Here is a short film about succession planting salad greens.
Technorati Tags: gardening, salad, vegetables, farming, soil, planting, seeds, podchef, wiggly wigglers
Thanks to the emergence of a Swine Flu Pandemic, there has been a heightened awareness of pork production this week. While the American Pork Industry seeks to reassure the nation that pork is still good to eat amidst plummeting sales, there are still worse reactions around the world. In Mexico, pork sales have fallen 70% and pigs are being culled due to endemic swine influenza in the herd. In Egypt there have been calls to cull all pigs and to move pig farms outside the Cairo city limits. It seems pigs are being made the scape goats for something they play a relatively small part in.
Pigs, unwittingly, it seems are the perfect vessels for mixing the different strains of influenza virus. Human flu virus, avian flu virus genotypes and two swine types have mutated together over time to create dangerous situation. What is worse is that like any flu, the swine flu attacks pigs or humans with weakened immune systems. That can mean all the pigs and some of the human workers in modern, intensive pork factories. Because of this potential, pigs in most modern pig farms are regularly dosed with SIV (swine influenza virus) vaccines.
But let me stress, it’s not the pigs, the pork or the farmers who raise and produce it that are to blame for the Swine Flu that is currently going around. However, the pork industry itself must bear some of the blame in how it has come to treat pork, pigs and farmers. Currently, the pork industry is in major butt-covering mode. Smithfield meats–the largest producer of pork products in the world–may be directly implicated in the outbreak, but is denying any connection. They, however, have a history of manipulating the facts, and controversy sticks to them like stink on a hog. The National Pork Producers Council is stressing that pork is fine to eat, that this has nothing to do with American pigs, pork or the food chain. But the problem, I think, goes beyond the issues of this epidemic or even the swine flu itself.
The problem as I see it is one of image. Pigs have always been seen as dirty, disease ridden animals. Both the Jewish & Muslim faiths forbid eating their flesh, and many people have extrapolated that out into an appallingly shallow belief system. More recently the expansion of large hog CAFOs (confined animal feeding operation) has caused public outcry. Often, the worst of these dirty, smelly farms have been the source of pollution, illness and Animal Welfare concern. Despite what the industry wants us to believe, the modern swine farm is no where fit for man or beast. However, we have to separate out the producer and product from the industry.
In the 80’s the nature of pork production changed. The small family farms which raised quality pork from healthy pigs began to be pushed out of operation in favor of the more intensive CAFOs. These larger, so called “efficient” integrated systems claim to produce more pork for less money with less resources. However, this also meant less profit for the farmers actually raising the pigs. The independent nature of the industry changed to become more one of indentured servitude where the meat packing corporations held contracts with hog farmers on increasingly tightening margins. In order to raise so many pigs so intensively farming practices had to change.
The bottom line is the type and quality of the meat suffered at the expense of farms, farmers, and the environment. Most modern day pork is watery, pallid and flavorless. It is bland and often ends up dry when cooked because of lack of internal fat. The prescription to brine the meat before cooking it is only a palliative to mask the base problem–this meat has no character. In reality, the pigs are raised so quickly on such a strict diet they have little chance to lay up any marbling of fat–something readily valued in beef. As consumers began eating more meat, they valued the flavor & quality less than the price. Production methods adapted to this least cost mentality.
In this whole thing, I think the farmers and the pigs are the victims–victims of an industry gone mad and a diet out of control. Never did anyone say–Stop! Why don’t we make more money by raising less pork? No, the high production, “economy of scale” took over and producers had to raise more and more pigs on tighter margins in order to break even. This has put the farmers in a pinch. They have gone along with how the industry wanted the hogs raised, and how the consumers were told they should have their meat–lean and cheap. The flaw in this being that while the meat is lean, it often is not healthy. In pastured, more naturally raised, pork, the fat contains more Omega 3’s, Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA’s), Vitamin E, D and Beta Carotene. Fat is where the flavor is, so this meat, more naturally layered through the muscle, contains more flavor than a quickly raised counterpart. In order to help achieve lean pork, the industry uses an additive called Paylean which has been linked to cancer. Likewise, and as has been seen recently, the industry regularly treats its animals with vaccines to keep them healthy. This is like telling all office workers they will have to be vaccinated month to keep their jobs because they work in cubicles. If the pigs were raise in an healthy atmosphere this would not be necessary. The very fact that the animals are kept in confinement means they will continue to be sick. Has factory farming created a perfect storm for a pandemic?
Given that there are a few bad apples, etc. I do not blame the farmers for much of this. They are hard working individuals with a love of agriculture or they wouldn’t be in the job. They are trying to do their best with what they have to work with. We all can get caught up in our own paradigm. So much so we fail to see beyond out own noses often. I am certainly guilty of that. However, I do think there are industry practices which pig farmers need to question the benefit and efficacy of–gestation crates. Manure Lagoons. Absolute confinement. As humans we can adapt and get used to anything. As pigs, they have no choice. But that doesn’t mean it is right, nor does it mean it is acceptable. I have been in good and bad hog confinement operations. They are noisy, smelly, and repulsive at best. I would not want to work in one. I couldn’t imagine reeking inside and out like one. I love to work with my pigs. They are clean, don’t smell, and are healthy and content. I happily spend time with them during feeding or just to visit. My confinement hog friends generally can’t stand being with their pigs too long.
