Farming in the shade

Plans are coming together for our Annual Shearing Day on February 25, from 9 - noon. It's a Saturday morning, and we're hoping for decent weather. Not sure what kind of weather is best--perhaps frozen ground (for parking) with no ice (for falling). We're lining up the demonstrators (so you can see what is done with wool) and the shearers. We've got a good part of our helpful crew in place. But we could stand to have help with parking cars the morning of Shearing Day. If you've enjoyed shearing day in the past, and could volunteer for an hour or two that morning, would you email us? If we get several helpers, the shifts will be short. You can even come with your family and let them enjoy the activities for a couple of hours, while you park cars for part of the time.

Did you know? Total farmland in Michigan is approximately 10 million acres. There are approximately 56,014 farms in Michigan with farmers caring for those 10 million acres. The average farm size is approximately 179 acres. Production agriculture, food processors and related businesses employ about one million Michiganders. Michigan's agriculture is second only in diversity to California. Imagine that!

Soaking some yarn to make it "bloom" so that The Farmer can knit socks with it. Unwashed (as in straight off the cone) yarn is too crunchy to knit socks with. The past couple of weeks have been filled with doctors appointments, claim forms, and prescriptions. Man, are there a lot of people sick in my family. Honestly, The Farmer hasn't been truly well since before Thanksgiving. He finally succumbed to a sinus infection about two weeks ago. He still isn't well, even after a round of antibiotics. One of our daughters is dealing with a mild medical condition and another daughter is dealing with a slightly less mild medical condition. This leads me to wonder aloud why it is okay to take antibiotics when you have an infection, but not okay to give antibiotics to an animal when it gets an infection. Organic standards do not all make sense to me--especially those regarding animal care. Which is why our crops are organic and our animals are not. Would you or your family membe

U.S. Consumers spend just 10% of their disposable income on food each year, while those in other countries spend much more.* Comparison to other countries: Pakistan - 50% of disposable income Jordan - 43% of disposable income Philippines - 38% of disposable income China - 32% of disposable income Japan - 14% of disposable income Of the 10% of disposable income Americans spend on food each year, 58% is for food eaten at home and 42% is for food eaten away from home.** * Based on a 5-year average of data from 2003-2007. **Figures for all other countries are for food consumed at home. As food consumed at home is less expensive, the gap between these countries and the U.S. would be even greater if food consumed away from home was added. --info from the American Farm Bureau Federation Food & Farm Facts booklet

This has been a full week of media coverage of farms and farm issues. Tuesday The Farmer and I went to a webcast talk by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms fame. I have mixed feelings on Mr. Salatin's approach to farming--I love his article "Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal" but have issues with how he "makes a living farming" by taking in unpaid interns and by earning honorariums speaking around the country. Today I read that agriculture and animal science are considered to be among the most useless college degrees (according to Yahoo, so I'm not giving it much weight, but still...). Within the last few weeks, I found out that two local businesses that we are involved with are sympathetic to the work of the Humane Society of the US. I can't tell you how much the HSUS leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Do your homework before you support them. HSUS is an activist group that is very good at raising money to promote its causes. Its causes include eliminating

Last week it felt like March or April here on the farm. We were flirting with 50 degrees there for a couple of days. Strange. This is more normal for this time of year... Saturday morning everyone was gone. The Farmer was milking cows for a friend. The boy was at a robotics meeting. One girl wasn't home yet from college for the weekend, and another was helping a friend pick out wedding dresses. I had nothing that couldn't wait 'til after a walk. We planted this tree line several years ago. It's grown up nicely. Though I saw no hard evidence of it, I'm sure the tree line provides wildlife cover. Even the compost piles had a white top dressing. It was a lovely day for a walk. This fence is at the back of our property. I love looking at the trees just on the other side. I may even have woods-envy. What's the weather like in your area?

Did you know? Wool is an excellent insulator. Wool fibers trap a great deal of air between each other, giving wool great warmth for little weight. Wool feels warm since fewer fibers touch the skin compared with other fabrics, so less heat is conducted away from the skin. Smooth cotton sheets feel cold. Fleecy wool blankets feel warm.

I come from a very limited bean background. Baked beans were regular fare, as was chili with kidney beans and ground beef. But I think that was the extent of our bean-eating. I like to joke that with a garden full of yummy veggies and Angus beef (and sometimes homegrown, pastured turkeys) filling the freezer, why would we ever eat beans? So now you know my food heritage. Meat and potatoes, with a side of veggies. So I had never heard of cassoulet. One of our bean customers shared this recipe, and I thought I'd try it before I posted it. She seems to be one of those gifted, creative cooks who throws together wonderful food dishes on the fly, so I questioned her closely about some of the ingredients. How much? What kind? I purposely did not google cassoulet, as I wanted to use what I had on hand, and didn't want exotic ingredients (like duck?!?) to spoil my enthusiasm. Here is the recipe as it was given to me. My comments are below... Soak and cook legumes of choice until tender.

Crazy weather. Our part of the world is known for snow and endless gloomy days at this time of the year. Yet today I have jeans and rugs drying on the line. And it is Day 9 (in a ROW) of sunshine. The Farmer is taking advantage of the nice weather to do jobs that are much harder in the snow. (He's spurred on by the weather report of an impending snowstorm.) He moved three piles of skids around to the back of the sheep barn, so they won't be in the way on Shearing Day . We put skids (or pallets) under the hay stacked in the barn. Hay stored directly on a concrete floor molds from the excess moisture in the floor. He moved load after load of compost from the compost building to the storage/finishing pad. He filled up all the feed barrels with oats and corn, to make daily feeding easier. We really should be working on bookkeeping (in preparation for taxes). But we just can't bear to do unpleasant indoor jobs when the weather is so nice!

Did you know? Over four million tons of sugar beets are processed every year. Michigan produces more than one billion pounds of sugar annually. There are approximately 1,100 sugar beet farms, totalling more than 150,000 acres.

Three days ago we had unseasonably warm weather, but they predicted wind and snow coming. They were (at least partly) right. We could have moved the sheep into the barn for the winter on that nice day. But we didn't. The truth is, they are not all that inclined to come in on nice days. They don't see the point of coming in, and they don't watch the weather forecast to see what's coming. So yesterday, when the weather convinced them it was time to come in, we moved the sheep. This is the latest we have ever moved sheep in. We've had essentially no snow. And while the sheep can surely handle snow (they're dressed for it, after all), we find it more difficult to feed them when there is a constant snow cover. Happy New Year!