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Not much time to write this week. I will say I think this may be one of those weeks when I long for the days when I was a row crop farmer and I would spend my days in an air conditioned tractor cab either cultivating crops or mowing around fields. I will be in conditioned air this week and the condition is going to be HOT.

Got a testimony from one of my CSA members this week that she has noticed a drop in allergy complaints from one of her sons this summer. She thinks this being the second season of providing mostly organic food for her family has something to do with it. That is good to hear, even if we have no way of knowing for sure, I think there is a connection. I think it was Ben Franklin that said the medicine of the future will be the food we eat. So here’s to healthy eating!

            Your friend in farming bringing you food with integrity

HAPPY 4^th OF JULY! I hope during this Independence Day holiday you realize how fortunate we all are to be Americans and vow to never take that for granted. Benjamin Franklin once said that those that give up a little bit of freedom for a little bit of security deserve neither and will loose both. I was reminded of this today by a missionary friend who told us how wonderful it was to fly into Chicago airport and see Old Glory hanging all around the airport. How we don’t have to be concerned with tanks coming down our streets and troops marching by. It is wonderful to live in a land where we can all feel free to hold different political, religious, and social positions without fear of reprisal from the government. Because of efforts of our Founding Fathers to instill the principles of individual freedoms we also can discuss our individual beliefs with each other without the hatred so many other cultures have for each other.

I love the Missouri Waltz, Dogwood trees, and the Bald Eagle. I love living in the country, being able to farm organically, being able to choose alternate forms of health care, and being able to have a choice at the polls. Another one of our Founding Fathers said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. I am afraid that we have not been vigil enough and we need to remember that when America ceases to be good America will cease to be great! America became great not because of its economic foundation or its political foundation but because of its moral foundation. Let’s work to return to those foundations and demand that in our leaders also. I am proud to be an American!

Your friend in farming bringing you food with integrity

First let explain why there was not a newsletter last week. I write the letter in a word document and save it. Then I e-mail it to my web master and he puts it on my web site. Last week I tried to go to Microsoft Word and I could not find it on my sister-in-law’s computer. I tried everything I could think of and could not find it. I asked my sister-in-law if she had deleted it which she had not. After thirty minutes of searching I finally found it in the recycle bin. The only way she thought it might have got there is that she baby sits a two year old that took a liking to the computer that week. It is pretty bad when even a two year old can do more than you can on the computer!

All spring we considered ourselves fortunate because we seemed to miss all the heavy rain that many all around us were getting. Well now that tendency has come back to haunt us as we now are missing rains that we wish we were getting. Weather patterns are one of the real challenges of vegetable farming in Missouri. I only have rural water on the farm which makes irrigation difficult but I may have to buy a couple of soaker hoses and start trying to give some of these guys a drink this week. You really need good drainage and irrigation to make growing vegetables more feasible in Missouri I believe and I have neither. So I just do what I can do and hope maybe someday I be able to afford them. Still I would much rather have it too dry than too wet as I can add some water at least and the vegetables do and taste better in the drier years.

It is hard to believe that we are praying for rain and I have a close friend that expects to loose most of his crops due to the flooding on the Missouri River. I know that feeling as I was farming the bottoms in 1993 and lost all of my crops. At least that year we were also getting some of the wet weather that caused the problem where this year the problems are being caused by excessive rain hundreds of miles away. Sometimes it makes us wonder why we love doing what we do but it just gets in your blood. A good dairy farmer friend of mine several years ago was struggling due to the low milk prices and he contacted a state program that was supposed to try to help through such times. The councilor, who happened to be his old high school Ag. Teacher, told him to give some thought for a few days about what he would really like to do and then get back to him. He did so and when his old teacher asked what it was he wanted to do he told him, farm. That’s the way we are, hopeless romantics!

Your friend in farming bringing you food with integrity

Well we are asking for something that we have had to ask for very seldom in the last three years, a rain! We need a rain and yet my friend on the other end of the county is afraid he will be flooded out because of the water release on the Missouri River. Dad tilled the sweet potatoes last night and said the tiller was jumping and bucking because of the dry hard ground. The weatherman says it is raining all around us so maybe we will get a little sometime soon. We are counting our blessing anyway as I heard of a 165 member CSA farm near Herman that was flooded out and the storms in North Missouri last week got some vegetable farms up there with hail. One of the other challenges we face that vegetable farmers in the west don’t have.

Was good to see my daughter this last week and she was a big help. She also made me a gooseberry pie sweetened with sorghum instead of sugar which was very good. The only problem was she discovered that she really liked gooseberry pie too. I think she ate more of it than I did but that was alright because I at least got my yearly gooseberry pie which I consider a family tradition. Tuesday we got the young people that help us on Thursday and Friday to help and we got most of the tomatoes tied up. They really look good for a change. I hope to be able to provide my CSA and customers with some really good tomatoes for the first time in 3 years. We have a couple of rows of green beans that need some picking. I didn’t have a real good stand so I replanted some in the blank spaces so I have some in the row ready and some not. Some much of my early crops came in at the same time, which has kept me so busy picking that I am getting behind in my planting. Would like to have a half inch of rain and then jump in and get another round of beans and squash going.