The reality is that in Swine Flu the CAFO has met its Waterloo. Intensive pork production needs to end. Society needs to eat less meat on the whole, and what we do eat needs to be of better quality. We need to have more respect for the animals we eat as food. We need a more sustainable method of rearing livestock. The large-scale Agribusiness model is a danger. We need to offer our support to local, sustainable, small-scale producers. Farmers who aren’t afraid to open their practices up to public scrutiny. Farmers in our communities we can know and trust. We need to support farmers who treat their animals right, with their welfare and well-being firmly in mind, who value the product they raise. As consumers we need to demand these higher welfare systems and demand better quality meat. Meat with flavor and balance. We also had better expect to pay more for such meat, to help support the farmers who raise it and keep them and their livestock healthy. Perhaps if the farmers could make more profit from fewer pigs they would be more likely to lower stocking densities and relax the use of additives and drugs. Above all we need to not panic about this so-called Swine Flu Pandemic. We need to keep calm and not get confused by the 24 hour news. We need to stay healthy and get informed and we need to eat properly–which is to say, a balanced diet which includes pork, preferably from a local, sustainable, get-to-know-your-neighbor kind of source.
Technorati Tags: CAFO, swine flu, swineflu, smithfield, pork, pigs, hogs, virus, influenza, pork production, farms, farmers
As you will know, I am passionate about food and farming. I defend anyone’s rights to eat what they want, how they want to. I have been fortunate that, although I wasn’t raised on a farm, agriculture has always been a part of my life. I have been equally fortunate to have always seen the positive side of agriculture–the profitable small, family farm cleanly run with minimal environmental impact. In all my farming jobs and farm visits I have rarely been turned off by what small, independent farmers are doing. I guess like seeks like. This is how I choose to farm myself. Small, diversified, as free from environmental impact and unsustainable imputs as possible and profitable whenever possible. I farm realizing there are environmental and personal gains to agriculture as well as financial. I endevor to keep my farming small enough to be within mine, and my families, scope of management.
Perhaps this is why I find industrialized agriculture such an anathema. To me, it is so unsustainable, so unsupportable, and so unprofitable–remember, I make a profit on my agricultural endeavors without subsidy–that I have a hard time being objective about it. Perhaps this is also why I defend small scale agriculture, like I practice, so vehemently against those who view Industrialized Agribusiness as the only way to go. We are equally wrong in some regards. While Agribusiness does its best to hide behind walls of obfuscation I am all too open about how I farm. In blog posts and videos I open myself up to criticism and show how I raise pork. While the other side also is open to criticism, the way they react to it is more like a rattlesnake disturbed from basking in the sun, than anyone who is open for debate and a mutual learning experience.
And so, I weighed in on a supposed attack against Sustainable Agriculture–Free-Range Pork rearing in particular–when perhaps I should have waited for the dust to settle. Certainly, a number of great writers picked the piece apart far better than I did, all for valid reasons I think. Here is a run down of links to articles which I have read:
My friend, Carrie Oliver, has a very balanced view on the issue. This week,however, the author of the inflammatory piece, James McWiliams, has offered a rebuttal of sorts. While a further, more open, discussion of the topic is welcome, he might have saved some trouble by stating a few things in the first piece like, he is a vegetarian and doesn’t feel animals should be killed for meat and that he is a friend of sustainable agriculture seeking to improve it by pointing out its flaws…Ya. Sure. To me, any Devil’s Advocate in the realm of sustainable eco-agriculture is welcome as long as they can further the discussion by offering some experiential solutions to the problems they present. But here is where I still have my doubts. Saying you are among the choir of supporters of Sustainable Agriculture is one thing, but actions speak louder than words…. This latest controversy isn’t the first of its kind Professor McWilliams has been entangled in. It would seem that a campaign of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) is being launched against Sustainable and Eco-Agriculture from all sides. To what extent Mr. McWilliams is involved in this, time will tell. With an upcoming book being published, with the sensationalist title, “Just Food: How Locavores Are Endangering the Future of Food and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly” the good professor has a lot of work to do to show he is firmly on the side of advancing Sustainable, Local, Seasonal, enviornmentally friendly agriculture. His previous mis-representation of the facts surrounding Organic Agriculuture and soil toxicity are the sort of help and support the cause can do without.
While my own writing and style may be filled with the problems of the overly enthusiastic, cult-like, religiosity of my beliefs I try to develop my view point from experience and practice. I openly admit I have no academic credentials to hide behind. I’m the one in the choir singly loudly, and ever so off key.
