


Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 5 April 2023…
Hey Y’all!
Good morning and happy Wednesday from Air2Ground Farms! Our morning staff meeting and coffee was cut short by a tornado warning telling us to take shelter. Of course, instead of going to the innermost room in our house, we hurriedly went outside and milked the cows so we could get it done before the storm arrived. We finished as the huge raindrops started falling. Luckily, the worst of the storms went around us, depositing only a small amount of rain. We are very glad the wind, hail, and tornados stayed away. The pics today are the hogs and a beef chick that learned to roost...a real rooster! There was another beef chick dead this morning, but the prolapse crew is still doing well. All of the other animals are great. Shelley and I spend a lot of time talking about the beef cows. We really enjoy the cows and look forward to the times of the day that we spend with them, both the dairy and beef crews. A couple of times, I’ve made the passing comment that beef cows are a long game. Allow me to expound. We want to grow a self-sustaining beef herd and provide quality, flavorful, grass-only beef. Let’s use the little bull calf that was born in the beginning of January. His mother was bred last spring, so our clock starts just prior to that, let’s say March 2022. A cow’s gestation period is 9 months which brings us to the calf in early January 2023. We decided to make that particular calf a steer destining him for someone’s freezer. In order to properly finish (fatten) a grass-only steer takes anywhere from 24-36 months. Let’s shoot for the middle of that at 30 months. July of 2025 is when that steer will be ready to take to the processor. We began the process in March 2022 and will end it in July 2025, over 3 years in the making. We could speed the process by about 12 months if we chose to pour the grain to him, but that process changes the meat…a topic for another day…and that’s not what we are about. Even if you consider the 21 days the beef chicks are incubated, they are finished and in the freezer in 3 1/2 months, less than 9% of the time it takes for beef. Thus the reason I say beef is a long game. We decided to cut up some downed trees yesterday and spent over 3 hours chainsawing and dragging. By the end of our energy, we had piles of brush and branches and 5 trees ready to be cut and split. Today we are going to make a couple of deliveries to town and focus on some YouTube.
Rob sent me a message asking about my thoughts on an article describing a lawsuit wherein Bayer is suing a group of Missouri farmers. [I love this type of interaction. Please send me your thoughts and/or comments, especially if it requires me to do a bit of research and think.] The article is https://investigatemidwest.org/2023/03/29/bayer-sues-four-missouri-farmers-for-illegally-spraying-dicamba-saving-and-replanting-seeds-from-the-companys-genetically-engineered-crops/ . Rob posited this is but another example of large companies in control of our food system. I’ll first share a bit of research and then my thoughts. Bayer is an American subsidiary of the German company Bayer AG. Yep another foreign company. Until 2016, Bayer focused on pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals. In 2016, they decided to purchase Monsanto, the notorious seed company that introduced genetically modified seeds so that plants could survive being sprayed with weed, insect, and fungus killers. In June 2018, the $63 Billion cash deal went through making Bayer the owner of prescription and over the counter medicines, health-related supplements, agricultural chemicals, and the seeds genetically modified to withstand those chemicals. In 2022, Bayer was #246 on the Forbes Fortune 500, and #26/350 in the food and agriculture benchmark. Thus, Bayer certainly qualifies as one of the huge food conglomerates controlling the industry. This case involves soybean and cotton crops and dicamba, a chemical herbicide designed to kill weeds that have become resistant to glyphosate (Roundup—also owned by Bayer). The details are in the article but summarizing, a small group of farmers saved seed from a previous harvest, planted that seed instead of buying new seed from Bayer, and then sprayed an outdated version of dicamba, instead of Bayer’s new product, on the plants—prompting Bayer to sue the group. In my opinion, yes, this is another case of a large company with undue control over our food system. Bayer makes millions on the sale of the genetically modified seed, then makes millions on the chemicals sprayed on the seed, and finally it sues farmers for millions if they dare step outside the container Bayer placed them into in order to use their seed. This is a big discussion, much bigger than this particular lawsuit, involving the exponential growth of the human population and the need to provide humans with sustenance. One side of the coin says that we must do whatever it takes to feed the world, to include introducing virus genes into edible plants so they can survive toxic chemicals so that the cost of production is as low as possible. The other side of the coin says that maybe we need to take care of the earth, even work to regenerate previously destroyed topsoil, so that there is a long-term solution to human survival—not just an easy answer to the here and now. I’ll throw out food for thought—the company that is producing the GMO seed and toxic chemicals is also producing the medicines and supplements required to attempt to stay healthy while ingesting the products.
YouTube Short for the day is a clip showing Betty attempting to give me a bath, securing my place in the herd. Wow, are cow tongues rough!
Local Farm Report for 4 April 2023...
Harvest:
35 Chicken eggs
18 Duck eggs
2 Goose eggs
5 1/2 Gallons of milk
Sales:
1 Gallon of milk
3 Dozen chicken eggs
2 Packs of jowl ends and pieces
6 Packs of rib chops
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
Hey Rich,
Thanks for the discussion and your thoughts on the article. There are so many different directions the discussion could go (big company control, Government’s role in the process of the chemical sprays, using chemical sprays, gmo seeds, the health results of the seed and spray, the patent control of seed use). However, I think one thing this article solidifies for me is one you mentioned over and over…it’s good to know where your food comes from. Why not buy it local where you can see how it’s grown!