Art (Factory) Farm

I cant help but think about some of the similarities between the plight of the small farm and the plight of the studio artist. Both have been institutionalized, and isolated from the majority of the masses. I find it funny that museums are these giant building in a selected location, where only the elite attend and actually know what is going on. They carry on a discourse foreign to the masses, and progress, if you can call it that, moves in ways that are non sensical to the rest of us. A vacuum cleaner in a glass case counts as one of the most valuable items a millionaire could have in their home!
Like wise the factory farm is also tucked away in large building where only a few of the elite, if you can call them that, are allowed to enter. There they carry on discourse that also seems like a foreign language, and progress, if you can call it that, is the next way to sell some ridiculous dairy-esque product to the masses. One of the most valuable items could have is a smoothie-dairy-cubie snack!
In both fields the typical consumer has no idea who the person is that is producing the food media, or the art media that is being offered to them. There is little differentiation between products. The franken food looks all the same with blaring lables, and most of the art on the wall looks about the same maybe there is an all purple canvas next to an all blue canvas. Thanks Yves!
The majority of people have never met their artist and never met their farmer. The masses carry a romantic conception of artist working away at their paintings in their Greenwich Village apartment, just like their conception of a farmer is a blond haired milk maid plunking away at a few cows with chickens and pigs running around the farm yard, and a frikin rooster crowing in the morning. yeah right.
Both institutions dictate down to the masses what beautiful is, and also what food will make us beautiful. Our link to the idea of a beautiful human and the foods that are produced to have that beautiful body are dictate by the same conglomerate. Wendell Barry said " our bodies were physically beautiful when they were physically useful." I don't see the use in running on a treadmill like a frikin gerbil all that useful.
The artist use to decide what was beautiful and the farmer use to decide on their own, what made good food. None of this was dictated to either of them. And we as humans had the ability on our own to decided what was beautiful and was good for us.  There is nothing more beautiful than watching your woman decide she is going out before the sun comes up, in a snow storm, with a busted foot, a hammer in one hand, to rip apart a frozen round bale because that is what needed to be done.  Or halter training a calf in the middle of a pasture with summer sun. Beauty has a purpose, and it is for artist and farmers to connect the dots to make a picture any of us would like to look at.

Art that lives on the land

My good friend Joan O'Hanrahan over in Lisdoovarna Ireland teaches at the Burren College of Art. She recently took her students out to draw in the forest. That lit a fire under my ass to say the least. I became inspired thinking about art, land, and everyday life on the farm, and what the function of art has on our rural landscapes. I am pretty sure Picasso said that "art brushes away the dust from everyday life."
The art that is generated on the farm is always sourced from the bi products of any given farm project, or daily activity. The bi products become your medium( bailing twine, cut up fence wire, plastic tubes, scrap wood, old house paint.) Your subject task is really simple, incorporate design into a space that you occupy everyday. Brush away some of the dust. Secondly,  get your art to accomplish something for your farm: A hay manger has a design that enhances it, or a feeding area has its structure enhance by a wire line, the stock tank that has copper tubing emulating a whirlpool. Its function can represent a set of beliefs that govern your farm, your underlying stewardship philosophies.
Symbols are consistently present in this world of work, rest, eat, sleep, work. They are simple.  The time and energy that it takes to conceive of a symbol, and apply it in a given space is minimal. They represent the most fundamental elements of your life that you worship. (flowers, sun, grass, leaves) All images become symbols representing the parts of life and farming that keeps you getting out of bed in the morning, and doing it all again. They are the images that carry through spring, summer cropping, harvest, storage, winter survival, and spring rebirth.

At some point in Art history, artistic objects transformed from an object that you interacted with in your life to an object that was representational of cerebral processing. Art objects became thinking rather than objects.  A subtler point than just utility, and allows farm art to circumnavigates the Art vs. Craft debate. 
Creating art on the landscape has aided in alleviating some of the feelings of contempt that seep into life as a farmer. The feelings that,"some one else should do this" or " I am too high and mighty to be doing lowly task of shoveling shit" Contempt has been a driving force separating people from the act of growing food, and keeping animals. Art is a healer, working at the root of the feelings of contempt that have divorced us from the land.  It helps make us feel that we are absolutely unique in our decision to be connected to the land. There are images and designs all over our door yard and landscape that help to state our uniqueness in the loudest voice possible.

