Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
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Posted on April 15, 2014 | 8 Comments
Well it’s been a rum old week here at Small Farm Future. First up, as you may have noticed, the blog site went belly up. This was caused by me attempting to sort out a minor problem that I didn’t fully understand very late at night when I wasn’t concentrating properly. Result: minor problem became a major problem, and I had to call in the experts to solve it. Which they did, almost – but not quite. Not quite, because a few of the comments (notably some of Patrick’s, Clem’s and Brian’s) from my last post got etherised. I’ve restored them, but have had to do so in my name rather than theirs (though the relevant name appears at the start of the comment). There’s no false modesty at Small Farm Future, and I’ve got to say that passing off other people’s thoughts as our own is one of our strong points, but I hope that everything appears more or less in order on the last post.
Moral of the story #1: don’t fiddle about with stuff in the blogosphere you don’t fully understand, especially when you’re not paying proper attention to it.
Moral of the story #2: if you do fiddle about with it, make sure you’ve got a backup.
Moral of the story #3: experts are good, but not infallible.
Moral of the story #4: substitute ‘biosphere’ for ‘blogosphere’ in the preceding 3 morals, and note that moral #2 does not apply. Be afraid…and then write a blog post about it in a couple of weeks’ time.
Anyway, I was following the discussion between Clem and Brian about markets and competition under my last post with great interest before I inadvertently axed it, along with the entire site. But rather than comment further on it here, I think I might pick up on some of those themes in my next post.
In other news, clearly I shouldn’t have cast aspersions in my previous post on my lovely (is that OK, Tom?) Ford 3600, which experienced multiple system failure shortly after I uploaded the post. Hopefully fixable, but I’ve had to boldly go into parts of the tractor I’ve never visited before, and my usual solution (a copious squirt of WD40) just isn’t going to cut it against 34 years of rust and grime.
And in yet further news, Spudman went out to buy a brand new secondhand potato planter and gave his hard-earned cash to someone styling himself from ‘a traditional old Devon farming family’ who promptly disappeared with the money. Moral of the story #5: people from ‘traditional old Devon farming families’ are thieving, lying b******s? Or maybe people from non-traditional Somerset farming families are gullible idiots? Or that it’s never OK to generalise? Anyways, Spudman is a week’s worth of veg boxes in arrears and still two furrows short of a planter.
Well, troubles never come singly they say. And frankly my troubles are pretty trivial compared to those faced by many small farmers globally. So I’m glad that I’m heading up to London tomorrow to mark the International Day of Peasant Struggle with a good old fashioned demonstration alongside my mates from the Land Workers’ Alliance.
Hopefully normal service on this blog after Easter.
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Chris,
Sounds like you have been having a classic week on the farm. Sorry about the tractor and the scam on the potato planter. The latter would rankle me the most. As for the blog site, glad you were able to recreate some of the discussion we were having (although I think my last burble was cut off).
Adding to that search for new or reuse of old models for producers, resilient.org had a related piece today.
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-04-16/redefining-local
It is a cooperative in Oklahoma that helps rural farmers connect with city based consumers, without having to make the trek for either a CSA drop-of or farmer’s market. Interesting.
Cheers,
Brian
Thanks for the link. That is an interesting concept and looks like one worth following to see how they manage.
On substituting biosphere for blogosphere in moral #2… it makes sense to me. I wonder if a matter of scale is where we differ? If one considers the whole of planet Earth as a single biosphere (which is a fair consideration) then the point is fairly made – there is no backup. But even in a smaller scale place – such as an 18 acre Somerset Vege farm I think one can “fiddle about with it” and if prudent have allowed for a backup.
If you plant your peas on Monday at the west end of the farm, and on Wednesday something horrible (to the peas) occurs – leaving you pealess – then, provided you’ve not used up all your pea seeds, you can replant. Now if the horrible thing above is some sort of soil borne seed rot fungus, then replanting the same seed on the same site is NOT appropriate. But if you need some peas and have another place to plant them (or can take other appropriate measure(s) to fix the original issue)… well, then replant and reboot. Crafting a backup plan when dealing with Mother Nature is always a worthwhile enterprise. [what – you want to know where your backup is at the end of May when said peas have faithfully done their part and on the day before you’re set to pick them a rogue deer beats you to the harvest? Where is that smart-alec Yank’s backup plan now?? One word: venison]
Chris:
Thanks for the link to the DEFRA and NFU protest in London… and now that its history, how did it go?