Technorati Tags: sustainability, eco-agriculture, James McWilliams, Free-Range Pork, pasture raised disease
I imagine “out there” somewhere there exists a growing group of people who would love to live in a bubble. A protective bubble where no harmful organisms exist. These mysophobes would love to dine on irradiated foods, completely sterilized of all harm, nutrition and flavor. They seek to sanitize the world. If ever they were to step outside this bubble the very first sneeze, whiff of warm soil, or sight of someone drinking raw milk would cause their immune system to collapse and they would implode…(one can hope…)
If first impressions are correct, then, James E. Mc. Williams inhabits this bubble. His latest Op-Ed piece for the NY Times, “Free-Range Trichinosis ” reeks of the sort of fear-mongering that bubble dwelling Mysophobes spout through the clean room intercom. It certainly doesn’t pass as the sort of scholarly, well thought out piece that a history professor at Texas State University at San Marcos should be putting his name to. Or is there another reason Mr. Williams wrote this piece of Pork Industry propaganda?
We have to ask this question, because the absence of any reference to where he gets his facts discredits the information from the outset. In fact, many of the statements are purely ludicrous. Either Professor Williams is suffering from some sort of mental trauma, or he is purposefully corrupting the facts to sway his audience against Sustainable Agriculture and the pastured, free-range meat movement. Why would he do this?
Let’s explore some of the mis-information…
The premise of the article is that free-range pork contains far more pathogens and disease causing organisms than its confined, factory counterpart. If that weren’t enough to raise eyebrows, the good professor goes on to mis-cite findings from the Journal of Foodborne Pathogens and Disease. Only he forgets to state that the study was ordered by the National Pork Board and he purposefully misleads readers into thinking the study involved 600 free-range pigs from three states, instead of 324 free-range pigs and 292 confinement-pigs:
The study published in the journal Foodborne Pathogens and Disease that brought these findings to light last year sampled more than 600 pigs in North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin. It discovered not only higher rates of salmonella in free-range pigs (54 percent versus 39 percent) but also greater levels of the pathogen toxoplasma (6.8 percent versus 1.1 percent) and, most alarming, two free-range pigs that carried the parasite trichina (as opposed to zero for confined pigs). For many years, the pork industry has been assuring cooks that a little pink in the pork is fine. Trichinosis, which can be deadly, was assumed to be history.
This paragraph really contains the crux of the issue. How and when was the salmonella measured? Before or after slaughter? Is it not possible that poor slaughter techniques led to the higher salmonella count? Properly handled, as it should be, raw meat is no more harmful than wiping one’s own arse. Are we supposed to stop that as well? Again, we are supposed to be shocked that two out of 600 pigs carried the parasite responsible for trichinosis. However, the statement is misleading.The report is specific in that those two pigs only tested positive for carrying antibodies linked to exposure to trichinosis, not the actual parasite itself.
At the end of the above quote we are regaled with, “For many years, the pork industry has been assuring cooks that a little pink in the pork is fine. Trichinosis, which can be deadly, was assumed to be history.” Obviously, McWilliams doesn’t cook or know anything about what he is writing about–trichinosis dies at 137ºF when the meat is still too raw to be appealing. Perhaps he prefers to use the Center for Disease Control’s guidelines for cooking pork–170ºF–which would mean the meat would be so overcooked and dry as to be almost inedible. In fact, “a little pink in the pork” can be achieved by stopping cooking at 145ºF and letting the meat carry-over cook until it reaches 150ºF, which is medium. Plenty safe to eat. Especially if the pork has been frozen below 10ºF for any amount of time–another method for killing the trichina cyst which the Professor forgets to mention…
As a producer of carefully raised, quality, farm-slaughtered free-range, pastured pork I find this sort of obfuscation of the facts to be annoying to say the least. The fact that it comes from someone who should know better and spouts off in a major public forum is reprehensible. This sort of shilling for Agribusiness does not help the issues we are facing–the end of cheap petroleum, the awakening of the public to the abuse of livestock and the lack of nutrition in industrial raised foods, and the growing need to find energy efficient, local solutions to feeding ourselves–a hedge against the day the industrial production of food fails completely; either through lack of safety controls or by being “too big to fail”. The deliberate confusion of the different terms, “free-range”, “pastured”, “natural” by industrial Agribusiness is one more tactic to demean and belittle those of us who are out there working hard to make sure local, quality food has a future and that the livestock gene pool remains diverse.
McWilliam’s, the author of the forthcoming “Just Food: How Locavores Are Endangering the Future of Food and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly”, also states “The long history of animal husbandry has been a fervent quest toward intensified control.” Who says so? Why? How has a long history of animal husbandry led to this? Only a select group of people have sought this. The rest of us have quietly resisted the trend towards this because we could see the writing on the wall. The confinement pork industry is running scared. They are using whatever means they can to maintain their control over the market. I fear it is only going to get worse. In the coming months, I think we should turn such standard thinking on itshead and ask instead, “How can locavores eat responsibly, when the future of food is endangered”?
Technorati Tags: free-range pigs, pastured pork, confinement pork, trichinosis, salmonella, Op-Ed, James E. McWilliams
Ever since building the Polytunnel, I have been seeking to improve ways of extending the growing season for vegetables. When I stumbled upon an serialization of the book French Gardening by Thomas Smith in Small Farmer’s Journal I thought I had struck gold. The book, originally written in 1909, divulges the intensive gardening secrets of Paris market gardeners. The text and methods captivated me. The pictures of glass bell cloches, their carriers, woven reed mats for temperature control, and glass cold frames got me dreaming of how I might be able to have vegetables earlier in the season and harvest later into the winter.
