Making Hay While The Sun Shines

My dad and I picking up round bales from our field.

Besides having a commercial chicken farm, my parents grow forty acres of grass. Every year we get about three to four crops off of our fields, a crop of round bales in May and September, and two crops of square bales in between, usually one at the end of June and another in the middle of August.

Michael Pollen's chapter on grass in his book The Omnivores Dilemma is full of stories that I can relate to. That green blanket of salad bar (186) is one of the most important pieces of our landscape and harvesting grass is the biggest pain in the backside. as Pollen mentions: Grass farming done well depends almost entirely on a wealth of nuanced local knowledge (191). The grass farmer must continually juggle the various elements of his farm in space as well as time, relying on his powers of observation and organization (191). And that's just it.

My mom sits on her laptop all summer pressing the refresh key on the agriculture weather network "farm zone" hoping to find a week of sun. Finding a good gap of sunshine is a challenge in the Fraser Valley's  lower mainland. Dad usually jumps in his truck and goes for a drive, if he sees the neighbors on their tractors mowing their fields, like a lemming, he races home and gets his tractor and mower out into our fields. Grass farming with skill involves so many variables, and so much local knowledge, that it is difficult to systematize (202).

Our neighbor raises and sells organic grass fed beef on her small acreage."She has too many cows and not enough land to keep them" my dad always says. As a result she usually buys most of our harvests. We produce enough hay to feed her herd all winter. Pollan questions why we have turned away from this free lunch in favor of a biologically ruinous meal based on corn? Why in the world did Americans ever take ruminants off the grass? And how could it come to pass that a fast-food burger produced from corn and fossil fuel actually costs less than a burger produced from grass and sunlight (199)? And the answer is that it takes much longer for grass fed beef to put on weight, corn on the other hand is cheap to feed and gets cattle fatter in a short amount of time and time is money. As Pollen mentions: the temptations of cheap corn are powerful, as irresistible as the temptations of cheap energy (200). So there are great many reasons American cattle came off the grass and into the feedlot, and yet all of them finally come down to the same one: Our civilization and, increasingly, our food system are strictly organized on industrial lines. It prizes consistency, mechanization, predictability, interchangeabilité and economies of scale. Everything about corn meshes smoothly with the gears of this great machine; grass doesn't (201).

 I liked the part with Joel's chickens. something I can for sure relate to. I liked how Pollen described their behavior as they were let out of the egg mobile: The hens picked at the grasses, especially the clover, but mainly they were all over the cowpats, doing this frantic backward-stepping break-dance with their claws to scratch apart the caked manure and expose the meaty morsels within (212). A little bit gross, but too funny that these poo eating chickens had tasty eggs as a result.

I enjoyed the chapter: The animals: Practicing Complexity. Pollan's words kept my head nodding up and down the whole way through. He makes really good points on both small organic and commercial organic chicken farming. he mentions that "EFFICIENCY" is the term usually invoked to defend large-scale industrial farms, and it usually refers to the economies of scale that can be achieved by the application of technology and standardization (214). Polyface Farm is built on the efficiencies that come from mimicking relationships found in nature (216). Mimicking nature to favor chicken and egg production is a huge part of "efficient" farming and I thought Pollan described it beautifully.

My absolute favorite paragraph in this reading was when Pollan compares the two different chicken farms: At Polyface no one ever told me not to touch the animals, or asked me to put on a biohazard suit before going into the brooder house. The reason I had to wear one at Petaluma Poultry is because that system—a monoculture of chickens raised in close confinement—is inherently precarious, and the organic rules' prohibition on antibiotics puts it at a serious disadvantage. Maintaining a single-species animal farm on an industrial scale isn't easy without pharmaceuticals and pesticides. Indeed, that's why these chemicals were invented in the first place, to keep shaky monocultures from collapsing. Sometimes the large-scale organic farmer looks like someone trying to practice industrial agriculture with one hand tied behind his back (221). This paragraph sent shivers down my spine. In Canada, regardless if you have an organic or non-organic chicken farm, the use of antibiotics, and other preventative drugs is prohibited and it has resulted as a challenge in in the industry. Bio-security practices are strictly followed to prevent any diseases from infecting a flock. As Pollen mentions: Meds just mask genetic weaknesses (221). Medications will not help chicken genetics; however natural and artificial selection will. Pollen's experiences on different farms has helped him understand the complexities as well as the importance of farming, especially small scale, sustainable and local farming.


References:
 Pollan, Michael. 2006. The Omnivore's Dilemma. USA. The Penguin Press, pg. 186-273.