            Lucky for the artisan farmer that people/consumers are deciding to reconnect with land and food. The people and place are taking a front seat ahead of brand, label and ingredient. A farm offers a place and a person. A super market offers brands and competition in a mostly chaotic overstressed environment that has a tendency to beat humans into a dulled down state of consumer compliance.  "Place" and experience are becoming important to consumers because they want to know that the "place" where their food comes from is being cared for. And in a small sense that then, they the consumer, are also contributing to the care of that place. The sense of place is reinforced by the experience that the consumer has at the farm.  The experience is a visual, audio, and best of all the wonderful smells of mowed grass, fresh compost, aerated soils, and running bubbling brooks and sweet cows. Art functions as the most effective catalyst for creating a sensory experience when it is generated by the person/farmer who lives in the most intimate relationship with the land. The consumer gets to share in that intimacy when he/she eats. It is said that eating is one of the most intimate things we do.

      I have dusted off the oil paints, laid my tools in a line, and accessed the materials that are around. Ten acres are going to be the paper, canvas, and piece of clay, metal, ect.... let the games begin.

The Apple Trees

Pruning the apple trees has been my chore for the last three days. One because it needs to be done, two because we like apples, and three a groovy bio-dynamic calendar told me that, according to the stars, these last three days have been advantageous to plants of the fruit realm. The moon seems to be traveling in front of a constellation that correlates to fire element, which enhances fruit growth.
After tackling four trees with my trusty $2.99 bargin bin hand saw, some surfing on line and chatting with people of apple tree knowledge, I think I have learned a thing or two about pruning super over grown, wild apple trees.
1st lesson- open the center of the tree. Easy enough. I charged in there and stared hacking away the dead and broken branches, as well as the "suckers". Suckers are these oprotunistic shoots that usually align themselves vertically. They are no good for fruit because the will bend over and break. Opening the center allows for air and light to get in to the trunk of the tree. I have noticed on some of the trees quite a bit of lichen. Lichen loves shade and water. I remember from my field trips in elementary school that lichen will eventually wear away at rocks. I can't imagine that stuff is really good for trees. So I decided that cutting away horizontal branches that entangle and compete with each other is a really good thing. It allows for more sunlight to get in and fry-a-late the lichen.
2nd lesson.- Keep the horizontal branches, and the branches that are angled 15 degrees outward. Apparently these will hold the fruit the best. I cut away the branches headed down. More than likely these branches will have fruit that will weigh down and hit the ground. It is the trees way of dropping its fruit and spreading itself. Interesting creatures these apple trees.

3nd lesson- Only cut 1/3 of  your tree away. I devised a rule of thumb; make three big cuts, and if there is another large cut that can be made, it can always be done next year. How to decide the "big cuts" is another matter. I used some of the knowledge from 1st lesson. "Open the center, cut away suckers." By looking at the tree it is pretty easy to tell which large branches were at one time in their life a "sucker" that just matured.  They make prime candidates for a "big cut".  Even better if you can find a "big sucker" that is "shooting vertical" or is "horizontally entangled" - let er frikin have it!
     After spending five years in art school drawing nude women, I couldn't help but notice that apple trees have their own figure gesture. So I made up another little mantra to follow: Decide where the gesture and life force is going, and decide where you want the life force gesture to go,  and anything that is headed in the other direction can be lopped off. 
There are plenty of wild apple trees out there, I am sure anyone can find one, prune it up, and have themselves a little one tree orchard. That is the news from Symphony Farm where the basil is germinated, the hands are scratched up from pruning trees, and the chores are usually finished.

The 2010 Moron awards go to...

The Symphony Farm moron award recognizes outstanding acts of the goonish nature. The award is given to the nominee who best exemplifies the best of intentions, yet lacks any sort of pre meditation, intelligent thought, rationale, logic, common sense, or any glimmer of an IQ. 

This month the Academy would like to nominate two acts that stand out in our minds.

The First nomination is: Jonathan Falby!!!! For his well intentioned method for dealing with a frozen round bale. Rather than being patient and breaking down the bale by hand; Or being smart and getting a neighbor to move it with a tractor; Or logical and setting up some bomber fence, so the cows wont get out while eating the bale, and they can walk to the bale. No, No.....our man decided in to jump in his pick up and try to dismantle the bale by backing into it.  With this brilliant method Mr. Falby got his truck stuck!!! Wedged up on the bale and unable to get the truck off (even in 4wd) until the cows ate the hay our from underneath it!! "Id jus t'oughd id smass id wid duh bumpah!"