The trouble, for me, was translating fascinating gardening history which relied on seemingly long forgotten intensive methods, and intensive labor requirements to a coastal, island, Pacific Northwest garden and polytunnel, where horse manure–the fuel which drove the Parisian gardens–is fairly scarce. But blindly I pressed on.
I realize now, I need not have tried to re-invent the wheel. Many times Eliot Coleman’s book, Four-Season Harvest, was recommended to me by many people. I put it on my wishlist. “Some day”, I thought. . . . Indeed, I almost missed the point that Coleman had instigated the republishing of French Gardening, in The Small Farmer’s Journal. It wasn’t until I was reading his latest book, The Winter Harvest Handbook, that I made the connections.
This new book, subtitled “Year-Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses”, expands on the older, classic, Four-Seasons Harvest and updates its techniques with new information recently gained. Full of fantastic color photographs depicting the greenhouses, tools, crops and techniques, The Winter Harvest Handbook contains a wealth of information on indoor and outdoor production of vegetables. The book itself is aimed at the professional market gardener who will benefit from the year-round intensive crop rotation advise, but the language and techniques presented make this book a must read for anyone serious about growing organic vegetables or self-sufficiency.
The heart of Coleman’s concept is the unheated greenhouse, or polytunnel. By using it not only in the summer but in the winter you can maximize your investment and growing space. If he can achieve growing winter salad greens in the tough winter climate of Maine, anyone in other cold or cool climates should be able to replicate the success he has on his Four Season Farm.
Not only is this book an explanation of intensive market garden techniques and winter growing methods, but it is an organic growing primer and history lesson. I was excited to find a whole chapter–far too short by half–on the practices of French Market Gardeners and about how Eliot Coleman himself learned from their methods. But even more exciting, for me, are the chapters on movable greenhouses. These are portable, rolling or dragable, greenhouses which can be moved around the garden to help extend the growing season. What a concept! Not only does this expand the seasonality of a garden, but it helps break pest buildup, keeps crops rotating and provides increased productivity. The only drawback to this part of the book, I found, was that it was too short, and not technical enough. Some other parts of the book–like the chapters on pests and tools–similarly lacked enough technical matter for me, but then I wanted to absorb everything in the book as much as possible. Someone else might find too much technical detail in the book.
Above all, what impressed me the most about the tone of this book is Eliot Coleman’s willingness to share his ideas, what you might call Open Source Gardening. Such access to the mind and spirit of a 40 year Organic Farming veteran is a blessing. The free flowing tone and open sharing in the book make it a great starting point to expand the conversation about how we can have an Organic, local, seasonal food system and still feed a growing number of people. The Winter Harvest Handbook is like a personal letter to each one of us, who grow vegetables, to take up the challenge, improve our soil and methods, grow organically and intensively and feed our communities.
I have been growing vegetables since I was a child. I have studied and observed the methods of successful market gardeners and improved my own growing practices. After reading The Winter Harvest Handbook I am re-energized for a new growing season–and not just the summer, but the full year of seasons–to get out into the garden and explore The Winter Harvest Handbook’s concepts and apply them to feeding my family and my neighbors. If you, too, love working with the soil and growing food, you will want to read this book and catch its infectious enthusiasm for producing top drawer vegetables through all the seasons.
The Winter Harvest Handbook , ISBN: 9781603580816, is published by Chelsea Green Publishing
Technorati Tags: The WInter Harvest Handbook, Chelsea Green Publishing, Eliot Coleman, Organic Farming, greenhouses, polytunnel, market gardening, vegetables
It’s all well and good to champion local and artisanal foods and it is fantastic to see the groundswell behind these products, but somewhere along the way these local producers need to accept some responsability for standards. How do consumers judge such products? Is it by sampling a wide variety of similar craftsmade products, or by comparing to known commercial, industrial likenesses?
Elsewhere I have postulated about how marketing & location effect the Farmer/Consumer experience. I’ve also written about how Farmers & Consumers can communicate in a broader forum. But over on the Serious Eats blog a great discussion about Artisanal products, Quality and Standards is taking place. Author of the post, Ed Levine, tells of a disappointing experience buying foods at a farmers’ market–not the first I’ve heard for sure.
I bought an insanely expensive half pound of bacon from a bearded dude who had the kind of sign up I can never resist: “World’s Best Bacon.” I plunked down my $12, feeling good that I was supporting a pig farmer who treated the pigs and his land right.
A woman came by the stand and said, “It’s good, but it’s really salty.” The bearded pig farmer responded, “Oh, yeah, if it’s too salty just soak the bacon in warm water before you cook it.”
That should have been the warning sign I needed, but instead I moved on to the next stand at the market, owned by a fruit and vegetable farmer I have known for years. I bought some of his mom’s low-sugar raspberry peach preserves after a lengthy discussion with him about the quality of his mom’s jams. . . .
