A Birthday and a Race Report

Saturday was Mike's birthday.  A benefit of having spring birthday is that there is an outside chance that there will be a canoe race on your birthday, and Mike was lucky enough to have his birthday fall on our first race of the season: the Klondike.

Klondike is just a short, 40 minute torture of a race on a small creek.  The race goes upstream for about 2/3 of the race, and downstream for the last 1/3.  Since the race starts facing upstream, and then has many twists and turns, both of which make it difficult to pass.  A good start is critical for finishing well.  I raced with my dad, and Mike raced with our good friend, Zach.

(Dad and I racing hard)

Last year, Dad and I had a horrible start, and while we recovered pretty well we were never able to pass the final mixed (one man, one woman) team, finishing 2nd mixed for the first time in many years.  This year we thought of trying a different starting spot in hopes of having a better jump off of the line.  Each part of the river has a different current and depth, so some spots are better than others for starting, especially in an upstream race.  Just before the gun went off we chickened out and went back to our traditional starting spot.  The gun went off and by the first corner we were in 5th place!  It was the best start we have ever had.  Since we started so well, we knew it was going to be tough to hold position.  We held off three other very fast teams for nearly all of the upstream, but right before the turn to head back downstream the three teams passed us by crossing the river, or sprinting up to get the inside of the corner.  Finishing 8th place was still fantastic, and we knew that had left it all out there.  We had never even been close to those teams in previous races, so I am looking forward to the season ahead.

(Mike and Zach in the lead)

At the finish we saw Mike and Zach cooling down.  I could tell from the look on their faces that the race didn't go as well for them as they had hoped.  Mike and Zach lead the race until the last 7 minutes, where another team passed them on the inside of a corner.  Neither had beaten that team before, but they had hoped to hold them off and win on Mike's birthday.  Even though Mike and Zach didn't win, it was a good practice in blocking and learning how to race when you are in the lead. They were close, and now they are hungry for a win.

(Mike with his parents, Mike, Michelle, and Jay)

On Monday, we had a get together on the farm for Mike.  Dad grilled out, Mom made cheesy potatoes, and we had root beer floats instead of a birthday cake, just to Mike's liking.  My whole family made it to the party, as well as Mike's parents.  It was a good way to celebrate.

Meet our Pig Farming Experts

Happy National Ag week!  It's nice to see all of my farmer friends taking the time to talk about how much they love agriculture with their friends.  People really seem to be into it this year, and a lot of stories are being shared.

(Ag story: wait until it's a bit drier to get in the field.)

This week on our farm we had one of our consultant's visit.  His name is Al, and he has spent is whole working life in the pork industry.  He comes through our farm about once a month, often with our other consultant Dale, and they look at all of our pigs, making suggestions on everything from feeding to handling to maintenance.  Al works closely with our vet, and with the people that sell us breeding stock in order to help us make the best decisions for the farm.  Dale really takes interest in pig structure and genetics, and helps us select the right animals for our system.  These two consultants have practical experience and industry connections, helping us to solve any problems we may have.  They also give us valuable outside information.  Sometimes you can look at things every day, but not actually see the problem.  Dale and Al keep us in check.

In addition to our consultants, we work with two vets.  One vet is a local large animal vet, and he visits each of our farrowing farms (where the piglets and mamas are) once a month to do a general health check-up.  He works closely with our other vet, who is a swine vet.  The swine vet doesn't make it out to the farm as often, but he is only a phone call away for any help that we need.  Our local vet takes care of us in emergencies, and helps us with diagnostics on a regular basis.  We are lucky to have two vets that can work so closely together and help our farm.

Besides these visits, our management team meets once a month in order to discuss all of the information that the consultants and vets give us.  This helps hold the whole team accountable on the changes we have decided to make, as well as make sure that we are all on the same page.  We also chat on a daily basis to make sure we are accomplishing the things we intended.  There are still things we miss, but working together makes a difference.