The Academy would also like to nominate Meaghan Kane for her brilliant attempts for dealing with escaped cows from the prior nominees crappy dumb dumb wire fence job! Only on the day when the farmer with two functional legs leaves town for the day; Only on this day when Miss Kane is freshly out of surgery for a fractured foot; Only on this day will the cows break out!!! Rather than being logical, and realizing the cows will not cross the brook bridge and get to the road. Or being intelligent and realizing there is no other feed out there and that the cows will eventually come back to where the round bale is. Or being smart and calling any friend with two good legs. No No....she decides that she is going to go out there with a busted  foot on crutches, with a bag of cat food to mimic cow grain. However, on her way from retrieving the cat food is some how bails off of the upstairs railing and smashes all over the down stairs floor!!!! " I jus t'ought I'd git em to come fur some cat fuud!!"

And the winner of the Febuary 2010 Moron award is...................

Febuary Milk

Dear All Raw Milk Fans,

Just a reminder that next week is the beginning of February and pre-payments for milk are due. The cows are on their way to their new home today. Lord bless them and keep them safe. The moving truck is on its way this weekend, and we are moving into the house. That is the news from symphony farm where all the farmers rule at pub trivia, the animals are 100% pregnant, and all the children are a glimmer in our eye!

Beef Shares Explanandum

For people who are new to beef shares, this is your crash course. Essentially a beef share is an animal sales transaction. Customers are buying a live animal off of us( the farmers). Animals can be rather expensive, hard to handle and not everyone is cut out for raising their own food, nor does everyone have land and acreage to do it. We sell a live animal certificate of ownership to four parties, constituting four shares. We (the farmers) take the money and manage the grazing, and care of the animal.  The owners of the animals are able to decide when and how to have their animal processed. Control over the timing of slaughter, the slaughter environment and meat custom cutting creates the highest possible quality product for the owners. It allows the owners to specify cuts they would like to receive, and access to all the products a cows has to offer: organ meats, bones, tails ect..
 There is an economic benefit for the farmer. Owners are asked to place deposits on animals early in the season to help cover the cost of operating. This is a wonderful injection of money into the cash flow of the farm, especially in the spring when the farm isn't grossing a whole lot of sales. Farmer has just shilled out an entire winters worth of feed, which ain't cheep, and gardens are not turning off product!The deposits are a welcome site.

     Pre-payment also allows farmer to purchase what is referred to as feeder stock for the owners. These are animals that are raised to a year in age and will be ready to slaughter with in eight months. Purchasing feeder stock in the spring alleviates the need to produce winter feed for an entire herd of cows. Summer time is spent focusing on grazing,  not on hay making and mechanical harvest. Eliminating winter feed as an expense drops the total gross expenses, and therefore drops the overall cost. This allows us to make a healthy profit per head, and provide excellent quality product, and charge reasonable price for the owners. In early fall, the animals are usually at optimum weight and they can be harvested and distributed to the owners. After the slaughter cutting and wrapping, we charge a shipping and handling fee to the owners and collect the rest of the value of the animal. Owners get product that has been running around all summer, eating as much grass as that little bovine could, breathing fresh air, fertilizing the earth, sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere, and becoming juicy steaks, roast, and burger. We welcome the participation of making "Food: by the farmer, for the people"

The Tour through Milking.

I thought it would be nice to provide this online tour of milking and give people better idea with what goes on with the cows at milking time.
     As you can see in the provided photos we dip our cows teats with a cleaning and sanitizing solution. The solution is a hydrogen peroxide based product available from any commercial dairy supplier. The solution leaves little residue and eliminates any bacteria on the milking teat itself.
The second step uses an electric vacuum driven stainless steel milking pail to do the milking for us! This comes complete with a machine or claw that is attached to the teats by suction. Back in the day of our great grandparents, farmers milked with open pails by hand. This allowed for flakes of manure, hair, dirt, hay or anything else from the milking environment to get into the milk. The closed systems provide us with an easy way to make clean milk. When the machine is removed we dip the teats again with the sanitizing solution to insure no bacteria invade the teats post milking.
     After the milking is complete we take it outside and run it through a filter strainer. This filters out any micro particles in the milk. Finally, the stainless steel caldron is pack in snow and ice to facilitate crash cooling, dropping the milk to below 40 degrees with in the hour. Prior to industrial cooling, freon and bulk tanks, our great grandparents cooled the milk with clean spring water that was piped into a small house with a concrete trough.
     We then pack up all the equipment and head to Gary's milk house to wash and sanitize all the equipment with water that approaches 200 degrees, and some good old fashioned FS 100 chlorox sanitizer.

