Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

Birds are arguably Iowa’s most conspicuous and best-known animals. If invertebrates are excluded, birds dominate our state’s wildlife in sheer number and diversity, comprising about 60 percent of all vertebrates known from Iowa. About 150 birds now nest regularly in the state. In all, around 200 species have nested here between 1840 and 2000. Including migrants over 400 bird species have been observed in Iowa—nearly half of the roughly 900 birds known to North America.

Cornelia F. Mutel, The Emerald Horizon: The History of Nature in Iowa

Practical Farmers of Iowa, Part 2

Interview with Luke Gran, Practical Farmers of Iowa, Part 2

Founded in 1985, Practical Farmers of Iowa includes a diverse group of 2,000 farmers and friends of farmers. The organization’s mission is to advance profitable, ecologically sound, and community-enhancing approaches to agriculture through farmer-led investigation and information sharing. Below is part 2 of acquisitions editor Catherine Cocks’s interview with Luke Gran, the coordinator of PFI’s Next Generation program. In our first post on this interview (June 12), Luke Gran said that marketing and production are the two biggest challenges facing new farmers.

Catherine: What are the marketing challenges?

Luke: Folks in the PFI beginning farmer network grow diverse crops and target diverse markets, from farmers’ markets to community-supported agriculture to grocers to brokers on the Chicago Board of Trade. All of them want to know how to build or maintain their customer base or how to make prudent selling decisions in commodity markets.

Catherine: And the production challenges?

Luke: In terms of production, 33 percent of our beginning farmers are focused on horticulture, but the knowledge of how to produce highly productive, diverse vegetable crops of high quality is lacking in Iowa because of the dominance of investments in research and market infrastructure for corn and soybeans over the past several decades. So this is knowledge that farmers are reacquiring now through experience and networking with other farmers. Another 20 percent of our beginning farmers are growing grain and raising livestock in integrated farm systems, and 15 percent of them are grazing livestock on grass-based systems. The knowledge of these systems also has also been lost as markets shifted and support in Iowa for these practices dwindled over the past half century.

            In general, new farmers face challenges in getting access to capital and land, developing comprehensive business plans, and finding or building adequate infrastructure for livestock and processing. 

More information: Farming's New Faces

Excerpt from Esther's Town

My mother regarded father as a dangerous man at the wheel. But she also was accustomed to horse-and-buggy tempo. One time while driving north on Sixth Street, he stepped the Hudson up to forty miles an hour. He suggested it might be discreet not to relate this foolishness to Maude. But he took pride on our annual trip to Des Moines that we needed only two hours to reach a country schoolhouse south of Algona, sixty miles from home. We always stopped there to use the two outdoor privies. On the Des Moines jaunt, we invariably had to bring out the side curtains and button them on to keep us dry. It always rained. Our route was identified by markings on telephone poles that pointed out the Lincoln Highway, the AYP, the Daniel Boone trail, and other competing traveled ways. Whenever the telephone company replaced a key marked pole at a highway intersection, we were in trouble: to turn or not to turn. Muddy roads sent my nervous mother into spasms of fear. But we always made it out without disaster.

Esther's Town, by Deemer Lee

Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

I was leery of walking under the great rookery, having an awe of herons that’s akin to my respect for skunks, buzzards and carsick puppies.

For nothing on earth can equal the cosmic, monumental defecation of a startled heron. Several times, while canoeing close-in riverbanks, I have been almost beneath perching herons before they saw me. As the startled birds lumbered into the air they voided incredible ropes of excrement that could have whitewashed an entire fleet of canoes. One startled heron is bad enough; a whole heronry could be a catastrophe.

John Madson, Stories from Under the Sky

Practical Farmers of Iowa, Part 1

Interview with Luke Gran, Practical Farmers of Iowa, Part 1

Founded in 1985, Practical Farmers of Iowa includes a diverse group of 2,000 farmers and friends of farmers. The organization’s mission is to advance profitable, ecologically sound, and community-enhancing approaches to agriculture through farmer-led investigation and information sharing. Below is acquisitions editor Catherine Cocks’s interview with Luke Gran, the coordinator of PFI’s Next Generation program.

Catherine: Can you briefly describe the Next Generation program and tell me why it’s needed?