Keeping the communication flowing from top to bottom is one of the harder jobs on the farm.  Even a small change has 10 people working on it, and easily 10 another people having to implement it.  No one person on the farm is an expert on everything, nor should they be.  Farmer's generally don't make changes to their farming practices without talking to an expert.  We don't want to do anything that will harm the animals, the land, or the farm family.  Not every decision is the right one; not every change is positive, but we move forward with the information we have and keep trying to improve.  That is a huge part of any farm story.

New Year, New Office, New Plan

Big and exciting things have happened on the farm this week.... our office addition is ready for move-in!!  In April of last year we decided to expand the office (there were more people than desks) and after all of the delays due to rain on foundation pouring days, harvest, illnesses, hunting season, and all the other things that can go wrong on a construction project, we are finally starting to get settled.  The window trim still needs to go up, and a few other odds and ends, but I now have my own desk to work at, so I am not complaining.

(My new desk, complete with a kitty house... not quite put away yet)

The other big project I personally have been working on is the siting plan for our new inside gestation barn we are hoping to put up this spring.  Friday I was able to send the plan into the state, and it was so relieving to have that project off of my shoulders.  For anyone unfamiliar with the siting requirements in Michigan, livestock farmers have a set of guidelines for building a new livestock facility, or expanding an old one.  We are actually reducing the number of animals on the farm, but the siting plan process is a really thorough way to check for potential problems.  The plan must include all items off of a 4 page checklist (and it's really tiny print!) in order for the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) to review the request and approve the site.

(Siting plan complete!)

When making the plan, I have to figure out what the impact of the building will be on the land as far as erosion, soil types, nutrient analysis, and possible crop farming uses.  I then review the impact on the watershed, wetlands, rivers, streams, drains, storm waters, and well records and maps.  Odor and manure management make up about half of the plan requirements, with a wind odor print taken to make sure the barn won't create too much stink for the neighbors ("too much"  is odor that can be smelled more than 5% of the time, or 18 days a year).  In the manure management portion, I look at the amount of farmland we have to utilize the manure as fertilizer, and see if the new facility can work into our system,  This is one of the most important parts of the plan for the farm to use.  I also submit an engineer's blueprint and a outline of current utilities on the property, so MDARD can analyze construction plans and placement decisions.  I work with the local zoning officials in the township to figure out further permitting that I will need.

This isn't just something for hog farms, but any livestock farms.  It isn't optional.  It is a lot of work, but it gives farmers protection and shows that we are following the rules.  It gives us guidelines for working with neighbors. We are doing our homework, checking our lists, and having conversations about conservation and our environment.

The Diet Push

I am lucky to spend my time away from the farm in a canoe.  It's my hobby, and it's my sport.  I have a mix of friends from the farm, and my paddling friends.  Needless to say, it's a pretty diverse group, and it's part of what I enjoy.  I love to be at the farm and I enjoy my friends here, but when I leave it's nice to be around a completely different group.

The hardest part of being a farmer in a group of endurance athletes, is that we tend to be on the opposite sides of the food spectrum. People who work out more than an hour a day, everyday, tend to see themselves as more health conscious than the average person.  They take pride in having discipline and self-control.  They see diet and exercise as being complimentary.  Paddlers don't work out to stay thin, they workout to be healthy.  For some, this means being either gluten-free, dairy-free, paleo, vegetarian, or even vegan.  As you can imagine, sometimes things get uncomfortable.

Often with friends who are living what I consider to be extreme lifestyles, they love to tell you about it.  Why it is better, why it works for them, or apologetically, if they could get meat from our farm, from good people like us, then maybe they would change their ways.  It's usually someone you see as a friend, someone who is comfortable enough with you to tell you about their habits.  It usually isn't meant to be preachy, but most of the time it comes off as such, or at least leaves me feeling inferior.

At the same time, I recognize being part of this group allows me the opportunity to talk to people who have a lot of questions about food.  I have had some really good conversations about food production, and learned some different perspectives.  Hopefully, I have positively affected someone's attitude towards food as well.  What I don't want to be is overbearing, and make people feel the way I sometimes feel when I talk to people with different life views.  No one should have to feel inferior due to choices he or she willingly made. Most people don't try to make bad ones.