Washington Fruition

Meg and I sat shell shocked on the futon in the little apartment in Montpelier. Our brains felt like stale bread being thwacked on a counter top. Both of our eye carried about as much expression as tea platters. The norm of living for the last six months has been non commitment to any plan. Plans, even the rational ones, were as dependable as leaky pipes. They held no water!

Plans that resembled concrete walls were busted apart by excavators of the universe, or gods hand. Throwing it all to the wind is an understatement. We threw it all into a hurricane. We threw it into a tornado. We kept hoping the storm would let up. We kept thinking we saw bright spots. Eventually the storm became the norm and we accepted rain falling straight down as a positive alternative to sideways rain.

Then the storm stopped. We were so accustom to the rain, thunder and lightning that calm skies seemed a bit uncomfortable. We have waited for the storm to start back up. We have been peering out from under out make shift shelter of impermanence, unsure if the sun might actually harm us. As the sun heats up our skin of opportunity we start to feel good, even excited. Our lens of reality has come into focus. Not a bad picture at all! In the bible Job was repaid two fold for his faithfulness to god in the face of suffering. I sure hope the lord counts this spring as payday friday, cause we are ready to clean ourselves up, head to town and party like rock star farmers.

Home in Tunbridge

I took these photos this morning, December 1st, 2009. The barn and its insides are really a very cool spot. For those of you who are looking at the blog and drinking the milk, 

this will give you an idea where the cows are living and where the milk is coming from. Meg and I are going to work together to create a tour through milking on the blog. This will give you a way to visit the farm on line and see how your milk is made. Until then the girls are munching away on their second cut provided by Gary, and are getting to be oh so happy critters!!

Away again...Farmers Passport

For the second time in two weeks I have been able to leave the farm and go to another state. For most people it isn't a big deal to get in the car and drive places other than where they live. For farmers it can be like embarking on a trip. One person can become so en grained into a "place" that leaving it for any period of time can be a lot like a voyage to another country. The every day language of getting up, making your coffee and having your morning routine is foreign, and resorting to hand gestures, smiles and facial expression gets you what you need in this foreign place. A sense of culture shock can envelope farmer.
Farmer can attain a passport to this other land by getting others to understand his imprint on "place". The permission to cross boarders is only granted to those who have some one else to step in and carry the farm. Some one who understand the animals, the equipment, and the care giving that is required. Unlike normal passports there is no application and six week waiting period. The process of getting a passport to leave the farm is contingent upon a community of people that are willing and still posses the knowledge and skill to care for animals and farm. A passport allocation is dependent upon farmer's economic health. Farmer needs to be capable of sufficent reimbursment to a community member for covering the chores.
A short while back in history these passports were far more prevalent. Many community members carried with them the skill set to care for animals and land. The divorce of a significant number of community members from land, place and food has drastically reduced the allocation of farmers passports. Mechanical AG finalized the divorce papers reducing the percentage of people involved in agriculture to 2%. As we march away from the date that those papers where signed, and start to recognize and process the trama that has insued, no part of our rural farming communities are healed up. In fact most farmers are pissed off, hurt and angry. The absence of granting trips away from the farm has transformed farm from "place in the world" to imprisonment without parole. Policy can change. Culture can heal. Farmer can enjoy his passport and sleep in till 7 am.

The News From Symphony Farm

Its November 19th, 2009 and the cows have been in Tunbridge, about a week and a half. A good feeling. The commute back and forth is pretty mellow, and I enjoy it. Meg and I have been car pooling. We are putting our best efforts forward in a temporary situation to make top quality milk, and operate with in the guide lines of the Unpasteurized(Raw)Milk Law. We have been able to get a vacuum and bucket milking system up and running. I just filtered milk through one of the old style calendar filter set ups this 'morning. It worked really well. I found a supply of half gallon ball jars. Meg has gone and laminated our label. I have looked into getting a test of our milk to determine its quality. 

