A Real Farm

Our effort to bring animals to our vegetable farm is going fantastic. Our worthy intention is not only to bring back endangered heritage breed animals, but to integrate animal and vegetable farming. They go hand in hand. It wasn’t’ so long ago that every farm was this way; pigs, chickens, eggs, veggies, a milk cow~ A Real Farm. Farming with animals brings nutrients to the soil, feeds animals their natural feed, making healthy animals, fertile soil & successful farmer. It is a closed holistic model. It was only in the early 1900’s, with industrialization, that  money became the real issue and it seemed to developers that growing a  mono-crop or keeping mono animal (like growing just lettuce, or raising just cattle)  was the answer for optimal capital gains. Well, this idea has brought very serious disease, death, animal abuse & misuse, loss of topsoil, unhealthy plants & animals in general, unhappy farmers, & devastation to our beautiful planet; imagine 2,400 pigs on a half acre, acre after acre. It would be comparable to having the same #’s with people. The cost is huge and the practices are not sustainable. It has been said, ‘there is no such thing as cheap food.’ The cost is real and comes from somewhere. Do you know that many commercial grain growers are given payment, subsidized, by the government every year to help them cover the costs of genetically modified or at least treated seed from giant corporations, for the pesticide and herbicide (from same or similar corporation) use for these crops, for fuel and for very expensive machinery. Then, the large corporation that sold the heavily treated/manipulated seeds to the farmer, buys back the crop at a cheap rate. And the government subsidizes the farmer for this corporate behavior and encouragement.

I say, let’s pay for the REAL GOODs, buy what is local, buy from real farms, support local economies, pay what a product is worth. Remember, it does get paid for somewhere.

Let’s weed our gardens together, help a neighbor plant tomatoes, quilt babies blankies, put up peaches for winter, invite friends over and gather around the fire. Let’s get together and share what is beautiful.