Probably the biggest take-away I have from these experiences is realizing that people honestly want to do the best they can, and that deserves respect.  Their are definitely people out there who actively want to hurt the farming community, but most people are either uninformed, misinformed, or are caught up in a type of peer pressure.  If you know any vegans, or least all the ones that I know, they tend to flaunt their diets, posting pictures of food, touting the benefits of their lifestyle, pointing out the flaws in every else's ways.  We shouldn't be that judgmental.  I have the choice to eat a certain way, and I need to give people their choice, even if I don't agree with it.  I care deeply about farming, and I support it vocally, but I have to understand that my opinion is just that; people have the right to choose.

Farm Life: Winter Edition

Happy New Year!  I hope things are going well for all of you; resolutions still intact, or at least were broken for a worthy cause.  Winter on the farm can be a good time to get things back into shape, especially after a long harvest season, but like with our personal resolutions, a lot of things can get in the way.  Last week we experienced 2-3 feet of snowfall in one afternoon, with temperatures dropping to -20 degrees.  That type of weather gets in the way of doing any maintenance and upkeep- putting the whole farm into survival mode.

So what were we doing out on the farm, when everyone else was snowbound?  First we had to plow; farm driveways, areas around the feed bins, and even the roads.  It took a solid three days for the county plows to hit all of the roads, and the pigs needed to eat before that, so the farm tractors joined in to help.  We also would become a towing service for neighbors in the ditch, and even plowed out some of their driveways.  

Another job is bedding.  Bedding is pretty simple on a usual winter day:  we go out to the outside pig pens, open the gate, drive the straw wagon into the pen, take some bales of straw and put them in the hog houses (little huts that hold about 20 pigs each, for sleeping and to escape from the elements), drive back out of the gate and shut it.  With 3-4 foot snow drifts, even opening the gate becomes a big challenge, but the pigs need the new straw bedding most when the temperatures are so frigid.  

Other winter tasks include running the generator, and fixing heaters.  Two years ago, we decided to buy one of those stand-alone generators that starts with the push of a button- no more trying to hook up the tractor to run the generator!  That's really nice for those of us who aren't very good with a tractor, but we still need to make sure this new one works in the worst of conditions, because honestly, the power never goes out when it's 65 degrees and the sun is shining.  This time the generator fired right up, but everyone held their breath until they heard it fall into a natural rhythm.  If it doesn't work in the cold we have to figure out a way to get it to start, because next time we might not be so lucky.  As far as fixing the heaters go, they always seem to work best when you don't need them, so a lot of time went into fixing those during the last cold spell.

After being on the farm a few years, you begin to realize that there isn't a "busy season" and an "off season."  Livestock still needs to be tended, maintenance is a constant battle, and there is always more work than can be accomplished in a day.  Each time of year is filled with it's own challenges and rewards, but all part of the same bigger picture:  we strive to care for our land and our animals better this year than in year's past.     

Summer Recap: Busy Building

How the summer has flown by!  I have been running all over the farm, learning new skills, working on new projects, and generally being caught up in the excitement of summer.  Since my last blog post, I have been building my skill set:  I learned how to collect boars and run our AI (artificial insemination) lab.  Now this might not sound like the best job, or the most exciting job, but it actually was a lot of fun. I was able to work closely with the animals, learning their personalities and quirks, as well as with my aunt, who has been running our collection lab for the past 10 years.  On top of that, I have been doing the Tyson animal care training each night with one of our 41 contract growers- 36 of which are Amish.  It has been fun to go out to everyone's barns and connect with growers and their families, and a challenge to set up meetings without the use of phones and answering machines!

