Health gift card Omaha Steaks Maple View Farm steaks (sorry, shameless plug) Toys R Us Neckers Yesterday, Californians voted no to getting more information about their food. The question on their ballot asked if citizens of California wanted food companies to label Genetically Modified Foods. And they voted no. Some people think GMO are good for the environment (they can reduce herbicides and pesticide usage) and good for our growing world (they can feed more people globally). I think they’re crazy. I’ve read about their studies and understand what they are trying to accomplish, but sometimes you just have to go with your gut. The bottom line is: I don’t want to feed my family or myself GMOs. Easy, right? Not so much. What foods are genetically modified, or have GMOs in them? If you turn the package of ketchup over (with 4 boys, we go through lots of this stuff), the label doesn’t read “Genetically Modified High Fructose Corn Syrup” as the second ingredient. But I know that about 45 percent of corn grown in the US is genetically modified (as well as about 85 percent of soy). So is it, or isn’t it? For now, we won’t know – even in California. Their reluctance for labeling should give us some clue they have something to hide, but instead of relying on (or legislating) food companies to come clean with this information, I have another solution. Don’t buy packages; buy ingredients. For now, there are no genetically modified fruits and vegetables and if you stick to animals that were raised on pasture, you can avoid meat that was fed GMOs. If we can stay away from corn, soy, and canola (we are also producing GMO cotton in this country but I don’t think anyone is eating it), we can avoid almost all GMOs. If we vote with our dollars to say NO to GMOs, food companies will respond by not using them. Then biotech companies will respond with not making them. It’s important for our own health, the health of the animals we eat and the land on which our food grows. So I'm disappointed, California, but I'll continue on with my own strategy to defeat GMOs myself.
Besides the horses, laying hens were our first foray into livestock. They are for lots of people. Hens have a relatively low investment cost (you can order chicks from a hatchery for about $2 each), require only moderate housing, a daily does of grain and all of your leftovers, and in 5 months you’ll get about an egg a day from each girl. Their production peaks when the days are the longest and wanes as the winter comes and we have less daylight. So eating seasonally for eggs, means eating plenty in the spring and early summer and cherishing every egg in the winter. Production will slow down again after they are about 2 years old, which is why in commercial operations they are culled at that age. They are great backyard livestock that are accessible to almost anyone anywhere and are very affordable when a family is raising a small flock on their own property. When we started scaling up to sell our eggs (and it became a business enterprise and not just for our own nutrition and entertainment), there wasn’t much to our pricing strategy. We marked them up just a bit more than the ones you find in the grocery store, figuring how we keep them (freedom, sunshine, fresh air) and their added nutritional value was worth the extra few cents. But lately we’ve been taking a hard look at all the enterprises on the farm and have decided that it doesn’t do anyone any good for us not to be making money on any one of our farm enterprises. If we’re not profitable, we’re not going to be able to stay here. And another family farm will be gone. So a jump from $3.50 to $5 per dozen seems like a big price increase. But here’s why we need to do it. 1. At $3.50 per dozen we really weren’t being honest with ourselves or our customers about all of our costs and labor plus profit to keep our farm going for the future. 2. They eat a lot! If you have any more than a handful of chickens, then pasture and kitchen scraps will not be enough. If you want a steady stream of eggs, you’ll have to pump some grain into them. And the price of grain has gone up about 25% in the past year. 3. Compared to other sources of protein, eggs can been seen as a great financial deal in terms of weight: One dozen eggs weighs in at over a pound of protein (not including the shell), while our beef and pork starts at $6.00/lb. So at $5.00, eggs are a great value! Check out this link http://cuesa.org/article/pastured-eggs-what-it-really-takes to get perspective from some other farms. I have a secret to share about the grocery store. Me, I like a banana with a few spots on it. I look at those green ones on the grocery store shelves and can just feel the chalkiness in my mouth. That’s why my favorite spot in the grocery store is usually in a back corner, maybe over by the bathrooms, where there is a rack of “old” produce. That’s what the grocery workers call it. I call it “ripe” produce. I’m afraid that we have become so accustomed to wanting something to LOOK perfect, that we have forgotten that looks often don’t mean much when you start talking about taste. In the US, we are wasting about ½ of the food that we grow. And grocery stores are a big part of that. Anything that doesn’t look like the perfect picture of itself gets dumped out the