Extreme Cold Prep

 Frigid. Arctic. Extreme cold.  Whatever you want to call it, the weather is finally doing what it's supposed to be doing, which is to say, getting cold. Perhaps a bit colder than we'd all like and maybe for not quite as long as the traditional "two-week cold snap" we often encounter in January or February but at least this winter we're going to get temperatures cold enough to hopefully give some of those summertime pests a dent. Last year's mosquitos seemed more numerous and voracious than I ever remember (do I say that every year?) and I attributed it to the too-mild winter. So I'm hoping that when I'm walking out to water the bull on Saturday morning in -50 degree, 100km/hr winds, I'll remember those August nights of mosquito swarms while I shut in the hens. 

The curls on Beowulf, the Belted Bull. Doesn't he have the best head?

I know the Galloway cattle are better prepared than most for cold temperatures. Their ears are covered in long, shaggy hair and they've got curls for days all over their heads.  Their thick coat is lush, they're pretty fat and they've got pretty stellar instincts.  Combined with the barn I shouldn't think twice, but of course I worry and wonder if there's more I should do. One of the girls seems to have shed some of her ear hair and I know when I'm laying in bed on Saturday night I'll be wondering about her ears. Oh #13, I hope you snuggle up close with #16 who seems blessed with especially long hair. 

We've had to designate one cattle barn as beef and the other as dairy, which is hilarious, given that only one inhabitant produces milk but "the cow barn" was leading to far too much miscommunication in a relationship that already has its fair share of communication mishaps.

Anyway, the dairy barn is housing the beef heifers while they are weaned, along with Petunia, and their door is to the west so we're planning to shut it once things start to really cool off but the heifers have never really been in a barn, and are still a little worked up about the weaning so I hope they appreciate the warmth more than they're stressed about being shut in. 

The other animals of concern are the hens, who will hopefully avoid any frostbitten combs. We put plastic over their windows and made alternative watering arrangements for when it inevitably freezes up. I'll give them some cracked corn the next couple evenings to warm them up from the inside out while they sleep and try to gather the eggs every hour or so in the mornings. 

Other than that, I'll be curious to see if Hagrid, the maremma opts to head to the barn at night. He so loves the cold and snow that it's so rare to see him choose the indoors, but Lennox, the Australian shepherd has been sleeping in the barn at night for a few weeks now. 

As for me, I'm off to NB to pick up our bacon and hams and sausage from our favourite butcher and tuck in with my parents in what we jokingly are calling the hottest place on earth, which is my Mom's kitchen with her sweltering wood stove working overtime at all times. Mark is going to hold down the fort, on pipe duty and Lucy is going to be on egg gathering and animal watering. 

In unrelated news, I have been having a horrible week on the board game/card game front. I have lost miserably and I don't just mean not first. I mean, I've been bringing up the rear in the score of a 5 person game! I am not accustomed to this, nor comfortable with it.  Last night after losing badly in Carcasonne, I insisted on Five Crowns, which I promptly lost as well by 200 points. I was tempted to insist on one more game of something in an attempt at redemption, but opted instead to go to bed, knowing if I lost another one I'd hardly be able to sleep.  Ugh. Tonight is hockey, so let's hope my losing streak doesn't translate to the ice!

I'm trying to think about what my future self might want to read and I think they will feel like I'm already stretching it with board game stats, so I'll sign off for now. 

May this find you putting up your thermal curtains and digging out your heaviest quilts and looking forward to the hunkering down.

-Sally

Dear Past Sally, thank you!

 I've been struggling in this new year to really settle into my goal of reducing my use of social media in favour of working towards my goals of writing more, reading more, playing more guitar and just generally being more present in the now. That subtle addiction to short, intriguing Instagram posts and videos is unbelievably powerful. 

After making an action plan for how to combat that omnipresent pull to pick up my phone, I decided to check out some old blog posts. when I used to share farm and family stories weekly, or even more frequently. Seems like 2010 was a banner year for posts on For the Love of the Soil and this post from October had me simultaneously laughing and incredulous that I have very little memory of the life detailed within.  I know my house was fairly chaotic at that time and it's inevitable with little kids that things will be unruly, but I am so thankful that I documented all of it!

