Post by brigitte on Mar 13, 2010 16:48:10 GMT -5
Welcome to Joshuasfarm (dot com) . Despite so many reasons to doubt the future of agriculture, and indescribable personal and financial hurdles, this is the hallaluja of success as the promise of Spring hangs in lingering sunsets and melting snow. The original farmer of this land, Revolutionary War hero Joshua Smith, must be smiling.
Land that had cows on it when General Henry Knox travelled by with his men and munitions to win victory against the British at Boston, once again hosts grazing cattle.
The barn is built- more expensive than planned, but a sturdy shelter worthy of the original post and beam barns and a far more permanent solution than pole barns.
The milking shorthorn heifers and one small wannabe bull steer are the breed preferred by pioneers for their durability, resilience to problems (necessary then and now in the absence of veterinarians)
I wonder if contemporary urban and suburban dwellers, materialistically bound, know how much they need the view of cows, and the taste of real milk and real eggs, real meat and real vegetables nurtured with manure not chemicals.
This is not factory food. Nor is it easily had. There is no leaving the farm for vacations. you have to want to be here more than anywhere else..
Daisy, the no. 1 heifer, is a culmination of a lifetime of effort toward creating a dairy- so far as I know the only one in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be created from the ground up, not retrofitted from an Agrimark dependant losing business venture or the brainchild of a sugar daddy with deep pockets and a renter farmer.
It's a losing proposition. but the hope is that public sentiment will eventually latch on to the value of small farms, before we lose the land and the possibility of having them at all. The hope is that the voices of people like Joel Salatin and David Gumpert and Ron Schmid and Sally Fallon will be heard, before we lose the land that could support the philosophy of community agriculture, and return it to usefulness other than second homes.
I worry that the public will never appreciate that our food sources are being controlled by agrimarketers. What needs to happen is nothing less than a wholesale dismissal of the subsidies and philosophy of bigger-is-better. It means that people who haven't the option of a family cow need to be as passionate about it as their neighbor who does, or the farmer down the road young enough to cling to a family tradition. It means that people need to care about something before the usual route- when it directly hurts them.
It is unbelievable that in a country founded on the passion of individual freedoms and motivation that a well kept dairy cannot sell milk to the general public from the farm in most states. But you can buy cigarettes at the corner store.
With a $50,000 investment in milking shorthorn heifers, barn, fencing and 14 years of land clearing, there is little hope on the near horizon that I would be able to sell raw milk legally from the farm without selling shares in the cow in Massachusetts. There is virtually no hope of returning the investment, or of finding grants to build a state of the art milk room and specified equipment to meet regulations. I didn't do this to get rich, I did it to answer a pull inside of me that has persisted since I was a child, drawing toy tractors and wagons through the lawn, picking up grass clippings pretending it was hay.
State inspectors are interested in what you are doing wrong, adding hurdles and expense that becomes insurmountable. Their demands seem arbitrary- I was told wood is not allowable- painted or not- in an area where cows are milked. Nowhere in the three inch thick book of regulations is this claim supported. Questioned, the regulator then backed off from the claim.
Land used as pasture is at risk of being used as house lots, recently declared not of appropriate soil type for protection. (that's what pasture is, poor crop land used for grazing). Many local governments care more about tax income from development than preserving land.
One begins to wonder if it's fixable, or if the whole system - like the health care system- will eventually fail and need to be rebuilt, appropriately, from the ground up.
If everyone who believes in community agriculture can make one effort- to contact a legislature, contribute to a cow share, or call a friend to tell this story, we will win. And win we must. So much is at stake.
Anyone interested in milk- I will have it April 10 in Sandisfield, Mass. through herd share. See Johuasfarm.com
Brigitte
Land that had cows on it when General Henry Knox travelled by with his men and munitions to win victory against the British at Boston, once again hosts grazing cattle.
The barn is built- more expensive than planned, but a sturdy shelter worthy of the original post and beam barns and a far more permanent solution than pole barns.
The milking shorthorn heifers and one small wannabe bull steer are the breed preferred by pioneers for their durability, resilience to problems (necessary then and now in the absence of veterinarians)
I wonder if contemporary urban and suburban dwellers, materialistically bound, know how much they need the view of cows, and the taste of real milk and real eggs, real meat and real vegetables nurtured with manure not chemicals.
This is not factory food. Nor is it easily had. There is no leaving the farm for vacations. you have to want to be here more than anywhere else..
Daisy, the no. 1 heifer, is a culmination of a lifetime of effort toward creating a dairy- so far as I know the only one in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be created from the ground up, not retrofitted from an Agrimark dependant losing business venture or the brainchild of a sugar daddy with deep pockets and a renter farmer.
It's a losing proposition. but the hope is that public sentiment will eventually latch on to the value of small farms, before we lose the land and the possibility of having them at all. The hope is that the voices of people like Joel Salatin and David Gumpert and Ron Schmid and Sally Fallon will be heard, before we lose the land that could support the philosophy of community agriculture, and return it to usefulness other than second homes.
I worry that the public will never appreciate that our food sources are being controlled by agrimarketers. What needs to happen is nothing less than a wholesale dismissal of the subsidies and philosophy of bigger-is-better. It means that people who haven't the option of a family cow need to be as passionate about it as their neighbor who does, or the farmer down the road young enough to cling to a family tradition. It means that people need to care about something before the usual route- when it directly hurts them.
It is unbelievable that in a country founded on the passion of individual freedoms and motivation that a well kept dairy cannot sell milk to the general public from the farm in most states. But you can buy cigarettes at the corner store.
With a $50,000 investment in milking shorthorn heifers, barn, fencing and 14 years of land clearing, there is little hope on the near horizon that I would be able to sell raw milk legally from the farm without selling shares in the cow in Massachusetts. There is virtually no hope of returning the investment, or of finding grants to build a state of the art milk room and specified equipment to meet regulations. I didn't do this to get rich, I did it to answer a pull inside of me that has persisted since I was a child, drawing toy tractors and wagons through the lawn, picking up grass clippings pretending it was hay.
State inspectors are interested in what you are doing wrong, adding hurdles and expense that becomes insurmountable. Their demands seem arbitrary- I was told wood is not allowable- painted or not- in an area where cows are milked. Nowhere in the three inch thick book of regulations is this claim supported. Questioned, the regulator then backed off from the claim.
Land used as pasture is at risk of being used as house lots, recently declared not of appropriate soil type for protection. (that's what pasture is, poor crop land used for grazing). Many local governments care more about tax income from development than preserving land.
One begins to wonder if it's fixable, or if the whole system - like the health care system- will eventually fail and need to be rebuilt, appropriately, from the ground up.
If everyone who believes in community agriculture can make one effort- to contact a legislature, contribute to a cow share, or call a friend to tell this story, we will win. And win we must. So much is at stake.
Anyone interested in milk- I will have it April 10 in Sandisfield, Mass. through herd share. See Johuasfarm.com
Brigitte