A point made by the DEFRA spokesperson in the linked piece refers to a 5ha minimum farm size to qualify for one of the programs. Is there some reason income (instead of parcel size) is not used as a qualifier? I can’t imagine all 5ha plots to be of comparable productive potential even in so small (relatively) a geographic as the UK. Is it because you can’t be a Kulak below 5ha?? 🙂
Yes, that’s fine, suspect relationships with farm machinery is exactly what we all expect from people from Chard.
Sorry about the rip off merchant. Make sure you report him to the police. If he does it again having a previous complaint will mean the police will show an interest instead of ignoring it. It might not help you but will help the next guy who gets ripped off.
I got worried when the site went down. I thought you’d got your hair off at the comments section and attempted to go back to a happier time in february.
Anyway, chin up, its proper seed sowing spring at last!
Thanks for those comments, folks.
Interesting link, Brian – thanks. Much for me to ponder.
Good points, Clem. I couldn’t resist the blogosphere/biosphere parallel, but maybe it was a bit glib – though not, as you say, at the larger scales where some issues bite. Interesting to think, perhaps, about the extent and nature of the investment in ‘backups’ in different styles and scales of farming. On venison, well that’s interesting. Perhaps one of the less obvious drawbacks of a small farm – particularly one in a crowded country with stringent gun control laws – is that it’s not so easy to shoot deer, for fear that you’ll bring down a two-legged beast by mistake. And there are a lot of deer, because they’re not controlled so much nowadays, so does shooting one make much difference to crop protection (though I’ll grant you that the venison is a great bonus)? And is the time invested in the hunting better invested in crop protection? Maybe the best option is just to eat deer killed by their fellows – happens here all the time: https://chrissmaje.com/?p=287. Goodness, what a lot of venison-themed verbiage – scope for a whole post on deer soon, perhaps. Regarding area rather than income based CAP subsidies to farmers, I guess the logic is that they don’t want to support inefficient practice by rewarding poverty…so instead they support inefficient practice by rewarding wealth. The whole CAP regimen is a nightmare, though as I try to point out repeatedly on this blog its real beneficiaries are retailers and consumers, not farmers. It’d be a whole lot better to stop subsidising farmers just for producing and to allow food prices to adjust accordingly, while targeting the subsidies on agri-environmental schemes that would allow farmers to look after the countryside better. Can’t see it happening though. I’ll report back on the demo soon.
Tom – thanks for that. Point of information, though, I’m in Frome, not Chard. You don’t want to know what those Chard folks do with their tractors. Which reminds me of a rhyme my kids came home from school with when we first moved here:
I can’t read an’ I can’t write, but that don’t really matter
Cos I come from Somerset, so I can drive a tractor
(Well, it rhymes if you say it in a Somerset accent…)
White tail deer control in Ohio is a big deal. The state government has a significant investment in its regulation, and hunting is a big business. There are many land owners who lease hunters the right to hunt their land during the hunting season. That is one side… on the other side, it is quite illegal to just up and kill Bambi out of season, or with the wrong sort of weapon even in season.
As for whether killing deer can be a solution (or will it deter other deer) there is plenty of anecdotal evidence here that it can work in some circumstances. These are relatively intelligent animals – made less so by hormones in the late fall when they go into their rut. Given plenty of area to roam they will avoid areas where they are pestered or killed. The availability of habitat is fundamental.
My little farm is just across a creek from a state game preserve. The deer come and go as they please – and their numbers on the state land are so significant it suggests they are aware the area is safer than other places they might roam. This affects me in that we have many deer visitors and with one or two taken every fall they still haven’t gotten the hint that they’d be better off staying on their side of the creek (there are just too many of them).
The state highway department puts up a yellow and black sign with an image of a deer to warn drivers of areas where many deer might be crossing the highway. Hitting a 240 pound deer at 55 mph can do unpleasant things to one’s vehicle. So I’ve occasionally wondered whether I might have any luck by designing a similar format sign with the image of a hunter with shotgun to post on my side of the creek… fair warning to the does and bucks smart enough to know what it represents.
Thanks Clem – interesting thoughts on deer. I’ll aim to come back to that.