. . . I brought home the jam and the bacon figuring I would use them to make breakfast for my wife, Vicky, the next day. But the next morning, my hopes and dreams for a delicious breakfast were dashed when I tasted the jam—yuck. And the bacon—even yuckier. How could this be?
The bacon-seller had a beard, worn-in jeans, and a sign that said “World’s Best Bacon.” He was lying, or maybe he just didn’t know any better. Or maybe he just didn’t know what delicious was.
Maybe my farmer friend didn’t want to acknowledge how bad his mom’s jam was. Or again, maybe he just didn’t know. Actually, I went back this past weekend and he told me the jam I despised was made by someone other than his mother. Now he tells me.
Maybe the bearded bacon man didn’t know that his bacon was inedibly salty and cut so poorly it could never cook up properly.
A realization then hit me like a ton of organic broccoli—the food revolution may be upon us (and it may even be televised), but sometimes handmade, artisanal food is so bad it makes you appreciate not only the truly great artisanal food makers but also the Smuckers and Oscar Mayers of the world. The even more compelling question: Are serious eaters down with eating bad food if it’s made by hand by someone with the best intentions?
You really need to go and read the full piece. But this is enough to make my point. In the comments below the post, a great debate rages from all sides. But one thing I thought missing was a solution–other than the one Ed suggests. So, of course, I weighed in:
You’re all pointing out something wonderful about local, artisanal foods–they are unique, they are different as night & day from one another, and although they can be good, bad or ugly, they are “self-regulating”.
If you get a hairy, nipple covered, salty slab of bacon you don’t like, will you buy from that producer again? Probably not. He has just lost a sale. If enough people stop buying from him, he will dry up and blow away. Or…Perhaps you should provide him feed-back. As a consumer, help him become a better producer. Take it as an opportunity to explain why you didn’t like the food he was producing. If he’s smart he will take it on the chin, adapt and try to do a better job at producing a quality product and providing what the market will buy.
There are going to be some bumps and ruts on the road to local, sustainable, quality foods. Too long we have been lulled into a palate deadening wasteland. We are going to have to re-learn to cook foods which our grandparents knew how to prepare instinctively. Producers are going to have to experiment and learn what works, what doesn’t and to rediscover how to make excellent artisanal foods–which once upon a time were standard fare.
And producers–give your customers a feedback form. Offer free samples & tasters. Open yourselves up to criticism. Ask you customers to help you be better. Learn from other producers. Have tasting competitions amongst one another. Earn the right to sell you Mother’s Jam recipe or “the Best bacon in the world” Do this, or you will find your products marginalized, your sales figures weak and you farm broken. A free market, a self-regulating local system means the best get better and they get the business while the rest loose money or earn nothing at all. Don’t give up. Strive to be better! And if someone does have a complaint, if your product falls short of your sales pitch, your standards or reputation, offer to replace it, exchange for something else or give them their money back.
Not only do we need to Vote for better food with our Stomachs, and Eat Locally, but we need to offer our views, experiences, and tastes to those we seek to help us in our quest. We need to engage proucers, farmers and other consumers in a larger dialogue. A dialogue, which hopefully, Social Media can help us expediate. So don’t be affraid to comment on producers’ blogs, engage them through Twitter, or leave them a note at their farmstand. Be positive, helpful and solution oriented in your criticisms and everyone will benefit.
Technorati Tags: social media, artisanal food, handmade food, local food, locavore, food quality, farmers’ markets, farmstands, consumer, producer, farmer
This is a cream separator. They still make them, but the new ones don’t have near the ruggedness or durability of this vintage Montgomery Ward separator. This ingenious device was American made, and has withstood the test of time. It is still in perfect working order despite many years of hard service. I have pulled it out of retirement from a neighbor’s barn.
In short this device allows the quick, clean separation of cream and milk. It is hand cranked and easy enough for children to use–just ask anyone who grew up on a farm from the 30’s to 50’s. By using a cream separator one can achieve a very pure level of separation–the richest cream and the skimmest of milk.
We don’t often think in terms of cream these days. Skim milk is generally looked down on as tasteless, barely better than water. Yet, not that long ago, these two items formed a currency in rural America which bought education and opportunity for anyone who wanted to own a cow and apply a little elbow grease.
Back during a time when cattle and milch cows, especially, were largely fed grass, cream was really the “Fat of the Land.” From cream we get butter, sour cream, cream cheese, double cream, clotted cream, and so much more. Cream is easier to store, lasts longer and provides a richer source of nutrition than whole milk alone. Cream was separated to sell and profit by, while the skim milk was for everyday, to make lean, soft cheeses, or to feed to the pigs.