My work on the farm probably hasn't even been the most exciting compared to our newest project, building our first inside gestation barn.  It is a very big project for us, although not an expansion. It is a move to streamline our business, while also reducing our environmental impact.  Moving hogs inside a barn is a big step for us.  Many people don't initially see how this is "better"  for the pigs or the land, but do see that it is less expensive for the farmer.  That is true, and it makes smart business sense to do things that cost less money, while also improving the conditions of our farm.  It makes us more sustainable.

How are we improving conditions?  Well, lets start with the pigs.  Our pigs have been housed outside during gestation for the last 50 years.  They have endure hard winters, where their ears tend to get frostbitten and fall off.  They have endured rainy springs, where the mud in the pastures makes it thick and difficult to walk.  They have endured scorching summers, with some dying due to heat stroke.  In the fall they have fought diseases when treatments couldn't administered at the proper time, just because the multiple acres of pasture sometimes lead to a pig getting missed.  They always had food, water, and shelter, as well as 3 or 4 acres of space per 60 pigs. Upon coming inside, these problems no longer exist.  The temperature is a stable 68 degrees, similar to what we prefer in our offices.  There are warm, dry places to sleep, and protection from the elements.  Treatment is faster and more effective, being administered at the right time.  The pigs are still in pens and can roam around inside the building. I can't say that the pigs prefer it that way, but I can say they tend to thrive in it.

What about the land?  Currently, we house our pigs in 3-4 acre lots, about 60 pigs in each space.  They tend to poop in the same areas, eat in others, and sleep in others.  Most of the lots are pasture grass, where the pigs really don't seem to hang out.   This means that in the corner with manure, the nitrogen content in the soil is extremely high, and run off can be a problem, even though the lots are plenty large for the number of pigs in each pasture. Over time, the manure builds up all over the lot, even though we plant alfalfa in the lots, and cut them multiple times per summer.  We don't know how to make it sustainable for the environment.  By moving the pigs inside, we can manage the manure, and put the nitrogen where we need it most.

This summer has been full of trial-and-error, and we have a lot more to learn.  Maybe we will decide that after trying this inside gestation style we might need to do something different.   However, we are trying to improve, not only for our short-term profit, but also for longevity.

Growing Community

Like many farmers, my family farm is having to do a lot more than it used to in order to keep farming.  We do a lot more record keeping; we pay more attention to animal care than we used to.  We keep manage manure application and take soil samples.  We have to show proof that we are good farmers and not just know it in our hearts.

As I have been going around to all our contract barns, I ask about the neighbors, manure management, and any other issues the growers may have.  Our growers are a little different than some, being that they are Amish, but they deal with the same issues with their neighbors.  One of the Amish gentleman, his name is Joe, that I visited last week has a neighbor that has the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ)  on speed dial.  Joe is on a first name basis with many of the DEQ workers, who have made multiple visits to the farm because of these calls.  Joe isn't doing anything wrong with his manure, and he has good records to prove it, but the DEQ comes out when they receive the complaints to check on the situation.

Another Amish man, named Jake, also has a neighbor who is interested in his manure management, but in an entirely different way.  Whenever this neighbor sees that Jake is getting ready to haul manure, he asks if some can be put on his garden.  Jake and the neighbor have a very good working relationship, and they are able to reap the benefits of being rural neighbors.

In both cases, we have a responsible farmer, living in rural areas, who is trying to have responsible manure management plan.  We just can't depend on who we have as neighbors anymore.  They might not be from the area, they might not know about the farm.  They definitely don't appreciate the weird hours, or funny smells that often accompany farms, and it's our job to make the neighbors understand our line of work, or at the very least, make it a comfortable place to live.  Our communities don't need farmers to support them like they used to, or at least they don't see our impact as they may have fifty years ago.  So whether is is delivering a Christmas ham, creating a scholarship for the local high school, or volunteering with the FFA program, we need to nurture agriculture in our communities.

Sustainability and Productivity

Some days it is just hard to be a farmer, or maybe more specifically, to work on a farm.  People respect my profession, but not day-to-day job.  Consumers want me to farm, but they don't think I know how.  I believe that I do care about animals, and the Earth's resources, but with Earth Day celebrations, this week has allowed me to see just how little regard farms are held, and how much we don't understand the consumers.