back door (literally). Is it the grocery store’s fault? They want to put out their “best” stuff. Trouble is, we customers equate “looking good” with “GOOD”, and so we continue to shun apples for small bruises, bananas with brown spots, and avocados for being soft. Now, we can’t just jump on the blame bandwagon at the grocery store until we take a hard look at what goes in our garbage. At home we throw away an enormous amount of good food as well. Even from the beginning, some food will be wasted because it can’t get harvested, or just isn’t right for consumers. Check out this TED talk to see more about what I’m talking about. On the farm, we feed uneaten food to chickens, pigs, or throw it in our compost pile. Not much gets wasted around here. Even our tomato and pumpkin plants get thrown in the pig pen after we’re finished harvesting. This type of recycling was common in leaner times in history. During WWII, people in England kept metal “Pig Bins” on street corners to save food that people weren’t going to eat for the pigs. These days, feeding pigs such leftovers is illegal, but is there something more we can do to recycle our food? It seems to me that shopping from that rack of old produce is a start. Tell the grocery store you don’t need perfect food. Ask your local grocer to compost what they throw away, or give the blemished produce to a pig farmer. Take care in your meal preparation and encourage your family not to waste food. Make friends with a local farmer and bring some veggie leftovers over to their chickens every once in a while. A big part of raising food sustainably is not throwing away half of it. On Saturday, September 8, from 10am-4pm, a dozen Granby farms will open their gates to the public. Experience the variety of agriculture that Granby has to offer. Pick up a passport at your first farm and collect a stamp at each visit to be entered in a drawing. You’re eligible for prizes with just one stamp; collect 6 or more stamps and be eligible for a week’s share in The Granby Sampler. Pick up a Farm Map at local businesses or download one online at www.granbyag.org. For more information and to play our game “What IS It?”, follow Granby Ag on Facebook. 1. YOU NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS AVAILABLE Almost everything you need is grown right here in Granby, but do you know when or where to get it? From soap to milk to meat to veggies, farmers in Granby grow and make many things you need. Find out how to buy these products, and when they are in season, or when you should be loading up for the year. 2. YOU NEED TO KNOW WHO YOUR FARMER IS AND KNOW HOW YOUR FOOD IS GROWN Open Farm Day is your opportunity to talk directly to the farmers who grow your food. Ask questions, find out how they work, how their raise their plants and animals. September 8 is the day you get to see all that in action. 3. YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO TELL OTHER PEOPLE THIS INFORMATION In order to support local farms and land in our town being used for agriculture, we all need to be marketers for each farm. Use the information you learn at Open Farm Day to educate other family, neighbors and friends. 4. YOU NEED TO SHARE THIS WITH YOUR KIDS We all need to know where their food comes from in order to make educated decisions about what to eat, and it is especially important to share this with your kids. This hand-on, interactive way of learning – by being at the farm, and asking questions of the farmer, is such a great way for kids to learn. 5. YOU NEED TO HAVE FUN (THE OLD FASHIONED KIND) With everything from pony and tractor rides to story time and farmer talks, Open Farm Day will be fun for everyone in the family. The farms have so much to offer in terms of enjoying the beauty of Granby. I’ve vowed to be positive in the blog, so don’t get me wrong: Life is Hard! I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. See, we’ve been working hard on the farm. Summer is a time of endless days and 7-day-work-weeks for weeks on end. My husband puts in a full day as an attorney, then spends evenings doing hay or fixing equipment. Even our kids have been working hard: They don’t spend summer days lounging around the pool or the beach. They are very involved in the quantity and quality of the work we do on the farm. But this isn’t a terrible thing. The Olympics also had me thinking: I bet Michael Phelps would say life is hard too. Bill Gates and Oprah are notorious work-a-holics as well. But I don’t think any of them think working hard is a bad thing. I chuckle to myself when the kids I teach horseback riding lessons to tell me, “but _______ (fill in the blank with whatever we’re working on) is hard”. (Note—they don’t usually say too hard, just hard.) To which I reply: “Yes! It is hard! So let’s get practicing!” Sometimes I have to give the pep talk to myself. When it’s 7pm and I’ve been working since 7am, and there are a couple more things to do and I’m dirty and tired; I try to think about all the good things about farming: hey – I’m not sitting inside at a desk, I am my own boss, I get to do lots of different tasks in one day, I get to bring my kids to my workplace. Just that change of focus takes me from “I’m tired and dirty” to “how great to have such a fulfilling, accommodating job”. Maybe the connotation of the phrase Life is Hard can be reinvented with just a change of attitude: We’ll substitute Life is Hard (hurrah!), for Life is Hard (bummer!). What can you do to make your life a little harder? For most of the year on the farm, my husband and I are able to do all of the work by ourselves. We feed animals, start and clean up gardens, fix fences and build sheds for 12 months a year. But summer brings with it additional sets of chores: Summer Session, hay, chicken processing, special projects. We’ve been lucky over the years to work with some great teenagers to help us with those projects. This is an open letter to them:
Dear farm helper; Thank you for all that you do for us! You work hard! The farm is not a place for the faint of heart. Working hard is relative, so if you thought you were going to “work hard” playing with horses or getting a tan, you quickly found out you were wrong. Thank you for using your muscles, keeping going and getting the job done. You anticipate our needs! Especially if you’ve gotten to know the place, you have intuitively clued in to how we like things. You know that we like the hallways and not just the aisle swept in the barn. You know that you don’t ever walk past an empty water bucket – you stop and fill it. You care about our business! Even though it’s not your own business, you care about ours. The quality of your work matters to you and therefore adds value to our business. You care about our customers! You try to help them when you can, have nice things to say about our farm, and are all around pleasant when talking to customers or potential clients. You solve smaller problems by yourself! If you see a gate down, you pick it up and put it back. If there’s a better way of doing something you try it and let us know about it. You don’t need to ask us about every little detail. You are available when we need you! I don’t expect your world to revolve around our farm, but boy am I glad that when I ask you to work you are willing and available to do it. You volunteer! I can’t always pay someone, but if you are my #1 volunteer, I promise you will be next on my list when I do have money to pay. You have a great attitude! Farm work is hard and it makes it more bearable to be around people who are fun and happy. These qualities don’t just make you a good farm worker, they make you a good teacher, electrician, veterinarian, banker, small business owner, or anything else you want to be when you grow up. I’m so impressed you already have these qualities and I hope that in some way, we might have helped you learn them. Sincerely, Kate Bogli I was a Democrat in my 20s, a Republican in my 30s. Now that I’ve hit 40, I’ve almost fallen over the Libertarian cliff. I think becoming a farmer had something to do with it. I just really don’t want government to tell me what to do. Part of me loves the idea of a tax on sugary beverages and Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on Super-Sized-Sodas. I agree that these sugar filled beverages, among other processed food, are at the core of the obesity epidemic that is leading to millions of dollars in unnecessary healthcare and federal tax dollar spending. I’m just not sure I want government to tell people not to drink soda. Especially because there’s a better way to limit people’s consumption of sugary beverages: and that is to eliminate farm subsidies and incentivize smaller family farms around the country that can make fresh food available to all people. The invention of high fructose corn syrup (HFC) brought with it the downfall of American eating habits. All of a sudden, it became very easy to make EVERYTHING sweet. In nature, sweet is a luxury saved for perfectly ripe berries in the spring and fruits in the summer. Most natural sweet comes in mild forms: sweet corn, sugar pumpkins, sugar snap peas. Even maple syrup doesn’t come to us from nature in its highly concentrated form. We don’t get this huge blast of sweet from anything in nature the way we do from HFC. And that huge blast is what gets our bodies hooked. We are wired to indulge in sweet because it IS so rare in nature. Our problem is not that we don’t have enough food – Big Ag is pumping out more food off of less land than it ever has in history thanks in part to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and feed-lot-raised animals. But fresh food is not in the right places. The only bummer about fresh food (food that is grown, not packaged) is that is has a very short shelf life. This means people need access to it often (compare the shelf life of a peach to a Twinkie). In reality, Americans want their right to choose, and not have our food chosen for us. But subsidizing big Ag ventures such as commodity corn and soybeans, the government is choosing processed foods for its citizens, especially those located in so-called “food deserts”. So take yer hands off my Big Gulp Mr. Mayor, but tell your colleagues in Washington to stop bowing to the status quo and start helping out rural, neighborhood, and inner-city farms. |
AuthorA blog about farming and food. Kate Bogli owns and operates Maple View Farm, raising livestock and growing veggies, with her husband Jason. The farm has been in his family for 65 years. Archives
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