Share Life Farms

The news this week brought a strong reminder of why I believe organic farming is the best way to farm. The town of Drexel, MO was unable to use the public water supply because the town lake had been contaminated with the farm chemical atrazine. Atrazine is a weed killer used in corn for grass weeds and some broadleaves. It was one of the first soil applied chemicals and has been around for a long time. When I first started farming atrazine was often used alone but today it is usually used as part of a tank mix with other chemicals or is part of a formula of a chemical of some other name. My question would be since atrazine today is seldom used alone what about the other possible chemicals that were probably present with the atrazine. The patrons of the water district were told not to use the water even to wash dishes and were told it was not safe even if they boiled it. And another disturbing part of this story not covered in the news bite is we talked to a grower from that area that get their water from there and they knew nothing about the order until they heard it on the news. Until then they were using the contaminated water. It makes me wonder since atrazine is an herbicide what if people were watering their gardens with this water. Were the levels high enough to cause possible crop damage? The grower we talked to grows 4000 tomato plants which I am not sure if atrazine would kill them or not since I haven’t dealt with chemicals for years.

Then came the announcement that never ceases to amaze me. When they announced that the water was once again safe they did not say that the atrazine had been removed from the lake but that the levels were below the levels deemed safe to consume. How much comfort do you think it would provide if the public announcement were to read something like this? We would like to inform the public that while there is still atrazine in your drinking water there is no need to worry because we have determined that a certain level of poison will not harm you even if consumed over a long period of time.

This kind of logic really bothers me because while it may be true for a vast majority of the population my wife is one of the ones for whom it is not and it has caused me much money and time over the years. She has to drink a special brand of bottled water and we haul water from 20 miles away to cook with. Just because they say the water is safe it does not mean it is pure.

As a young man on the farm most farmers used few if any chemicals and most weed control was done mechanically. As soon as the crop germinated you tried to get over it with a rotary hoe. I used to like to use this implement because for it to work you needed to go as fast as you could. I can remember hoeing corn one whole day with the old 51 John Deere A that had been my dad’s and then was my uncle’s whom I helped after Dad left the farm. That tractor had no power steering and was notoriously hard to drive. Because you wanted to go as fast as you could you hoed in “road gear” which was the same gear you used running on the paved or gravel road. It was probably about 10 miles a hour for that tractor. After hoeing the field I drove home and thought as I was nearing home that that tractor didn’t seem so hard to drive after all. It was not until I had turned off the tractor and started to the house that I realized that I could hardly open my hands because I had been griping the steering wheel so hard all day. Then as soon as you could you were on the field with the cultivator. I hated this job because while you hoed in the fastest gear you had you cultivated in the lowest gear you had. You would work all day long to just get over a few acres. While with the hoe you just had to keep the tractor pretty much on the rows with the cultivator you had to be meticulous. If you got off the row the least little bid or went a little too fast you would tear up the corn. As much as I hated that job it was still rewarding to pull into a weedy field of corn and start down the rows of corn and look back and see those rows of corn with those clean middles after going through them with the cultivator. Then farmers started using chemicals and they no longer had to rotary hoe because while the early chemical did not last all season they held the weeds back until you could cultivate. You could usually cultivate when the corn was a little bigger so you could go faster and it was harder to cover up the corn. Today the chemicals are designed to last all season and kill everything but the desired crop. Now the only farmers that consider the rotary hoe and cultivator two of their most valuable implements are organic farmers.

Sometimes I think chemical farmers think organic farmers really don’t mind weeds but that is not true. I wish the chemical industry’s assumption was true that chemicals are really not that dangerous or harmful to health and environment. That any time we had a problem we had a chemical that would solve it. It would be nice to be able to simply treat the crops and still have all the benefits I believe organics bring. No I think if anything organic farmers hate weeds more than our chemical counterparts for many times we are battling weeds in hand to hand combat and not from the cab of and air-conditioned cab with 100 foot booms!

My friend Melinda Hemmelgarn stopped at our market booth and was telling me how much she appreciated us trying to continue being certified organic. I needed that because at that time I was feeling like organic farmers were the only farmers dumb enough to pay a third party thousands of dollars just to be a pain in our rear. My agency was questioning some things that I believed they had already approved and I was frustrated to say the least. Also in a year like this year that hand to hand combat is rough.

Your friend in farming bringing you food with integrity.

Boy am I ready to go back to those dry years we were having three years ago. It is a lot easier to put water on than take it off. The timing can also fit your schedule instead of Mother Nature’s. Although it easier to get vegetable crops up when it stays wet until they come up, it makes them harder to take care of once they get up. Since most organic treatments wash off with a rain it also makes it more difficult to control the bugs. The last two years it has been so wet that pests have not been a huge problem but I’m not sure this year is going to be so kind.