And thankfully, re-reading those old posts has inspired me to take back up the sharing of stories from the Barnyard. They're decent reading, but more than anything are an invaluable snapshot of life that I am so thankful to have to look back on.  Future Sally will inevitably love these posts as much as current Sally is enjoying the old ones. 

So here's a start:

Last week I picked up our pork and beef from our favourite butcher shop. Our three pigs, Destiny's Child, and Thor, the jersey steer came back in banana boxes and the 6 of us worked hard to get them all vac-packed and in the freezer quickly.  That large vac-packer was probably overkill for the CSA at the time, but it's been incredibly useful, however infrequently. That said, I think I'd like to try wrapping some things in butcher paper next year. The roasts, and chops with bones don't do so hot with the vac-packer, often puncturing the bags and missing the point. 

What a blessing and glorious fruit of our labour to have the freezers full of the meat we raised! 

(No, we're not selling any.  Seems we 6 humans eat an awful lot!)

We FINALLY got some snow after what felt like a never-ending mud season in January of all months! It wasn't a HUGE dump or a terribly nasty storm, but there's enough to cover the fields and make some drifts. The kids have been taking advantage of two snow days off school to wear the bottom off one of their (expensive) LL Bean snow tubes but hauling it behind the four wheeler and seeing how many of three can stay on while the fourth tries to whip them off by doing donuts.  Lucy hit the frozen, heavy concrete planter by the front step hard enough to knock it over, so they're getting velocity and momentum!

The Belties are doing great and thoroughly enjoy their barn.  One of the OGs, #25, came into heat late last week, but by the time we managed to get her in with the bull, we had missed the heat, so it's on the calendar for next month.  I was torn about breeding her now as it'll mess a bit with the schedule for next year, but it seems more prudent to have her calf in October than let her get too fat all summer on grass, only to get bred in September.  

I'm trying to take the positive out of this situation, which is to say that I THINK she's the only one who came into heat, which hopefully means that Beowulf, our bull, did in fact manage to breed the rest of the herd. 

We castrated the little bull calf that arrived on New Years, Buster, which was a bit sad, given that he is purebred to fancy genetics, but my management capacity can't at this point manage two bulls with the mere hope of selling him as breeding stock. (That's one thing I was stunned at reading my old blogs. It seems we had unlimited optimism and confidence as younger farmers! Breeding sheep, getting a dairy cow for the first time, purchasing extra chickens, making first-time dairy products, all with multiple babies underfoot and almost no experience with any of it!  I don't read much doubt or worry in any of the posts. Just a wide-eyed wonder and enthusiasm that seems to have more-than carried over any hardships. While I don't feel "old" I think that is a defining characteristic.  Am I overthinking it all now or was I under thinking it all then? Good on ya young folks, you're what makes things tick along at break-neck pace!). So all that to say, Buster will likely be our first taste of Barnyard Organics beef at some point in a couple years!

Mark's new blue tractor is meeting all expectations and making him a very happy farmer. There's some talk about PTO problems or implements not matching the power of the tractor or some such thing, but generally things seem to be working fine.  Here's to optimism for planting season!

Our farm hand, Browen, is away for the month of February, which adds some challenges in some ways, but also reduces Mark's mental load in ensuring valuable work for someone else. It also means I'll have to step up to be the feed miller more reliably, which is fine. 

The kids are well. I'm really enjoying raising teenagers (which is incidentally the mantra I repeat when Lucy is particularly difficult to deal with). 

I don't want to risk losing my audience (is anyone even out there?) too soon so I won't go on with further details just now, and I have to get out and make sure my bull has water on this chilly morning but I'm thrilled to be back! Stretching these particular writing muscles feels like a deep, delicious yoga I'd almost forgotten. 

May this find you feeling some winter sun on your face and crunchy snow under your feet!