This little powerhouse of a cream separator, which once sold for around $17.50, is rated for around 225 gallons per hour. The most I have put through it so far is 18 gallons. I would have been hard pressed and sore of muscle to get anything more through in an hour. With the gears cranked up to speed and humming, the milk flowing through its series of cones and channels I was able to get a gallon and a half of cream from all that milk. With a bit more effort I turned the cream into its more stable form of currency: butter. About 5 pounds of butter. Now those of you doing the math at home are probably wondering what the fuss is about. It all sounds like an amazing amount of hard work. You would be right. But, in a world where our priorities are out of balance, where the natural order of life, work, food and living are skewed, it would seem unbalanced in itself. It took me 4 hours to milk enough to get the liquid which I ran through the separator. It then took another two hours to skim the milk, clean the machine and churn the butter. If I got 5 pounds of butter, which sells at around $7 a pound (have you ever priced “organic” butter?), I would have made $35–or at least saved that much–or earned about $5.83 per hour.1
However, you cannot equate farming and the time spent producing food with an hourly wage. If you try to do that you will go mad. There is much more which I earned besides saving myself the $35 in butter at the store,2 There is the manure from the cow for my vegetable garden. There is the buttermilk which I use in biscuts and pancakes every week. There is the skim milk which I can feed to the pigs and drink. There is the savings of not driving to the store for butter, milk, butter milk, or cream. There is also the fact that if I keep up walking back and forth to the pasture, milking the cow, carrying full pails home, cranking a manual cream separator two or three times a week, that I will never need to pay for a health club membership. And of course there is the fact that I know what is in my food, where it has come from, and how it was made. Priceless, as they say.
So the next time you reach for a pint of cream for your coffee, a pound of butter for a special cake, some buttermilk for a recipe, think about where and how that came to be on the shelf. Think about how far it travelled there and if it could be found closer. Consider if you have the desire and ability to produce such items yourself. Whether you could skim some of the fat off the land. Then give a thought to those of us who work hard behind the food products you take for granted and think about reaching out in your local area and meeting some producers for yourself. Who knows, you might make new friends, and find yourself cranking a separator of your own one of these days.
Technorati Tags: cream, butter, raw milk, cream separator, Montgomery Ward, milking, cows, farming, agriculture, food production, agrarian economy
I have been working on some Raw Milk issues lately, dealing with press perspectives on it–mostly bad, largely uninformed scare-mongering–and how we can cut a path through the red-tape of over-regulation and ignorance for greater access of something which is supposed to be legal in my state.
However, the horror stories from other states keep coming. Hushed news items about the triumph of police over illegal activities, and protest pieces about attacks on and abuse of Raw Milk producers in other states where it is legal to produce and sell Raw Milk. I would expect these attacks in narrow-minded states where it is illegal to drink fresh, unpasteurized, unprocessed, unindustrialized milk. The forces there want everyone to drink a homogenized, de-natured, ultra-processed product which may as well have come from a cess-pit as a nurturing creature. For so it seems that Milk has been removed from the natural and made into some sort of squeaky-clean water replacement that must be processed and altered in order to be a healthy, natural product. It is as if somehow nature cannot be allowed near anything we consume.
Along with this paranoia about the product, it seems to me good Farmers are being made to be criminals for doing their best to provide their customers with a healthy, wholesome products which the customers themselves are requesting. There have been many raids on farms and arrests of farmers, launched by power-hungry government functionaries who are trumping up charges, being inventive with the laws and draconian with their enforcement. It seems that attacks on Raw Milk are on the rise, as is the complete ignorance of the issues. Elsewhere, I have suggested that consumers who want to eat real food, live a life of informed choices, and who do not want to be told what to eat or have their diets controlled by a nanny state, should be allowed to sign a waiver releasing the farmer or farmers’ collective from harm, fully acknowledging the risks and benefits of their choices. We need a consumer/farmer/local foods/healthy dining manifesto which will carry some authority allowing local food customers and producers to cut through the red-tape and bureaucratic nightmare.
What are these functionaries protecting us from? With misguided statements to the effect that raw milk will cause “miscarriage…swollen neck glands and blood stream infection” a largely ignorant public will be frightened into demanding that the poison and poisoners be eliminated, regulated, punished, for the protection and welfare of society at large. What these poltroons don’t realize is that such a statement could be made–more correctly–about pasteurized milk as well, and any number of prescription and over the counter drugs which these same people trust as safe everyday. The sooner such a skewed reality ends, the better. Is Raw Milk 100% safe? No. Most things aren’t. But properly produced Raw Milk from a pastured herd has a higher rate of being safe than most industrialized, pasteurized, so-called “safe” milk. The sooner people are provided with correct information so they can choose for themselves and the sooner the goon squads stop attacking farmers and treating them like they are drug lords, the better for us all. Farmers need to be allowed to produce the crops and products customers want. They need to be given the space and freedom to produce safe, sustainable products and the backing from their agriculture departments to keep these products quality the highest they can be.
Technorati Tags: raw milk, usda, fda, goon squads, over regulation, burden on small farms, food, agriculture, farming
I have been working with a committee on limiting agricultural over-regulation in our county. Whether we will be successful, and how long it will take, only the future knows. I am encouraged by the drive and focus of our group despite Department of Agriculture suggestions that if we are having problems when one inspector shows up on small farms, they will send two. . . .
I am not sure where the crux of the matter lies, but I suspect it is partly because inspectors are over-worked, underpaid, lack the correct knowledge to perform their job correctly or that authority filled regulatory positions such as this attract morons. And it is not just the inspectors who are to blame. The rule-makers at the State level also play their part in driving the idiocy forward.
