Genetically Engineered Alfalfa

I just read in the "News Bleat" section of Sheep! magazine that the Center for Food Safety has filed suit against the USDA for approving Monsanto's "Roundup Ready Alfalfa." This legal action dates back to February but this is the first I've heard of this genetically engineered alfalfa.

According to the article, the USDA Inspector General released a report in December which criticized the USDA. The report said, "Current [USDA] regulations, policies and procedures do not go far enough to ensure the safe introduction of agricultural biotechnology."

Frankly, this scares the crap out of me. We at Liberty Farm have gone to expensive lengths to avoid feeeding any genetically engineered grain to our chickens but GE alfalfa is much more worrisome than GE grain because it is a perennial. Fields of alfalfa can live for many, many years and be pollinated by many, many thousands of bees. Figure as many as four blooming periods a year versus one for annual crops times ten or more years. These bees then range for miles. Even the certified organic hay fields won't be safe.

tags: center food safety, alfalfa, GMO, GE alfalfa, GM alfalfa

What's In The Works and Some New Links

We've got a few projects in the works for this week(end) here at Liberty Farm. Our chicks are two weeks old today and have outgrown their brooder box. I'm clearing out a place for them to move to in one of the barns. The tricky part is going to be keeping the cats out. They're great mousers and would probably consider themselves to have died and gone to kitty heaven with 50 chicks to prey on.

The UPS man brought strawberry plants today from Johnny's. I hope to plant them tomorrow evening. This will be the first thing to go into the garden and while I'm at it, I've got some lettuce and brassicas to harden off and will probably plant more lettuce, spinach, beets and carrots. Last night I tranplanted and fertilized celery and tomato seedlings. The celery is doing great. The tomatoes were in 2" soil blocks so I set them down into 4" pots. Our peppers are germinating slowly. After seeing our last electric bill I turned off the heater in the cellar so it hasn't been warm enough for optimal germination.

We've still got three ewes yet to lamb and they all look like they could go at any time.

I put some new links in the right hand column today. GRAIN "is an international non-governmental organisation which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge." ATTRA is the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service and the 100-Mile Diet is a cool site about two people who went for a year only eating food that was produced within 100 miles of their home in Vancouver, B.C. The site is loaded with good information for anyone who is interested in drastically cutting food miles.

Grazelines

I moved the temporary fence in the pasture this morning and this photo shows the grazeline between the new area on the left and the already grazed area on the right. Right now the ewes are on about a three day rotation. As the grass begins growing faster that will get down to 1 day. This part of the pasture is primarily orchard grass and white clover, although the white clover hasn't come on yet.

tags: graze, grazeline, orchard grass, pasture, sheep

Grazing, SGF Kudos, Lamb Update

Our first season of Management-Intensive Grazing (MiG) is officially underway here at Liberty Farm. Much of my posting this summer will probably be dedicated to our grazing practices. We will be doing quite a lot of mowing until we build up the size of our sheep flock and can afford to add a couple cows to the mix.

I call what we're doing here mini-MiG because we have only 10 acres on our farm. At the end of the season I may write to the Stockman Grass Farmer with a description of mini-MiG. Maybe it will be a really slow month and the editor, Allan Nation, will come here to profile us. Hey, a farmer can dream, right?

Speaking of SGF, I've finally had time to read through this month's issue and have kudos for them, as usual. First, here is an excerpt from a letter to the editor entitled, "Disgruntled Reader" and the reply (in italics) which shows the integrity of this publication:

...Now though, you have gone to this grass fed, everything paper.
...So in closing, if you are going to start putting out a magazine that is helpful to all your readers, let me know so I can sign up. If it is going to be a steady diet of articles about grass fed animals and their processing and marketing I think I will pass.

...We made the decision a few years ago that we would rather be a smaller publication with a bigger mission than the reverse. We know our shift in editorial toward all grass feeding has alienated some people and cost us subscribers.
However, all of us here at SGF have found creating a new grass fed future is a lot more fun and exciting than endlessly preaching cost control, which is the only tool commodity producers have.
Apparently, 11,000 plus paid subscribers agree. Sorry to see you go.

Amen, brother.