-Sally

Eating Each Other's Food

Our household isn’t growing by numbers anymore, but our collective appetite is in a stage of exponential growth and one I expect to continue for a few years yet. Mark and I are not small people and neither are our offspring and we all love to eat. We acknowledge, nearly daily, how lucky we are to be able to raise and eat the food we do. We say the name of the animal and the part we’re eating, we talk about the farmer who grew the veggies, or the country from which some exotic ingredient came. We’ll research how something we’re not familiar with grows, how it might be harvested, how it gets to us. We’ll marvel over the colour and stain of a pickled beet, the yellowness of creamy, summer butter, the orange brightness of egg yolks from pastured hens and the flavour of the milk when the cow moves to fresh clover. We’ll all give a new cheese a deep whiff, gently poke at rising bread, nip some chilling cookie dough from the fridge and crunch into a sweet, cold carrot from the winter storage, gripping it with a mittened hand as we make our way back to the house with a bunch for supper.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t get in a rut and tired of cooking. Some days, especially if I haven’t prepared anything in advance, it feels like drudgery and I start to resent this part of my job. I’ll mutter to myself about time wasting and hastily throw together a meal of relative convenience that checks bare-minimum boxes of completion and nutrition, but is hardly inspired or inspiring. Like, who decided that rather than just eat wheat, we should have to grind it up, make flour and then turn that flour into arduous pasta, or pie crusts, or bread or crackers. Why do we go to such lengths to put together some elaborate cream sauce when we could just eat some garlic, drink some milk, chew some herbs and save all the time and effort?

 

So this year, with my usual new years resolution gusto, I decided I wanted to avoid those occasional resentful moments in my kitchen. And I got to thinking about an idea I heard a couple years ago that suggests that at the most basic level, our entire purpose here, as humans on earth is to eat each other’s food. 
We might have grand ideas about the change we’re making in the world, or the importance of our careers, our goals, etc. But at the foundation of it all, at our very core as part of humanity, we’re here to be a member of a larger community and within that community, we eat. 
Why not make it awesome? Why not perfect that favourite sauce, why not make the fluffiest pancakes, use the sweetest cream from a cow on alfalfa pastures, find the best variety of corn for our garden soil, explore new flavours and interesting ingredients? 
 
When I’m able to think about it in that context, I start to think that we’ve actually been tricked into thinking cooking is drudgery and the kitchen is a jail cell. It’s easier for the profits of food companies if we think that so that we’ll buy more convenience foods, we’ll rely more on others to keep us fed so we have less control over what we eat and how it’s made. If we believe the lie that food is complicated, expensive and better left to someone else, we’ve missed the entire point of being here. 
 
To eat each other’s food.

to be continued...

One Helluva Pipe(dream)

Big numbers can be tricky to get ones head around. It's why they get kindergarten kids to bring in 100 of something on the 100th day of school. Our brains sometimes struggle to grasp the enormity of big numbers. 

 340,000 is a huge number. I've been trying to get my head around just how big that number is in the context of litres.

A Boeing 747 uses 14,400 litres of jet fuel per hour. So 340000 litres would be enough for a 24 hr flight and then some. 

A round, backyard pool measuring 15 ft across and 5 ft deep holds 25000 L. You could have nearly 13 pools in your backyard and still not have 340000 L of water in them. 

A large milk truck holds roughly 20,000L. So you'd need 17 milk trucks to hold 340,000 L. 

Yet, somehow last summer, a pipe moving liquid cow manure through a culvert and across a field burst and for three hours, gushed liquid shit at a rate of 340,000 L PER HOUR. FOR THREE HOURS. That's a total of well over 1 MILLION LITRES OF TOXIC LIQUID MANURE in a matter of THREE HOURS. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-farm-fish-kill-manure-fined-1.6395209

I keep waiting for this number to be corrected in the CBC article, thinking it simply cannot be correct. But it still stands, a day later and is based, presumably on court documents, so must be correct. It is little surprise then that the reported number of brook trout was 600 and that's just the ones they found. The nearby public beach was closed for the season and shellfish was limited in the area. 