What I am calling over-regulation is from the view point of a small farmer.1 This same farm-gate bureaucratic nightmare might be called inadequate regulation by the Department of Agriculture, or seen as no regulation at all by the consumer. Herein lines a major problem in today’s climate. When the news headlines flash “Food Scare” across the nation’s screens worried citizens cry “Regulate! Regulate!” and their toadying political representatives seek to pile on more regulation without any of them trying to understand the problem, the scale, or the needs.
From the consumer point of view, food–especially when connected with something so filthy sounding as a “farm”–needs to be clean (read, white styro trays and lots of cling film or flashy packaging), healthy, safe (Really, two issues which have been combined. We all know most Americans wouldn’t know healthy food if it bit them. . .) and cheap. If a consumer stops to think about what they are buying, these are likely the first categories of consideration.
From the farmer’s point of view, producing food needs to cost less, involve less hassle for more gain, and the regulations need to be guidelines which are easy to follow and make common sense. Here is the disconnect. The Department of Agriculture is on the side of the consumer, protecting them, while heaping inane legislation on farmers to the point of breaking them. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
Let’s take a for-instance. If I have chickens and I want to sell some eggs to my neighbors, I can without any hassle. I don’t need a license as long as I sell from the farm and have less than 3000 birds. There are no regulations which I need to follow, or even any best-practice guidelines. I can re-use egg cartons, wash the eggs in my kitchen sink, and put them out with with the veggies for sale on the corner of the farm. I don’t have to candle the eggs. I could, if I really had no common sense, put them out in an old mailbox–you’ve seen them, those gigantic ones which must become ovens in the summer. I’ve passed plenty of these with EGGS brightly painted on the sides out in front of rural properties. I can store the eggs I have for sale in my home refrigerator and legally sell to anyone except restaurants and retail establishments. My customers are my regulators. If they get a rotten egg, or one with a half-formed chick, they call up or stop by quickly and let me know. Either I hear back from them or I don’t. In 16 years of trading in eggs this way–via direct farmhouse sales, not the roadside oven–we have only had a complaint twice due to chicken embryos, and both times the customer was one back with apologies and an extra free dozen of eggs. Word of mouth sales keep up busy with more customers than we have capacity for.
Now, say I wanted to sell my eggs at a farmers’ market or the little corner store or to a local restaurant. I then step from the realm of the small farmer into the giant catchall of the industrial egg producer. It doesn’t matter that my flock, at it’s biggest, is 50 chickens and that generally I will only sell two or three dozen eggs a week for 8 months. To sell to the general public you must play with the big-boys. It doesn’t matter that the customers–the restaurant chefs, the general store owner and the farmers’ market shoppers–seek me out, and know and understand the provenance of my eggs. That isn’t enough. Full compliance with all the egg regulations and nit-picky inspections are the order of the day. No adjustment for scale of production. No pandering to common sense, self-regulation, or market access.
To be a licensed, legitimate “egg dealer” one must pay a yearly $30 fee, contend with a minimum of 4 annual inspections, and dance to the tune of whatever the inspectors say–usually under threat of fines and loosing your licence. Gone are the quaintly, farmy mis-match of eggs in recycled cartons. Every egg must be graded and in a fresh box with a state seal on it. Eggs must now be washed under a litany of rules and procedures–I especially love the last one where each egg must be dried by a fresh paper towel. . . .2 In addition to this you must carry liability insurance and label your egg cartons, not only with your farm’s information but also the helpful reminder that the eggs must be refrigerated. Also, eggs should be marked as potentially hazardous due to their capacity to harbor disease. But complying with these minimum requirements isn’t always enough. On a recent visit to a friend’s egg “dealership” the inspector required either a locking door on her refrigerator–a special one just for the eggs–or on the outbuilding it resides in, as if someone in this remote location was going to tamper with the eggs. The inspector also inquired into the farm’s bio-security practices, failing to note the out-of-the-way location, lack of traffic and less than 40 hens. This same inspector forgot to bring their own boots, and had no sanitizer to clean the forgotten boots or vehicle tires before heading to the next farm. . . Another burden on the small farmer. After severely rattling my friend. the inspector threatened to show up unexpected, for the next visit, to make sure that full compliance with their whims had been achieved. All of this to be able to sell some eggs at the local grocery in a small community.
So which is it to be? Do we do our best to promote local, small scale agriculture and community food-security, or do we cave in to panicy pencil-pushers covering their butts from liability by inventing more and more useless rules? Rules which have little to do with safety, health or common sense and more to do with enforcement for enforcement’s sake. If I bought eggs from a large corporate egg-farm then perhaps the rules and the scale they aim to protect me from are valid. But I, and many of my neighbors, prefer to live on the edge and to buy food from people we know and can trust. Surely for those such as us there can be a means of lightening the regulatory burden.