An Earth Day buzzword is of course "sustainability."  It is often used in opposition to current farming practices, and in animal care discussion.  I understand that we can always improve on both of these fronts, but I see farming as so much more sustainable that it used to be, largely because we are able to produce so much more with fewer resources.  Yet, we are badgered for making these advances.  Isn't it somewhat counterintuitive?

To answer my question, I have done a simple search on the definition of sustainability, hoping to gain some further insight on the issue.  For my purpose the EPA's definition seemed most relevant; "Everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment.  Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations"(For the direct link, click here).  This definition seems relatively straightforward.  We need to produce for now, and produce even more in the future.  Preserving resources is important in production, and using less to get more really does help us become sustainable.  It requires us to be productive and efficient.  Two things that most people don't like to think of when they see the word "farm."  Definitely not what they want to think of in animal agriculture. 

How can we be productive, sustainable, animal friendly, and respectful to the needs of our customers, all while creating a financially sustainable business model?  Are we buckling under the pressure, or just ignoring it, hoping that it will pass?  Answering these questions is the ticket to being the producer of the future.  We have to strive to come up with the answers that will build trust, instead of waiting for someone else to force them upon us.  We have the tools through universities, extension agents, government agencies, and our own human capital that are full of ideas on how to make production better.  At the same time we have to put our "customer hats" on and see how new production methods will sound on the front page of the local newspaper.  We have to be our own PR people.  It is a full time position, not just something we work on between planting and harvest, when every animal is healthy and nothing is sitting broken in the shop.  We have to create our own industry sustainability everyday, one conversation at a time. 

Conservation Compromise

Last night I went out for dinner with my family and a good friend, Matt.  He isn't someone most farmers like to share dinner with, let alone call a friend, but I feel lucky to know him.  He works for Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) as a watershed conservationist.  Many farmers have a hard people who work in these positions, and we think that they are trying to take away land that we own, and that they don't understand the position of farmers.  In many cases this may be true, but Matt and I have some of the most thoughtful and exciting conversations about the future of agriculture, since with have different perspectives, but see the value in the land.

One point he brings to me about his job is that he is working towards getting people to realize the importance  of the wetlands.  The filter sediment, rejuvenates the soil, and generally make the water we have better.  They are things that whether or not we want to admit it, are good for the longevity of farming.  The point he brings to farmers is, that by protecting the wetlands, he is protecting the future value of the land for farming.  

With that in mind we talked about regulation.  As the conversation continued, I wondered whether we need a certain amount of regulation to protect us from our own best intentions.  For example, I want to plant the best crops I can, and have the best yields possible, year after year.  I would like to think that someday, my children will get to do the same thing if they so choose.  I know that I need the land to be in top condition each year, and that I need to do everything in my power to keep it that way for the next season.  In a way, some regulation on water quality, air quality, and soil conservation helps me to do that.  It makes me not only accountable to myself, but also my neighbors, cities, states, and nation.  It also allows me to record how well I am taking care of my land from year to year.  While many may find this to be a violation of rights, every time I drive downtown Detroit by the old automobile manufacturing plants, I am glad they can no longer dump sewer water straight into the river, or emit big clouds of black smoke.  They are more accountable for the waste they produce than the whole field of agriculture is; not that we are doing it wrong, but why not be accountable for what we do?  We need to have guiding principles to the care of our resources, and we need to make sure that we are part of the discussion when the principles are being made.

As we talked, Matt reminded me that with any adoption of environmental reform, we need to make sure our food production systems are protected by some kind of trade barrier. He doesn't believe that throwing farmers under the bus will do the country or the land any favors.  We need to maintain some type of self-sufficiency, and sometimes protecting our natural resources comes at a price.  However, once we have lost them, natural resources won't come back, so we need to if future longevity is worth some sacrifice now.  We need to see that conservationists and agriculturalists are working towards the same goal of protecting our land while producing from it.