Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 23 February 2024…
Hey Y’all!
Good evening and happy Fast-Jet Friday from Air2Ground Farms!! The fast jet today is the Mighty-Mighty F-15E Strike Eagle flying low in Scotland against a snowy background. The weather is amazing here with mid-60s today and low 80s on the horizon next week. The animals are doing very well! The pics today are the hogs enjoying a meal. They are growing exactly on schedule and are looking really good. Of the 8, we plan to take 4 mid-march and 4 mid-April. We will try to sort them so that the largest ones go in March giving the smaller (although not small) ones a few more weeks to grow. At this stage, they can gain as much as 50 pounds in a month! The rest of the animals are doing really well. We moved the chickens out of the garden this week. They did a great job cleaning up all of the weeds that had taken over by the end of the season. While cleaning up, they tilled the soil and left behind some amazing fertilizer! We wrapped the garden back with electrified netting to keep out any critters and we will let the soil rest for a couple of weeks and then start preparing it for planting. We are going to try to be a bit more purposeful with our planting this season. Maybe we will try to plant a bit less of the very prolific things like cucumbers and a bit more of some things that we like but didn’t get much of last year, like zucchini. I have some Harold’s St Bart Habanero peppers on the way to arrive the first part of May. They are our favorite peppers and have a smoky, very hot, flavor. I’m sure we will end up with a confusing mess by the end of the season, like last year,…but we will be growing our own food and enjoying the process!
During the podcast Thursday, we discussed the ongoing farmers protests in Europe and India. We questioned why and then wondered if we would see something similar here in the USA. During our research, we found that in India, 80% of the food is produced by small farmers and in France, 60% of their food is from small farmers. Guess what that number is here in the USA. Here in America, 10% of the farms grow 80% of the food. That means that the VERY large corporate farms are responsible for 80% of the food production here. Us small farmers that make up 90 % of the farms only grow 20% of the food. What that means is that we are unlikely to see protests like those in other parts of the world. The numbers just don’t add up for us. The large farms have the millions of dollars required to lobby the decision-makers in DC. Even if the 90% of us small farmers did have a “beef” with the federal policy, we have such a small share of the market that our voices aren’t quite as loud. The large corporate farms can lobby the lawmakers to ensure that any policies coming out of DC favor them while leaving the rest of us to deal with whatever rolls down. The distances alone preclude us small farmers from driving our tractors to our nation’s capitol…like what is happening in Europe. As we discussed it, I assured Shelley that even if we lived very nearby, I have no intention of returning to DC anytime soon…especially on my tractor!
Check out the podcast for more!
Today’s video was a look at the chicken move out of the garden and a surprise from Teeter…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbhCQ0huM00
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
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