Technorati Tags: eggs, egg production, chickens, laying hens, egg dealers, wsda, farm fresh eggs, eggs for sale, farm regulation, overregulatory burden, small farms
- For the sake of making it painfully obvious I am distinguishing between a small-scale farmer who may farm up to 100 acres, but probably a lot less, and the industrial-scale agribusiness man. [↩]
- In truth, eggs shouldn’t be washed or scrubbed at all unless absolutely necessary. The cleaner the egg is naturally the better and shows the mark of good husbandry. Eggs are coated in a natural, waxy film. Any washing rubs this protective coating off the porous eggshell exposing it to contamination from outside. Think about that as you read the rules for the sanitizer in the wash water. What exactly is in commercially processed eggs? [↩]
There is a machine at work, launched by the Industrial Agricultural Complex, to churn out supposedly convincing arguments to con ignorant people that “Milk is Milk”. The current Milk is White Gold or White Gold is White Gold to be related, if but in a cagey sort of way. However, the only way Milk is close to white gold currently is in the profits of the Dairy Consortiums who push rBST and other intensive dairying practices, and who are quite happy to push small, independent dairy producers out of business. The whole concept that milk needs to be promoted is a bit bizarre. Dairy products would seem, on face value and nutritionally, to sell themselves. Why does milk need so much promotion? Is it just a case of pressing the wholesome image just a bit too far, of oversell?
As we have seen with the latest Chinese Milk Debacle, milk simply isn’t just milk. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Milk, whose image is of purity, whiteness, cleanliness, wholesomeness–white gold, even–has become one of darkness. A vehicle of poisons. Industrial and toxic poisons as bad, or worse, than any germs Raw Milks opponents may conjure our of their bag of fear-mongering tricks. And yet, pasteurized milk has a worse track record in the past 20 years than Raw Milk has had in the past 50. Not only is it susceptible to contamination post-processing, either in the bottle or the bulk tank, but it can actually be a very compromised product pre-processing. Sloppy farmers–I’ve seen them–cramming milking tubes onto unwashed, manure smeered udders; unclean, bacterial soup bulk tanks; cows with bad cases of mastitis passing clots, blood, and puss into the milk; anitbiotics, hormones; tens of small farms’ suspect milk mixed together–aw, sure it’ll be okay, it gets pasturized doesn’t it? Out it comes to store shelves, white gold. Sure, that’s better than Raw Milk, sure–wink, wink.
Now, I’m not saying that every Raw Milk dairy or cow share program is acceptable. In fact, from what I’ve seen many are not. They either skirt the law, flaunt it, or are just plain ignorant of what it takes to produce good quality Raw Milk. That being said, I also don’t agree that Raw Milk should be treated like a bio-hazzard or toxin. Milk from a grass-fed herd, safely gathered in a sanitary environment from cows which are screened regularly for disease should pose no problem ever. You can’t get Safe Raw Milk from a large herd, from a feed-lot dairy, from grain-fed animals. It’s not that hard to understand. I have outlined before my positions on this issue. I’ll say it once again–we need Education, not more Regulation on this issue. Farmers who produce Raw Milk need continuing education. The State Agricultural and Health Department staff need Education on best practice of producing Raw Milk, Consumers need to know the difference between the supposedly safe pasteurized liquid in jugs and true milk–raw, unhomogenized and fresh. There is no comparison.
But what I hear from local producers and read in the news is that continually Raw Milk Dairys are harrassed. The farmers are treated like criminals, their products like they are toxic. But what is the allowable melamine content in Raw Milk? How much pus, blood, rBST, antibiotic are allowed in Raw Milk? None, and rightly so. But what of the pasteurized, mass produced, commercially acceptable stuff? Too much is allowed, and backed by dairy board goons who get paid to promote milk production for their corporate paymasters. The farmers don’t benefit. The public pays more for an inferior product and Raw Milk is treated like a poison it isn’t.
So let’s start calling it like it is. Milk isn’t milk. Milk isn’t white gold. It’s a liquid, sometimes pure and raw, sometimes barely healthy, sometimes so full of toxic waste it kills or maims. And lets get the rose tinting off of the Corporate Shades. Let’s get veterinarians involved in checking and regulating Raw Milk dairies. Let’s get government Ag goons pushing corporate agendas off of small farms where they are harassing good farmers. Lets lift the regulatory burden on farms who serve under 500 people Raw Milk, or meat or vegetables. The customers can sign a waiver, adopt a manifesto, release the farm of liability and enjoy real food, real flavor amongst real risks. That’s life. Let’s start making it easier for all people to get access to local food, safe with in reason, and secure from mass-contamination by the very fact it is small scale. Let’s get the WTO, NAFTA, Corporate Agri-Industry off of our backs and get back to flavor, community, and freedom. And lets get out from under the fear and paranoia that we don’t know what we’re doing, that something will go wrong, that people will get sick, die or starve. That could happen anyway and probably will if the corporate model for Agriculture continues along the way it is. If you’re going to think twice before you have a glass of Raw Milk, you’d better thing three or four times before you have a glass of pasturized bacterial soup. . .oh, err, I mean White Gold.
Technorati Tags: white gold, milk is milk, raw milk, freedom to eat, food manifesto