The take away from this article is not about this specific farm however. It's not even about the shit or the fish. It's the fact that we've designed a system to heralds the capacity and size of farms like this. We've placed efficiency and cheap food on such a high pedestal over the values of sustainability and ecological awareness that we shouldn't be shocked when disasters like this happen. 

We can discuss the multiple dangers of liquid manure another time, but consider that a small farm wouldn't likely be moving manure so far. They wouldn't be moving it by pipeline. They wouldn't have such a large pipe or pump system. Manure wouldn't be a waste product to be rid of, but a valuable input to be managed and monitored closely. A small farm would never have found itself in the position of being in court for spilling liquid manure at a rate of THREE HUNDRED FORTY THOUSAND LITRES PER HOUR.

$50,000 is a significant fine in the world of PEI agriculture and it might even lead to changes on that farm. But it doesn't do anything to move us toward a system of more, smaller farms with more farmers and happier neighbours. 

The Dangerous Part

 The argument over whether the trucker convoy headed to Ottawa is a bunch of hillbilly-anti-vax-white-nationalists or the most hopeful momentum of protest against government restrictions is a distraction from what I think is the real tipping point here, and it only serves to continue to divide the country even further.

This has grown into a much larger issue than just vaccine choices and while some will certainly frame the protest in such a light, given the scope of support it's seeing, I think it's important to consider that it is much more than a single issue movement (and in fact, some would argue is not about vaccine choice at all). 

When Trump was elected, I was among those who was astounded and confused. And I stayed that way for the first months of his election, confused over the support such a deplorable leader could rally. But the more I paid attention to the kind of folks who were behind him, the more clear it became that it was less about him as a person and more about him as a boisterous voice, an attention getter. He was offering a very public and loud voice for a large segment of people who felt ignored and marginalized.  Whether they actually were or not, is up for debate in a different article, but they FELT they were and they were angry about it. 

I think we're seeing a glimpse of that with this Freedom Convoy. There are a lot of people who have kept their opinions to themselves about the rules and regulations over the last couple years. The risk of saying anything against the rules was to risk being labelled a careless, selfish bigot who doesn't care if vulnerable people die so rather than question a publicly supported narrative, a lot of folks have kept to themselves. Some, more vocal folks have fanned dangerous flames on the internet, spawning lots of questionable information and garnering support from some vulnerable folks. 

But there are a lot of people who roll their eyes at the angry Facebook warriors and still have questions that they're scared to ask and are frustrated at the limited dialogue. Just as there were a lot of folks who didn't attend Trump rallies but who still quietly put their vote beside his name because they finally felt heard. Just as there are a lot of people in support of the convoy who have never posted a comment on the internet, waved a flag or complained to you about any of the rules. 

So if you're someone who has been publicly critical, shared a dismissive article, maybe posted a clever meme or come up with a cynical new pun for the name of the movement, consider that there may be someone close to you who you assume has the same views as you, but has just been keeping to themselves because that is what is acceptable. Consider that by sharing your negative views of what is (thus far) a peaceful protest that is clearly supported by a lot of folks, you're making yourself yet one more unsafe place for that person to turn with their questions. 

And if your reaction to that is, "Good! I don't want to be a safe place for 'anti-vaxxers'! They're not worth my time!" then it's time to consider that you're no better than the most vocal, unmovable protester and we'll never reach common ground as a country. 

And the problem with that, is that we risk electing officials over ideologies and not policies. That's where things get dangerous. 

Values Chain

 I've been putting off writing this. For all kinds of reasons, but mostly because I just don't want to acknowledge what's in it. 

We have to raise our feed prices. 

Womp womp.

Sometimes we get teased that we're the vertically integrated Irving-esque organic farmers of the region. We grow much of our own seed for our own grain, for our own feed for our livestock that we process and market ourselves. We didn't start out that way, but I will admit the comfort I take in some of our food security here, to a degree. 