Saw an article this week that claimed that chemical insecticide had gotten a bad rap because they claimed that vegetables made their own insecticide that contained more potent carcinogens than commercial chemical insecticide. I try to keep an open mind about such claims until I can find the real truth in the matter but I would question the science behind this claim. For one thing the best way to repel insects in plants is to balance the soil so the sugar content in the plant is high. Most harmful insects are biting or sucking insects with simple stomachs. If they ingest plants of high sugar content it turns to alcohol in their system and it kills them. I would also dispute their claim based upon what a bio-chemist doctor my wife went to told me several years ago. He said that as a bio-chemist he would have to say that in the lab there was absolutely no difference between ascorbic acid and natural vitamin C. However he said that if you took a synthetic vitamin C made of ascorbic acid it would simply pass through the body while the body would use a vitamin derived from natural vitamin C such as Rose Hips. This makes me believe that our Creator designed us in such a way, that while some lab technician would say the chemical is less potent than the natural, our body recognizes the difference and accepts the natural with not harm yet tries to reject the chemical thus causing cancer. Just goes to show that our Creator was a whole lot smarter than science. Even if their claims are true I still would rather my food be all natural than modified by some well meaning scientist.

Your friend in farming bringing you food with integrity

It has been good to have our daughter in for a wedding and visit since Wednesday but I’m not sure she feels the same way. She helped get ready for CSA and market Thursday and Friday and she is now sunburned and sore. She has decided she likes her tiny little garden in Pennsylvania and being a church secretary. There is quite a difference between 8 and 800 tomato plants.

If you have been watching the news the last week you have been hearing of the concern now about flooding on the Missouri River now. I know how they feel because the flood of 93 put an end to my row crop farming career and it is a sinking feeling. It is kind of like a friend of ours who fell off of a roof several years ago. He was on a tin roof and lost his footing and as he was sliding down the roof he remembered thinking. “I am going to fall off of this roof and there isn’t a single thing I can do about it.”  That is how you feel watching the river rise. You sandbag and ride the levee watching for possible leaks but in the end you are totally at the mercy of the river. It is especially hard when you are dry and problems way upstream are causing all of your problems.

I hope if you check out the web site that you got a chance to look at the new pictures. My daughter looked at them and she thought the coin I had put on the leaf was a dime but it is a quarter. I have never had such broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower in the spring. I sure hope the season can continue as it has started. After 3 poor years in a row it is nice to have a change. The most rewarding part of it for me is being able to provide some vegetables of excellent quality for my customers. My uncle who has been a big gardener for 60 years has always told me that you raise better vegetables in dry years than in wet ones and he is right. While we haven’t been exactly dry this spring we have been blessed to miss some of the big rains that hit all around us.

We are always hearing about the damage from wildlife and with the exception of raccoons in our sweet corn we have never had much of problem. That is until now, as we had the deer go through one of our fields and help themselves to much of the lettuce we had that was ready to cut. The worst thing about deer is that they are foragers and not grazers. This means that instead of eating a few heads off to the ground they simply walk down the row biting the top out of each plant as they go. Hey deer, your momma should have taught you to eat what is before you and not just pick at your food.

Your friend in farming bringing you food with integrity

See more Spring 2011 pictures here

It’s been a couple of weeks since I have been able to put out a newsletter. I had planned on writing one last week however things got just a little too exciting here in Waverly. As some of you that follow me know I write these on Sunday while we are at my sister-in-laws giving her a break as she cares for Rose’s mom and disabled brother and she has internet which I do not. Last week she asked if we would take her to a 50^th wedding anniversary party for one of her cousins and while we were there we ended up dodging tornadoes. We stood in the door and watched as one headed right for us and then lifted and the cloud went right over the house. Another one formed after it went over the house. Then someone pointed to another one about a mile southeast of us. We saw the debris and heard the roar from that one. Later on we learned that it had taken part of the roof of an old shed located on Rose’s grandfather’s old farm where her nephew now lives. His house is about 200 feet from the barn but it had no damage except maybe a couple of shingles. We could not get hold of her sister and niece who were both in Waverly so I had to go check on them. We learned that there was no reception in Waverly during the storm. Not near the storms that went through Joplin nor even Sedalia but that was ok with us!

This year I was able to apply some additional organic approved nitrogen to a couple of fields that really didn’t need any more manure and it has really made a difference in the crops. I hope to get some pictures up in the next couple of days so check them out. So far this year is shaping up to be so much better than last year. We are actually getting some sunshine in between the rainy spells. The weatherman is promising a little dry weather the next few days so I hope to get a lot done. I am behind as always.