They also have a cool article about the importance of forage self-sufficiency before going certified organic. If a grass farmer has to buy a few bales of hay from a non-certified neighbor to get over a rough patch in the grazing year, that $650 organic certification fee is just flushed down the toilet.

Two of our five ewes have lambed for a total of four lambs - 2 boys, 2 girls. It seems that our rams didn't breed the ewes on their first heat cycle. The guys were only seven months old at the time so I guess we can't blame them for taking awhile to get the hang of it. The truth is, I'm glad for it now. The end of March was cold and brown here.

tags: stockman grass farmer, MiG, management-intensive, grazing, forage, organic, ewe, lamb

More lambs

We had our second lambing a little while ago. Ingrid gave us two boys. One is white and we think the other is moorit (brown) but he may be black. We won't know for sure until he's completely dry. We were speculating, based on her size, that she may have triplets. She hasn't passed the afterbirth yet so it's still possible.

These lambs were born unassisted.

We Finally Have Lambs!

Here is a photo of our ewe, Lambie, with her new lambs - both girls. Lambie is the first ewe lamb we had - in 2003. The lambs are both white and were born about 30 minutes before this photo was taken. One is covered in meconium (newborn baby poop). In a trouble-free birth this doesn't happen but she had a little trouble coming into the world.

My wife called me at work to tell me Lambie was in labor and had some mucus hanging out. When I got here, I saw that the mucus was actually the broken water bag and I could see the lamb's nose but the ewe wasn't making any progress. It took a lot of work to get the lamb past the vulva. It got to the point where I was considering doing an episiotomy but a little more stretching with my fingers got the front legs out enough to get a grip and pull. I'm sure the ewe appreciates not being cut. She is now doing a good job cleaning the babies and they have both nursed.

tags: newborn, lamb, ewe

Some Photos

Wow, third post today. Here are two photos from this week. The White Rock chicks were hatched yesterday. Jennifer took the picture of the kids in the pasture with the ewes earlier this week.

Immigration, Farming and the Environment

Over at Gristmill, Tom Philpott has a post regarding the latest immigration controversy here. I'm not in agreement with everything he writes. In particular, his take on Ted Kennedy's pandering made me laugh out loud but the article did make me think about this issue in a way that I hadn't before. Here is my favorite part:

If we agree that a global economic system hinged on export and long-distance trade is energy-intensive, and that U.S. policy (and by extension, IMF, World Bank, and WTO policy) has for decades worked to subsidize and promote global trade, then a way forward comes into view.

An environmentalism that challenges this fundamental status quo has real potential to bolster sustainability. By developing and promoting local production for local consumption on both sides of the border, the U.S. economy can wean itself from its schizophrenic addiction to disenfranchised Mexican labor. And the Mexican economy can begin to work for its own citizens, not for the global investor class.

To do so means forging cross-border coalitions to challenge the assumption that state power exists to promote long-distance trade. One place to start: the 2007 Farm Bill, which Congress will soon take up. The bill will govern how the government subsidizes agriculture. Since the 1970s, the federal government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars rewarding bulk production of environmentally ruinous commodities like corn, which also threaten rural livelihoods in Mexico.

Let's work to rewire federal farm policy to promote organic agriculture destined for nearby consumption. Ending the commodity-corn subsidy alone will instantly provide relief to beleaguered rural Mexicans now contemplating a hazardous trip north to a nation that both relies on and scorns them.

Building Community

We are very fortunate to live in a rural community where the neighbors are all quick to work together and help one another. Yesterday evening was my turn to lend a hand. Meg, one of our nieghbors, is a widow in her early 60s who raises Jacob sheep and llamas. She called me earlier this week and asked if I could come over to help her get her sheep shorn.

She hired a local shearer, Tom, whom I have know most of my life, to do the actual shearing. I helped catch and move sheep and in the process I received some valuable lessons from Tom. I partially sheared 3 or 4 ewes under his hands-on direction. When the time came for him to be paid, he asked me if I wanted in on the payment. I told him I should pay him for the valuable shearing lessons. He told me he would come over when I shear this fall and talk me through the first few sheep.