And I think as a result of that vertical integration I thought we might be immune to all the wacky fluctuations happening *gestures wildly about*. I think I foolishly thought that because we knew our cost of production and our margins, we could to control the pricing and honour that crucial part of our values statement that says,

"Barnyard Organics is a diversified, family-friendly, soil-focused farm with a priority on organic integrity from seed to feed and keeping products fair and accessible to the regional community."

I knew better. I know enough about our upside down global food system to know that no one is separate from the policies and politics that affect our food. Including us. 

As East Coast Organic Grainery grew, we have had to purchase more and more grains from other farmers. And we're thrilled to do so. It says right on our bag how much supporting organic farmers matters because more consistent demand means more acres turning over to organic production. Which means fewer pesticides & chemical fertilizers and more emphasis on soil biodiversity and agroecology. But those same organic farmers have choices of where to send their product and we can't blame them for choosing the highest bidder. If a broker in Ontario will pay $1500 per tonne for raw organic beans, we can't expect them to take last year's price from us, just so we can keep our feed prices the same. 

We saw organic field pea prices rise last year and a general shortage meant we had to source from outside the Maritimes for the first time which meant a subsequent rise in the price for peas. It was our first sign of things to come.

Overall, this current price hike is due mostly to the significant increase in the price for soybeans, one of our main staple ingredients. But all the grains have gone up. Which means all of the feeds have gone up. Even the SoyFree options. 

We know that choosing our feed is already a decision made based on values. Not the lowest value, but the highest valueS. Like wanting to support a local mill, Maritime farmers, soil health, non GMO, simple ingredients, organic grains, etc. And because we share all the same values, we absorbed the higher costs for a while, hoping this blip would pass and we could get back to ensuring our feed was accessible to all those who wanted it. But now, even after trimming our margins and having a hard look at all the excel sheets and data, we can't absorb it anymore. Prices are going up. 

And it isn't easy. There are undoubtedly cheaper options out there. Some of you may be forced to switch based on dollar alone.  We understand and hope that you will be back. We will still continue to insist on the best grains, simple recipes, high quality minerals and really great feed.  

 We're all swimming upstream against this strange and sudden tide of inflation that no one can make sense of and no one seems to be able to avoid or control. 

This is an outtake from an OLD Christmas card of ours, but it feels appropriate for the moment. Things are a little fuzzy, a bit confused, not quite aligned and we sometimes put on an overdone smile, but we still hold out hope. For it all.

Warts 'N All

 Well well well, three holes in the ground. Or in this case, just one big hole with a bunch of PEI potato farmers tossed in it by the Feds while politics plays itself out in the theatre of cross border posturing. And one "farmer" sitting up on the edge of the hole looking down, grinning and counting his money.

We all know how much I love to hate Cavendish Farms and the Irving oligarchs. But if this current situation isn't one in which to take a more critical look at them, I don't know what it will take. Of all the businesses and farms affected by the potato wart border closure, Cavendish farms is the one business that stands to BENEFIT from it all. As buyers of potatoes, they now rest as the closest and easiest market for all the potatoes from the fields with wart and now all the potatoes that won't be sold across the border. Desperate farmers who are watching their market go up in smoke will be looking for willing buyers and who will be gleefully rubbing their hands together at an abundance of local spuds at reduced prices? 

Even if the potatoes DON'T go to them, what is their incentive to keep the wart in check? They are virtually unaffected by any fresh potato border closure and are always looking for more product so besides the hassle of extra cleaning of their gear at digging time, and some extra CFIA oversight (for which they have people hired to deal with), why would they be particular about keeping it contained? What is their inventive, as a business that buys potatoes that are not sale-able, and then buys farms that are no longer viable because of lost markets? 

I know there are lots of farmers and employees on PEI who will never speak their mind on the Irvings for fear of retribution, loss of contract, loss of employment, etc. But until we look this exploitive monopoly in the face and call it what it is, we're just continuing to rail at the heavens, clutch our pearls and pretend we don't know any better. When we know better, we can do better and now we know.