Looked at an article in Growing for Market the other day about the Brown Mamorand Stink bug that come in with some of the imported food we bring into this country. My daughter lives in Pennsylvania and it was in all the houses there last winter and they couldn’t get rid of it. Here we have had the Asian beetle for several years that was also a product of imports.  This global economic so many are pushing maybe a recipe for global disaster as these bugs have no natural enemies over here. That is just one more reason to buy local and eat seasonally. There was something else I wanted to cover in this newsletter but it has been a hectic two weeks and I can’t remember what it was so until later I will be.

Your friend in farming bringing you food with integrity

They say that behind every successful man there is a woman, telling him he will never get it done. Now while that last part provides the punch line for the joke the first part has a lot of truth to it. For the first time today I heard the entire poem from whence we get our expression, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. One of my greatest blessings in life has been the women that God placed in my life. First there is my mother whom I could spend all day telling of her attributes and then God gave me a wife a whole lot like her. Both women have been plagued with a life time of health issues but neither has allowed that to stop them. Then there is my mother-in-law that recovered from a car wreck that left her with 28 broken bones at one time and later on in life spent 15 years on the wheat harvest trail cooking and cleaning for a thrashing crew. Then there were both of my grandmothers whom I was fortunate to have until I had children of my own. One was the wife of a dairy farmer and the other was widowed when her youngest was only 2 and raised a family of six kids with the oldest only teenagers on the farm as a single mom. The example of these women is always a great encouragement to me and as much as I love to farm I wouldn’t trade a one of them for a farm in Texas! I hope you have had the pleasure of having the influence of great women as I have and I want to wish all you mothers out there a HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!

The sunshine is here and if you want to work on that summer tan I can accommodate you. The weather has been good and the crops are starting to grow rapidly. Unfortunately so are the weeds! So if you would like to experience the joy of farming come on out. You can leave at the end of the day feeling muscles you forgot you had and a nice red glow to your skin.

You can tell the weather has warmed up because the asparagus has taken off. We cut it twice on Friday for the markets on Saturday and we cut almost as much on Saturday night as we did on Friday and Rose cut one and a half pounds less this morning as she did last night. Get your asparagus recipes out for I think there will be lots of fresh asparagus at the markets this week.

One vegetable farmer compared our line of work during crop season to trying to run down a mountain slope with a huge boulder right behind you. Well I feel the rock is heading my way so I’d better close for this week. Come see us if you can. Bring a pair of gloves!

Your friend in farming bringing you food with integrity

Well this is the week we look forward to and dread all at the same time, the start of our CSA season and the opening of our second market. We look forward to renewing our relationships with our past members and customers as well as the other vendors at the market. We dread the fact that our already busy schedule is about to get unbelievable and we always wonder if we will have enough each week and how we are going to get it all picked and ready each week. This year is already looking better than last year and we have been having good markets at Columbia so my expectations are up for this year. The potatoes are coming up and it looks like we may get a good stand for the first time in three years. I have one wet corner that Dad still is betting that they rot before they get up. The German Butterball still aren’t up but we have high hopes that they will make it and we will have a good stand. It’s supposed to be dry this week so I need to spend a lot of time behind the tiller, and on the tractor and transplanter, and staking peas, and picking and cleaning for deliveries. Throw in a trip to Jamesport for organic fertilizer and Rose’s annual checkup at the heart doctor in the city and I don’t think I’ll have any trouble keeping busy this week!

I’m a news addict, actually more of a weather one, but I saw a news clip this week that I thought needed commenting on. Channel 4 reported on a university study that found that pregnant women exposed to pesticides could lower the IQ of their infants by as much as 10 points. When are we going to wake up and realize that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease! At the end of the article their answer to the problem which was not an answer at all was to be sure and wash all fruits and vegetables before eating them. Most people erroneously believe that you can just wash most commercial chemicals off and they are safe. How do you suppose that those chemical once applied keep working for months if a little water could remove them and now you have the problem of GMO crops with the chemical imbedded in the plant so it never leaves. That is the big difference with organic approved protectants is that they have little or no residual effect so they are easily removed with washing or simply quickly break down in just a few days.

I also saw an unrelated article that I think amply illustrates this point. The article concerned someone that had been with Lady Ga Ga on a plane and mentioned that she would not put a cell phone up to her head because she was scared of getting a brain tumor. The report stated that sometimes it takes decades before we really know if something was really harmful, such as smoking which used to be thought harmless. A medical person in the report was concerned that if the cell phone concern was valid that by the time it was proven it might be too late for potentially thousands of users. That is exactly how I feel about GMO altered crops and I think we are starting to see the effects of decades of synthetic chemical overuse. The kicker in this is that I have heard that we actually lose more crops to pests than before we started to be so chemically dependant. What it has done is allow us to displace millions of farmers because you can cover a whole lot more acres if all you have to do is plant it and spray it!

Your friend in farming bringing you food with integrity