It’s been to long since I’ve done one of these. A cold afternoon seems like a perfect reason to take a few minutes and give some information and outlook for the new Year. We continue to have folks stop by and see how we farm, how the livestock are doing and verify what we do. We enjoy the accountability we receive from our customers and the words of encouragement as well. Every time we drop off milk we feel the great responsibility and trust you place in us for your families needs.
Winter is usually pretty uneventful. Right now we are just feeding up our stores of hay and grain and using ALOT of bedding to keep everyone happy. We’ve started to have some cows calve and that adds more milk and will be the source of more milk soon. Hopefully the cows have a calf once a year this replenishes their milk supply and gives us cattle for future herd growth and future beef. The hogs are growing and staying warm in their pens. Some days waterers can be an issue with the severely cold temps but every day we spend the time to take care that every animal is well cared for. When I was a teenage boy at home helping my Dad he would always say” livestock’s needs come before ours!” as a teenager I didn’t like that but it was sound wisdom and that’s how we still do things today.
This gets to my title. Technology should benefit husbandry. Sometimes people come to the farm and are shocked that we have tractors, and combines, hay balers and grinders, we even have a sprayer for the fields. They come into our barn and they can see our pipelines, vacuum pumps, bulk tanks and a wide range of electrical equipment we use to ensure good hygiene, quality milk and well cared for animals. All of these things are used to enhance husbandry. What is husbandry you might be asking?
The 1828 websters dictionary states “HUS’BANDRY, noun The business of a farmer, comprehending agriculture or tillage of the ground, the raising, managing and fattening of cattle and other domestic animals, the management of the dairy and whatever the land produces.
This is very useful in that it first states the effort is directed towards the betterment of the farmer through proper understanding of the ground, fattening cattle, and the dairy. This is how the old timers looked at it. We here at Nourishing family farm agree that the benefit comes from understanding the cattle, hogs, and chickens we raise on the earth God created. For the purpose of human flourishing. All the while understanding that we must leave something for those who come after. In fact we hope we leave it better than we found it. Not just for the person who takes over the farm but also for the people who eat our products and thrive on them.
We often tend to think of modern agriculture starting in the years immediately after World War 2. Actually many of the laws that regulate us occurred as technology was rapidly introduced into farming around the turn of the 19th century. I’m gonna focus on milk as it is the biggest concern to many of our readers. And it is the biggest part of our farm.
In the time after the civil war many of the nations biggest cities grew substantially. The Big Apple having some of the most prominent growth. The growing city pushed farm production farther away from the people and transportation became difficult to get the fresh products especially highly perishable milk into the city in a timely manner. Another factor was that many of the breweries that were in New York had dairy cattle in the basement of their facilities, which they fed the brewery grains to. These cattle were kept in very cramped and unsanitary conditions with little or no exercise for years. News paper drawings show the cattle were actually held up by ropes from the ceilings! Even with many cattle housed this way NYC didn’t have enough milk for it’s growing population. Companies like Bordon’s began a “milk Train” it was a designated train with box cars which would be cooled using blocks of ice. The train would go around to rural areas of New York state and pick up milk from the farmers and deliver it back to NYC creameries to bottle and deliver the milk. Of course electricity wasn’t wide spread yet and cooling was difficult but even more difficult was hot water for sanitation. The milk was often rancid by the time it got to the creameries and of course the brewery cows were housed in unsanitary conditions which caused disease to spread throughout the cattle. The public began an outcry in protest as their children were becoming very ill and dying from infected milk. Some of the more unscrupulous farmers and bottlers would even add plaster to the milk to thicken it and give it a white color. SO technology in many cases was masking poor husbandry skills.
So many people were just concerned about the outcome not the business of farming and they certainly weren’t concerned about the well being of the land, cattle or the final consumer. It got so bad they had a name for the milk. Swill Milk! These folks had thought technology would trump the lapses in husbandry! But they quickly found out it did just the opposite. But in this golden age of technological wizardry and enlightenment instead of returning to the old paths. The titans of industry along with the politicians who wanted a quick answer to this public health disaster again turned to science.
And that is how we got pasteurized milk! It was an answer to milk produced in what we would call today CAFO’s, transported long distances, handled and exposed multiple times stored for long periods before getting to it’s final consumer!
For so many of our farm products today we have replaced husbandry with technology. Now I am not a Luddite! I like having tractors and bulk tanks, manure spreaders and vacuum pumps. I enjoy milking in a parlor with a milking machine. We are very thankful for coolers to store our milk in. But all of these things benefit our husbandry. They don’t replace it. We still believe the best disinfectant is sunlight, the best way to treat disease is to prevent it and that soil health translates into healthy cattle which means healthy milk which gives you our customers a healthy product to feed your family. Less disease in the soil ultimately makes for healthier people. After all we were formed from the dust!
This has been long enough I’ll give some update for what we hope to do on our farm upcoming open house dates and more very soon.