Luke: The Next Generation program was developed in response to PFI members’ requests for more support in dealing with their children’s wish to come home and farm with them. Farmers wanted to share with each other their struggles and successes in making this happen. Established with seventy-five beginning farmers in our membership, it has now grown to include 1,300 beginning farmers in Iowa and continues to grow each month by about thirty beginners. Now the majority of people involved in the program tell us they are not the children of farmers. They’re new farmers without that rich family background and experience to draw from who are looking to network with other farmers.
        Keep in mind, if there’s no place for beginning farmers, if we don’t support and encourage them to explore their diverse farm business dreams, we will have a stark rural landscape, without a lot of humans in it—just a limited number of families with the large equipment that is necessary to support the production of corn or soybeans. Add in clusters of animal confinement complexes from county to county. So much of Iowa’s cultural identity depends on us creating space for families to continue farming, and this means ensuring the generational transition and conveying knowledge. Even if you don’t farm, think about your favorite recipes or meals or season—our food is very intimately tied to humans on the land, living with natural cycles. Farmers are key part of that. So think about what we could lose if there is no new generation of farmers.

Catherine: What are the top three obstacles to getting started as a farmer?

Luke: The most recent information we have is from a March 2012 survey. As of last year, beginning farmers listed marketing as their top challenge, followed by production issues, financing (access to capital), pricing farm products, and financial recordkeeping.

More Information: Farming's New Faces

Interested in living off the land?

Today's post comes to us from Housekeeping: Knock Out Dirt and Clutter For Good.

As grocery stores continue to raise food prices, more people are turning to their own land to produce food instead of purchasing it at the store.  Whether you want to grow your own herbs, harvest your own fruits or vegetables or raise cattle, there are many ways you can maximize your land as a food source. These 25 blog articles will dig into how you can live off the land.

How to Do It

There’s no way that one blog could give you all of the information that you need to live off the land, but combining these five blog entries can give you some ideas on how to go about starting the adventure.

• Live Off Your Land—Fifteen Steps You Can Take to Get Out of the Cubicle and Onto Self-Reliance
• Infographic: How Much Backyard Do You Need to Live Off the Land?
• The Floyd Eco-Village: Living Off the Land with an Economic Plan
• Tough (and Valuable) Lessons from the Homestead
• Rural Free Delivery: Living Off the Land, Almost

Meat

Hunting isn’t the only way to have meat on your dinner table if you are living off the land.  Many folks choose to raise their own livestock to butcher for food.  A family of four can eat for several different meals from the meat that comes from a whole pig or cow.  If you live by water, you can add fish or other seafood to your diet.  These five blog posts will share some of their insights with you.

• Living Off the Land
• The Year in Oysters
• Living Off the Land
• Abandon the Office: Be a Hunter-Gatherer
• Living Off the Land – And Sea—In Kotzebue

Vegetables

Probably one of the easiest ways to start saving money and living off the land is by growing your own garden.  For instance, one tomato plant will yield about one bushel of tomatoes. These tomatoes will allow you to make and can your own tomato sauce, stew tomatoes and make salsa, in addition to eating them fresh.  Just think of all that you could do if you had more than one plant.  Making your own salsa is a snap when you grow your own onions, jalapenos and cilantro, and you don’t have to step foot into a grocery store.  These five blog posts will give you some ideas for getting started.

• A British Town Relearns How to Live Off the Land [Video]
• Garden Prep [What I’m Doing to Prepare for Spring Gardening in DECEMBER]
• Gardening in November?
• The Progressive Garden—Living Off the Land
• Living Off the Land

Off the Grid

Some people have taken ‘living off the land’ one step further and have decided that they are going to live off the grid as well.  Living off the grid means that you don’t pay for electricity from a company; instead, you create your own by using solar, wind or water power.  Or you could go completely electricity free.  Take a look at these five blog entries to see what others are doing to get off the grid.

• Living Off the Grid, Urban-Homesteading Style, With the Dervaes Family
• 16×9—Off the Grid: Living Off Land Hour from Vancouver
• Living Off the Grid—In a Bus
• Living Off the Grid: Could Decreasing Energy Dependence Ultimately Make Life Easier?  (Video)
• Living Off the Grid

Little House on the Prairie Living

When you were a kid you may have read the Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder or watched the spin-off TV show.  If you did, you may remember how hard life was on the prairie and how the Ingalls family survived by living off the land for the most part.  Read these five blog posts to learn a bit more about living like they did back then.

• It’s ‘Little House on the Prairie’ Up In Here
• The Meteorology of Little House on the Prairie
• In Search of Little House on the Prairie
• The “Historical Pa” (Little House on the Prairie, Controlling Love Etc…)
• Little House on the Prairie and Djibouti

Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

In some of the quiet places, where leaf mold is heavy and old logs decay on the forest floor, lives the world's most savage mammal. It's a ravening little beast seldom seen by man; an irascible, twittering phantom that kills incessantly. Even the weasels and great cats can't match its talent for bloodletting, for each day it must devour its own weight in food or starve.

But the same nature that grants a genius for death always stops short of fatal perfection. This terrible hunter--the shrew--may weigh no more than a dime.

John Madon, Stories from Under the Sky