It has been a interesting week at the farm. We were working in the field Tuesday when it started to rain lightly so we moved into the high tunnel for some weeding and soil preparation so we could plant more tomatoes and peppers and our celery. I was tilling when I heard Rose holler and I looked her way to discover her, my cousin, and my brother-in-law trying to hold the high tunnel roof down. A big wind had come up and was literally lifting the roof off of it. It lifted part of the bows off and set them back down and tore the plastic up. I never dreamed of it doing it now because I had the sides down 5ft. up so I thought any wind would simply blow right through. Chalk one up to inexperience and plain old stupidity. The strange part was that for all of the destruction it caused, the storm only gave us two tenths of rain. Then Tuesday night we got 8 tenths more. Also the storm came from the north but the wind came from the south. Then Friday as we were picking for market I had a row of potatoes dug and two buckets picked up when we got 9 tenths of rain in maybe 45 minutes. Did you ever try to pick up potatoes in fresh plowed ground that had an inch of rain on it! It reminds you of your childhood making mud pies and as I recall I was never that fond of making mud pies. It took me three hours to finish that row that normally would have taken 30 minutes. Then Saturday we were having a very active market in Blue Springs. That is until about 10:30 when another big storm hit and all we could do was try to hold our tents down and wait for it to let up, which was about an hour later. By the time we got out of there we were all sufficiently drenched.

For those of you who have been looking for my update each week, we have been away from our web connection for a couple of weeks so I haven’t been able to write my newsletter. I think we are back on our regular schedule for a least a while anyway. After market on Saturday we were in a Wendy’s so those with dry clothes could change and a family eating there asked if we sold at the farmer’s market. They said they had bought some greens from us a couple of weeks earlier and told us how good they were. That was a ray of sunshine in our otherwise dismal week and it is those kinds of comments that keep us going sometime. A friend of mine called Saturday and was discussing the storm during market and he commented that this was sure a fine way to try to make a living. I told him the key word was try. Well I am going to close for now and try to get a little rest before Church tonight. After the week we have had I am tired.

Your friend in farming bringing you food with integrity.

Well if you have been outside the last few days I am sure you have noticed that finally the weather seems to be heading in the right direction. Maybe that is why whoever named the seasons called the next one spring. Because after a winter like this and the warmer weather arrives we soon forget those blustery sub-zero days and it seems as if this pleasant weather just sprung upon us, hence the name spring. The last week around here has been a blessing.

The hoop house was planted in early February which should have been adequate time to have produce by mid-March. However the cloudy days and continued cold prohibited germination. It took almost two weeks for radishes to come up and with adequate environment they are usually up in three days. In fact here it is three weeks and they are still coming up. It can dry up pretty fast once the weather warms up but as much moisture as there is in the ground prospects for an early outdoor spring planting seem dim.

We got to spend a week with our children and their families in January. The bitter cold did not seem to bother our 2 year old grandson who has spent all but a couple of weeks of his young life in the Mojave dessert. He was always at the back door wanting to go outside with Papa. His parents however, who both were raised in Missouri, liked to have froze to death. They would hardly venture out at all. What softies they have become!

We are about to get the heated greenhouse full. We are re-potting some of the early plants because we were afraid they were going to get too big for the pots before we could get them outside. We are looking into the possibility of putting up another hoop house this spring.

I think the extended cold this winter lulled me to sleep thinking winter was never going to end, so I am slow in getting my CSA letter out this year. Don’t give up on me it is coming soon I promise.

Since I have been in the vegetable facet of farming I don’t believe there has been a year when I wanted so bad to get so excited about the coming year and yet have at the same time been so frustrated. When I read articles in the farm publications about the high demand for local food and have new businesses contacting me wanting me to raise for them I get excited about the extreme possibility of this trend in food production. But then when I look at my own limited resources I get discouraged because I know without some outside help I will not be able to use my farm to its full potential.

To this extent I have been trying to get a video made to put on my web-site explaining my dream for Share-Life Farms. If you are concerned about local food, organic food, better health, the environment or good common sense you will want to see my videos. Keep looking for them soon I hope. My social networking ineptitude has caused me to rely on others to help me with this and then the weather has also been a hindrance. We have a great window of opportunity now but farmers need your help or I am afraid the window may close as fast as it opened. Watch the videos for little things you can do to make a big difference.

Until next time your friend in the farming business.