I just wanted to say that I have been reading for a a couple of days and I would like to sign up for the rss feed. Regrettably, I am not to savy so I’ll give it a try but I will need some assistance. This is a great find and I would hate to lose contact, and maybe never discover it again.

Anyway, thanks again and I look forward to reading/posting again in the future!

Many thanks – Jeremy

Grandpa broke my heart when he told my brother and I, ‘There’s no money in farming, so don’t bother.’ We sat on the wide fenders of that ancient Case 500, and watched his older (ancient) brother combining golden oats with an ancient combine, rolling clouds, warm breeze,… you and every one from the country knows that scene from the family farms of old.

It was the late 1980′s, and he was dying of cancer. Lymphoma, actually, probably from the Roundup and atrazine and God knows what else was in those cans rusting away for a generation in the sink holes dotting the rolling limestone hills approaching the “Little Switzerland” region of Iowa-Wisconsin-Minnesota borders. But he knew I loved the summer spent working for him as a high schooler saving up for college money. Perhaps he spoke to us so frankly because he knew I wanted to join him and let those days to last forever.

He was so old fashioned in his farming, he’d be avant garde nowadays. His 40-odd head of Holsteins were pastured and fed from the haymow in the winter. A huge manure pack waited, steaming, in the barnyard for spring. Sows and boars had 15 acres to themselves, supplemented with the aforementioned oats and the corn gleaned from wintering afield; their litters were finished with corn grown on the farm; 100 beef cows and their April-born calves roamed pastures, never seeing grain; tiny tractors with belly cultivators waiting their turn in the rotations of beans, corn, hay, pasture, etc.

“Knowing what I know now…” of course, I’d never had gone to college and forged $40k in debt-chains. I’d have worked for $4 an hour (or room and board for a year to convince him) to help him develop a local market for his grass-fed beef, talking him into giving up that bit of grain and selling grass-fed milk, or (with likely more success) talking the hogs into hogging down the grains themselves and direct marketing the pork. From an old hay wagon, I’d fashion a chicken coop for layers among the beef cattle herd. You bet I’d ring that entire farm with oaks and maples and native Iowa hardwoods, and fence off the creek and springs, and scratch ponds where I could. Perhaps I’d take the rings out of the snouts of sows and boars so they could root out the bitchweed that plagued some fields so bad we nearby grandkids would spend summers ‘walking corn’–on our hands and knees– pulling out it and the wild cucumber.

Hindsight is 20/20, even if the memory is fuzzy and forgets the sweat and corn-pollen-caked afternoons. Looking back as an armchair farmer, of course, I think I have it all figured out. I can’t go back in time. Those 500 verdant acres have long since been sold out of the family. The old, functioning combine sold at the estate sale for $300, or $200 less than the riding lawn mower. The barbed wire fencing has all been pulled up to till and plant non-stop from one end to the other so the fellow can make it to work in the city on time. The hog pasture has been turned into a 4-wheeler race track. Such is life, regression, and its regrets.

Instead of hanging on what if’s, I’m resolved to start anew with my own kids. They come with me to the tiny suburban garden, even if it’s just to watch me toil, or fetch a drink, or snack on sugar snap peas. Our corn seeds came from an ‘Indian corn’ souvenir cob from the kindergarten field trip. Our elderly (or ‘seasoned,’ if you prefer) widow neighbor just gave up her large garden plot, and with a nice letter and promise of help with the leaves this fall, she’s letting me expand.

Just today we dowsed my new “north 400 sq ft” with the lawn sprinkler, and tonight slid a stirrup hoe through it, sowed oats from the farm co-op onto the fallow ground, stirring them in with a garden rake. (Small scale indeed.) If we get any grain before our early October frosts, we’ll tromp through the stand and cut the seed heads off with kitchen shears and give them to friend with a backyard flock of chickens to self-thresh. (Maybe we’ll hold back an armful to sew into a pillow case and run through the clothes dryer, crack in the blender, winnow with a box fan, and make one–even just one– glorious bowl of nutrient- and labor-dense oatmeal.) I’ll mulch the straw down with my lawn mower, then plant elephant garlic through the cover. A layer of mulched leaves from her huge sugar maples will help them overwinter. My own elephant garlic’s globes of purple flowers stretch 5′ tall, so it’ll be pretty, even if this armchair farmer can’t figure out how to sell all that garlic. I’ve got a long Wisconsin winter to fiddle at the fireplace and think about it.

Mr. Logsdon, I just want to share some of the relief I feel that I’m STARTING. It’s not a great leap forward for reinvigorating authentic agriculture, but it’s a start. I’m doing what I can with what I have. Thank you for giving so openly of your research and inspiring thoughts.

Godspeed,

Brian in suburban Wisconsin.