Just last week we welcomed Ben on board.  Super good guy who has been able to pick up the milking skill in a short period of time. We are going to go away for the weekend, and there is somebody who is going to fill in. As those of you who have been familiar with previous states of the farm, this is huge! From the get go we have a relief milker. 

I made the paper and it wasn't for the police reports! It was for getting involved with the after school program pottery. So that coming up in the future. 

The cows are just fine. Siobhan and Trasa are doing well and growing well. The barn cleaner runs like a champ. Why people use liquid systems I do not know. 

For the most part, other than a few freak outs here and there, and a few trips to Covi land and back, things are well.

Thats the news from Symphony Farm, where all the women are beautiful, the men are emotionally stable, and the children have yet to be born

Having a Good Day?

Are you better off at the end of the day than at the beginning? A quality definition of what counts as a good day farming. The converse definition of a bad day is also true; being worse off at the end of the day than when you started the day. 

In the last week I have had the pleasure of getting to know a farmer down in the Tunbridge area. Tinkering with the little bucket milker which now constitutes my whole milking system, lead to an awful feeling that I may end up worse off at the end of the day. Started with a working pail milker, and with all the effort to make it better, found myself at the end of the day with no pail milker at all!!

A bad day was just about to happen. I drew the last straw and pulled the entire mechanism apart, only to find a small over looked detail. I righted the wrong, plugged in the milker and presto. Awesome pulsation and a better working system! I drove up the road to return tools, and parts to Gary. The sun was low and I saw Gary at the shop. 

"How did you make out?" 

"I suppose I'm better of at the end of the day than at the beginning."

"I  guess that is all you can ask for some times."

Love the small victories in the is little trade called dairy farming. 

Fourth Barn...

I am meeting up with Teddy Yandow today to truck cows from Fairfield to Tumbridge. The fourth barn I have been in. Mountains of fear reverberate the nagging question; "what will make this situation any different?" The best answer I have to the fear is ; "I am not trying the same thing for the fourth time and expecting different results, so back off!" 

I guess this effort counts as the first time I have tried keeping cows with no expectations: I don't expect to gross eighty grand, I don't expect the cows to be my main source of income, I don't expect to become a grazing super star, or an Organic Valley poster child. The expectations have burnt themselves like an over heated radiator. It forces a guy to pour on some antifreeze of acceptance, indifference, and objectivity.  Antifreeze of the intellectual and spiritual type keeps things cool and running smoothly. It allows a guy to keep his eye on his temperature gauge. It allows a guy the choice to pull over, add some more antifreeze, check the belts or limp into the fix it shop. It allows a guy to scrap the truck all together and get a new one if he wants. Junk grave yards of ideas and efforts are really sweet places to visit. The best part is the grave yards never move location they stay at the same address in our memories of the past.  You never have to go looking for a new Junk Grave yard of the future, they don't exist yet.

The road from then until now...

The road from then to now constitutes its own novel. The characters that grace the story are as rich in flavor as the fresh picked produce and slow cooked rib roast. The places that occupy space on the road from then to now went through a process of envisioning, living, dying and rebirth. Each place had its own set of dreams and grand visions. Much like blank canvases or lumps of clay and an artist brain that wishes to sculpt, paint and mold his or her ideas; only this was land and communities, life and living that were the ideas, and plants animals and trees that were the medium. The road from then till now deserves a lot of thought reflection, and each of its stories to be told and shared. Now there is a space to do it. I hope all who have watch and listened will now enjoy the reading

Jonathan

Facebook, check. Twitter, check. Blogspot, here we go....

So Jonathan has mastered Facebook...and we're on our way to Twitterland, but for those of you that aren't so connected to the "I want to know what you're doing every second" world, we have made a blog.  We hope to share the trials and tribulations as we move forward in creating our own farm business.  We'll keep you posted on products we hope to have available soon -- raw milk, grass-fed beef and a boatload of savory garden products!

Jonathan will be trekking the cows from Fairfield to Tunbridge tomorrow as we wait to see if the Washington house/barn becomes a lease to own reality.  Cross them fingers.....

Meg