I grew up on a 200 acre farm. It was well diversified. We rotated religiously, corn followed by soybeans, pasture, hay and oats. We were a self sustaining farm. We had 6 to 8 milk cows, a dozen or so hogs, stock cows ( mostly Hereford and Angus cross), we raised 75 pullets every spring (for meat and for free range laying hens,) and finally because we lived in very cold climate we’d have them inside during some of the winter months. In the spring, we would spread the manure from the barns, hog pens and chicken house on the land, along with the hoof work,the animals performed made a very fertile land. I do believe the climate is changing and that fact can be used to our advantage. I don’t put a lot of stock in climate change. The climate is always changing. I have seen and lived what resilience looks like and what actually works. We can make it through this time and we will, I strongly believe, if we keep the bureaucratic unnecessary regulations out of the equation. We can build a more resilient farming community. I had to sell our 100 acres in Iowa because it had fallen to the 5000- 10,009 acre behemoth mentality. They would work like madmen for two weeks in the spring to get the crop in (with enormous input cost) and then go to town to drink coffee until it was time to repeat the same thing in reverse for the fall harvest. It was no longer a way of life. It had become purely extractive and America’s largest welfare program. The attempt was to satisfy the natives with cheap and less than nutritious foods. We actually measured top soil in feet, and lived in a very blessed time that has all but disappeared.
This is such a powerful description of what resilience actually looked like in practice. Diverse rotations, mixed livestock, manure cycling back onto the land, and animals doing “work” with their feet as well as their fertility, that’s a whole system, not a single crop propped up by inputs. You can feel the difference between farming as a way of life and farming as extraction in the way you describe it.
I also really hear the grief in what happened to your Iowa ground. That shift to the behemoth acreage mentality, huge input bills, short bursts of frantic work, then waiting for the next chemical and machinery cycle, it hollows out communities as well as soil. And you’re right, it becomes a kind of welfare programme, just not one that feeds people well or keeps farmers thriving.
On climate, I’m with you on the practical takeaway even if we frame it differently. Weather volatility is already here, and the farms that cope best are the ones with diversity, soil cover, organic matter, and fewer brittle dependencies. If we want more of that, we need to stop regulating for paperwork and scale, and start making it easier for mixed, local, genuinely regenerative farms to exist again.
I rented out our 100 acres for quite a few years. The fence rows disappeared along with all the pollinators and wildlife. I was especially fond of the pheasants. I had 6 acres on the back forty that had never been tilled and there were 100s if not 1000s of pheasants who were not native but they thrived. I would have pheasant eggs for breakfast a couple times a year. They are gone now and so is my six acres. It has been tiled and cultivated. I’m not crying my beer but I have been trying to document where we went so very wrong and am now trying to restore a better way of living and farming.We are trying to purchase an acreage in southern Kentucky for my family. I’m 72 and I’m doing it for future generations. Enough of my blathering. God bless Helen and keep up the very important work!
I grew up on a 200 acre farm. It was well diversified. We rotated religiously, corn followed by soybeans, pasture, hay and oats. We were a self sustaining farm. We had 6 to 8 milk cows, a dozen or so hogs, stock cows ( mostly Hereford and Angus cross), we raised 75 pullets every spring (for meat and for free range laying hens,) and finally because we lived in very cold climate we’d have them inside during some of the winter months. In the spring, we would spread the manure from the barns, hog pens and chicken house on the land, along with the hoof work,the animals performed made a very fertile land. I do believe the climate is changing and that fact can be used to our advantage. I don’t put a lot of stock in climate change. The climate is always changing. I have seen and lived what resilience looks like and what actually works. We can make it through this time and we will, I strongly believe, if we keep the bureaucratic unnecessary regulations out of the equation. We can build a more resilient farming community. I had to sell our 100 acres in Iowa because it had fallen to the 5000- 10,009 acre behemoth mentality. They would work like madmen for two weeks in the spring to get the crop in (with enormous input cost) and then go to town to drink coffee until it was time to repeat the same thing in reverse for the fall harvest. It was no longer a way of life. It had become purely extractive and America’s largest welfare program. The attempt was to satisfy the natives with cheap and less than nutritious foods. We actually measured top soil in feet, and lived in a very blessed time that has all but disappeared.
This is such a powerful description of what resilience actually looked like in practice. Diverse rotations, mixed livestock, manure cycling back onto the land, and animals doing “work” with their feet as well as their fertility, that’s a whole system, not a single crop propped up by inputs. You can feel the difference between farming as a way of life and farming as extraction in the way you describe it.
I also really hear the grief in what happened to your Iowa ground. That shift to the behemoth acreage mentality, huge input bills, short bursts of frantic work, then waiting for the next chemical and machinery cycle, it hollows out communities as well as soil. And you’re right, it becomes a kind of welfare programme, just not one that feeds people well or keeps farmers thriving.
On climate, I’m with you on the practical takeaway even if we frame it differently. Weather volatility is already here, and the farms that cope best are the ones with diversity, soil cover, organic matter, and fewer brittle dependencies. If we want more of that, we need to stop regulating for paperwork and scale, and start making it easier for mixed, local, genuinely regenerative farms to exist again.
I rented out our 100 acres for quite a few years. The fence rows disappeared along with all the pollinators and wildlife. I was especially fond of the pheasants. I had 6 acres on the back forty that had never been tilled and there were 100s if not 1000s of pheasants who were not native but they thrived. I would have pheasant eggs for breakfast a couple times a year. They are gone now and so is my six acres. It has been tiled and cultivated. I’m not crying my beer but I have been trying to document where we went so very wrong and am now trying to restore a better way of living and farming.We are trying to purchase an acreage in southern Kentucky for my family. I’m 72 and I’m doing it for future generations. Enough of my blathering. God bless Helen and keep up the very important work!