Now yesterday was a beautiful day and there were certainly lots of other things I could have been doing but rural life would be difficult indeed without a network of neighbors who sacrifice some of their time to help one another. I know that I have plenty of neighbors who would do the same for me and I will gladly continue to do my part in the future.

tags: rural, community, sheep, shear

Plow Hitch Adapter

Here is a photo of the adapter I made to attach my plow to my tractor. The plow is a Brinly 12-inch one-bottom. It came with a sleeve hitch and my tractor has a category-1 3-point hitch. The adapter bolts to a drawbar (the red thing) and is shown here upside down. The vertical extension is the toplink attachment. I bought the drawbar but everything else was just steel that I had in my shop. I milled keyways where all the pieces attach and welded everything together. On the floor in the left foreground is a U-bolt that I made by heating a 5/8-11 threaded rod with a torch and bending around a piece of 1" steel. It attaches the coulter to the plow frame. In case you haven't guessed, I work at a machine shop on the weekdays.

The ground was dry enough again today to plow. I was making some mighty ugly furrows with ragged edges and sod strips in between, experimenting with the 3-point adjustments to bring everything into line. When I finally hit the "sweet spot" it was like magic. Everything fell into line and the furrows came out like someone had went down each one with a level and scribed a sharp edge. Very cool.

At this point I should say that I am actually an advocate of minimum tillage, although it may not sound like it. Since I'm beginning with sod, I wanted to plow everything under. In the future, I will not plow (or till at all) every year. My long term goal is for 1/4 to 1/3 of the garden area to be growing a perennial legume for cutting compost material and ultimately plowing under. According to this schedule, each section of the garden will be plowed every three to four years with the deep roots of the perennial legumes breaking up the subsoil and remedying whatever compaction may occur in the meantime.

Tomorrow, I will finsh the plowing and get the disc harrow out to finish the seedbed. I will post more photos of this process. We still don't have any lambs but our ewes are looking very pregnant.

tags: sleeve hitch adapter, 3-point hitch adapter, brinly, plow, tillage

Sodbustin'

Here is a photo of me plowing a couple garden beds with my new Brinly plow. The beds may look pretty good in this photo but up close you can see that I've got some problems with the plow. The first furrow comes out great but on the subsequent furrows the plow frame is flexing several inches and leaving a strip of sod between the furrows. Hopefully, I'll be able to adjust for this with some more experimentation.

Hurry Up And Wait

Is the name of the game this season on the farm. The ewes are making us wait for lambs. The high winds today and wind and rain the last couple days are making us wait to do the things we want to do in the pasture and garden. But we'll continue to wait and everything will get done in its own time.

The seedlings are doing pretty well. A few of the ones I transplanted Saturday are still a little droopy, probably because of my mishandling. I watered the soil blocks with the tomato and pepper seeds. I don't think I mentioned that the celery germinated and is doing well - still very small and the onions may be ready for the 2007 garden - LOL!

I bought a plow on ebay. It's a Brinly 12-inch, one-bottom. It's set up for a sleeve hitch so I'll have to adapt it to the 3-point hitch on my tractor. (It's actually my dad's tractor but he's letting me keep and use it here at the farm.) Hopefully I'll get it this week.

tags: lamb, ewe, pasture, garden, seedlings, soil block, plow

Inside Work Day

Today was kind of a misty, gloomy day here at Liberty Farm. I had planned to put up some permanent and temporary pasture subdivision fence but decided to work in the basement on transplanting seedlings and planting seeds instead.

In the past I've never grown a large quantity of seedlings so I've just planted them in small pots, 6-packs or 4-packs depending on what I was growing. This year, since I'm growing a lot more from seed, I decided to go old school and plant into flats and then transplant to save space. After pricking out a bunch of little seedlings today, I have to say that this really sucks. It takes a long time and I think I probably killed over 10% of the plants just due to my own clumsiness. So, after doing this transplanting, I planted my tomato and pepper seeds in 3/4" soil blocks. When they germinate, all I have to do is plunk them into a 2" block made with a 3/4" insert to accept the smaller blocks. I guess the reason I didn't do this from the beginning is that I don't have enough trays to hold all these soil blocks. Will definitely remedy that before next year.

Still no lambs...