Independence Day Dependence

Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 4 July 2023…

Hey Y’all!

Happy Independence Day!! I hope you are enjoying your Independence Day in whatever manner you wanted. Here in Free Missouri, we are enjoying our day inside instead of outside in the scorching heat. We’re already dry again and hoping for the forecast rain tomorrow night. The animals are all doing well. The animal pics today are the sheep flock resting in the shade this morning, the pigs enjoying their meal, and Stella looking like a model Jersey. We quickly replaced the fuel pump on the side-by-side yesterday and it is back up and running. We formed an additional flerd yesterday by moving the rams into the paddock with the dairy cows. They are getting along well with no issues. The beef chickens are doing very well under the trees, staying much cooler and eating well. The beef chicks are also doing well hanging out in the brooder for another week. We awoke to no water pressure this morning so our farming day started before morning coffee and staff meeting. I went to the most obvious places that there could be a water leak and nothing was wrong. Instead of continuing to search in the dark, I went to the pump house and closed the main valve shutting off the water. After coffee and staff meeting, Shelley went up to the pump house and opened the valve while I rode around the farm checking the waterers. I found the issue at the waterer across the creek where our hose bib had been crimped under the waterer lid and split. I just shut that waterer off and will replace the hose in the future. We expanded the beef flerd’s paddock and can get another day or two out of the area. We’re out of pasture in the bottom areas and are going to have to move them back onto the hills for a while waiting on the rain so the grass can start to grow. We’re hoping there is enough for them on the hills so that we don’t have to give them hay, but we’ll have to see. Tomorrow we plan to move the dairy flerd to the hill behind the milk barn to allow the pasture they’ve been on to rest.

Interestingly, this Independence Day has me thinking about dependence. I love our great Nation and believe that we should celebrate its independence. Having spent 25 years in the Service, I really do understand what it takes to become and stay independent as a nation. That said, this day has me thinking about Americans as individuals and the dependence that has become an expected part of our existence in this great nation. I’ll share a bit of my thoughts. We’re dependent on banks to loan us enough money so we can “own” our home. We’re dependent on the US Government to subsidize big agriculture so we can buy cheap beef, pork, and poultry from the grocery store so we can afford to pay the bank for the home we “own.” We’re dependent on the grocery store to supply us with the food necessary to sustain our very life. I’ll stop there and expound on those, but you can see this list can go on and on. The economic system in America relies on people working, in the traditional sense…a job in which effort is traded for currency. What is the best way to ensure people get and keep a traditional “job?” Ensure they are indebted for the extent of their most useful working age—how about 30 years?—the term of most mortgages. How do you convince anyone to willingly enslave themselves to such? Make it the “Dream,” maybe call it the “American Dream.” How else can you do it? Maybe you can convince them that they MUST go to college and offer them loans to pay exorbitant tuition, but you make those loans government backed so that even in bankruptcy they don’t go away. In the years after WWII, the Department of Agriculture went on a campaign throughout America telling farmers “Get big or get out.” We had to feed the world and the way to do it was through massive farms, industrial scale agriculture. The government subsidized corn, wheat, soybeans, sugar, etc. The nation responded, small farmers were forced to sell, large scale farmers began producing enormous amounts. What do we do with it? One thing was to feed it to cows, pigs, and poultry. The best way to a accomplish that is in huge concentrated animal feeding operations. The result is cheap, crappy, meat that is artificially lower in price due to the government subsidies in the feedstuffs. Once the small farmer went out of business and moved to the suburbs, there were no more options to “buy local” when it came to food. We became dependent on the grocery store to supply our food, instead of local communities bonding together to provide for themselves. We can look back 3 years to the spring of 2020 to see the danger of dependence on the grocery store. I love our great Nation and am excited to celebrate the Independence of the United States of America but this particular Independence Day I’m contemplating the constraints of Dependence.

Local Farm Report for 3 July 2023:

Harvest:

24 Chicken eggs

5 Duck eggs

0 Goose eggs

5 1/2 Gallons of milk

Cheers!

Psycho & Shelley