If I had to come up with only one reason why I grow a garden it would probably be - eating sweet corn.  It's hard to beat the taste of fresh sweet corn from the garden, slathered in butter and salt.  'Bout the only way to beat it is to add a few burgers from the grille, homemade potato salad and garden tea.  Yes, nothing says "Summer" like fresh from the garden sweet corn.  Sorry to say but you'll most likely never be invited for supper when sweet corn is on the menu.  Not because we want it all for ourselves (well, ok, its kinda that too) but because its one of those meals where you don't want anyone but family watching you eat it because its so messy to eat.  If you were here, you would most likely see stray kernels in my mustache and butter running down my hands.  Not exactly a sight for company - thats why I never order it when I go to a restaurant, that and the fact that restaurant corn is usually old, hard and tasteless.  
     The only thing better than homegrown corn in the summer is homegrown corn in the winter.  And thats where Marla comes in.  I realized a long time ago that all my labor around the farm and in the garden isn't much good without Marla working her kitchen magic.  (She would say, "there's no magic to it, just a lot of hard work".)  While this is very true, its magic to me because about the only things I can do in the kitchen are make a sandwich, fry up some eggs, or heat up some leftovers in the microwave.  Other than that I'm heading for the local deli to buy a cheesesteak.  

     Obviously, we start by picking the corn from the garden.  We like to be out there by around 5:30 am.  We pick and shuck all at the same time so the corn leaves the garden without it's husks.  Next, Marla cleans the silk off and does a thorough cleaning with cold, running water.  While she is doing that the Coleman stove has been set up on the porch and lit.  The stainless steel stock pot is filled with water for it to boil.  After a few minutes in the boiling water it is then placed directly in cold water to chill.  

     Once the ears are chilled by the cold water Marla begins the work of running the ears over the "corn cutter" to remove the kernels from the cob.  (Here's where you learn to keep you fingers out of where they don't belong!)   This is usually Marla's job but I helped with this part a little bit this year.  And I didn't even need a bandaid when I was done!  

     Once the kernels have been removed from the cob it is time to bag and label "the good stuff".  (Obviously this picture was taken last summer.)  To be honest, this years crop was very disappointing.  We only got about 100 ears (the deer put a hurtin' on the crop this year) and many of those were quite small.  A few weeks later we bought 10 dozen (120 ears) at a farm stand in Lancaster  county and put them up too.  All told, we put up 37 quart size bags of corn in the freezer to hold us over until next summer.  Every time Marla pulls a bag of corn out of the freezer for dinner this winter I'll think about God's provision for us from the garden and "doin' corn" together.  

     The above picture is not my garden sweet corn but a field of "field corn" about 20 feet from where I park my van for work everyday.   One day at lunch time I wondered out there to look at the corn.  I was surprised to see many of the stalks had two big ears on each stalk and this one I took a picture of had the makings of a third ear (although not very well formed) on it.  Yes, corn is an amazingly productive crop especially since scientists have figured out how to make it a hybrid, and fertilize the heck out of it.  Like Wendell Berry say's, "everybody knows that American agriculture is fantastically productive, what most people don't know is that is also fantastically expensive".  While corn is a wonderful, God-given crop for the benefit of man and beast, it has probably been the cause of more soil erosion than any other crop.  Actually, the corn itself is not the problem, the problem is the misuse of corn and the mismanagement of farmland for the sake of greater and greater profit.  

     Besides Wendell Berry, my other favorite agrarian writer is Gene Logsdon.    Mr. Logsdon in from central Ohio, on the eastern edge of the "corn belt".  He grew up on a farm, has been a farm journalist for many years and an actual farmer for almost 30 years, so he knows what he's talking about when he talks and writes about farming.   In his book, "The Contrary Farmer" (he uses the word "contrary" to mean not ornery or obstinate but one who goes against   the "conventional/industrial agricultural paradigm") is a chapter entitled "King Corn".  He starts this chapter with the following two paragraphs:

     "The cultivation of maize has probably sent more soil down the Mississippi River in the last century than natural erosion did in the preceding twenty.  Clever compilers of statistics say that for every bushel of corn produced, five bushels of soil wash into the lowlands, ditches and streams or blow into the next county.  The townships of the midwest spend millions of dollars annually to clean out the dirt that oozes into roadside ditches, and this is the least of the erosion cost that the earth must bear.  Much of the soil is lost from farms owned by wealthy people, who rent their land to farmers who produce surplus corn on it, subsidized by taxpayers.  Perhaps we are quite demented; I see no other suitable explanation."
     "I know a farmer rich enough to have retired years ago, who instead filled every building on his several farms with corn while he waited fruitlessly for a year when prices would go up high enough to make a killing on sales.  When he ran out of other space, he knocked a hole in the roof of an abandoned country school on his property and filled this, too.  That scene, plus one other, of a hog standing in the doorway of what had once been a pretty  country church, say more about the decline of rural life than anything I could write."

    Later in the chapter he offers the following thought-provoking paragraphs:

     "Look at what we have done with our "labor-saving" technology.  Consider for example a 160-acre field of corn.  Forty years ago, this field was a whole farm, with house and barns and animals and many kinds of crops and people in the fields (and in and around the homestead).  The buildings, woodlot and fences have now been bulldozed away, the animals transferred to confinement factories where they must be heavily medicated to prevent disease.  The people have gone away too, most to the boredom of the assembly line or the hopelessness of no steady job at all.  In the spring, a lone man, often hired at minimum wages, jockeys monster equipment over the 160 acres and in a couple of days plants the whole parcel.  Before or after, a custom sprayer applies poisons.  All summer the field is empty of activity except for an occasional Indian artifact hunter (me) and the deer.  Again in the fall monster harvesters and semi-trucks or grain wagons appear on the field, causing terrible compaction if the soil is wet, and whisk, whisk, whisk, the corn is gone.  One such "farmer" I know, groggy with lack of sleep after forcing himself to keep his $100,000 harvester going into the night, accidentally ran over and killed his hired man, who had crawled under the machine to check a bearing.
     Meanwhile the people who might have harvested that corn with communal, physical labor, get their exercise jogging along the road, risking being run over, radios plugged into their ears in an effort to alleviated their painful, panting boredom.
     Compare that picture to a scene I recently observed.  I had gone into a cornfield owned by an Amish farmer to find out from the owner when he would have time to press and boil down my sorghum molasses.  Half of the field had already been cut with binder and horses, and a group of men and boys were moving across the field, setting up the bundles strewn on the ground into shocks.  I approached them through the standing corn and they could not see me.  I was in the situation all writers yearn for: I was invisible.  Were these farmers bent over in pain and boredom at their "backbreaking, tedious" work?  No way.  They were jabbering away in German to the tune of almost continuous laughter while the boys wrestled and played tag between the shocks.  They were having a party, working hard!" 

     Yes, corn is a wonderful, God-given blessing.  But when it, (like many other things in this life) is misused, abused and exploited for economic gain it begins to loose its beauty and benefit to mankind.   May God help us all, no matter how big or small our "farm", to be faithful caretakers of all that He has entrusted to us.  The health and well-being of our children and grandchildren depend on how we care for our land today.  

Blessings to you my friend,

Todd

For many years I have subscribed to a periodical called "Small Farmer's Journal".  It is a magazine that encourages and champions the cause of small, independent, diversified family farms.  The story I would like to relate to you in this blog is a part of the editorial of the Fall 2012 issue.  As far as I know, the story is true and factual.  I believe Great Uncle Ephriam was the actual great uncle of SFJ editor Lynn Miller.  (And Great Uncle Ephraim reminds me so very much of my own grandfather, "Pappy")

He held close, every day, the layers of his farm - the livestock, each species; the fields at their readiness  or usefulness or at the fallow; the ripenings, the remainders, the margins, the routings, the seeds, the pollen races, the droppings, the absorbent chaff, the everything of his, this farm world.  Close as it all was to him it required and earned his attention.  He could tell you what piece of that field had a shallower top soil, he could tell you the history of the grandmother of that Guernsey heifer and how it might influence the coming partition, he could predict the bloom of different crops and talk of how the bees affected it all passing one to the other, he did speak of this strain of legume seed he had carefully gathered and replanted for a quarter of a century, and he could wax poetic about plowing.  He loved to plow, loved the slicing of the earth, the flip, the crumbling curving wave, the evidence it allowed him.  He never tired of "working" his soil and having it work for him.

Great Uncle Ephraim farmed his whole life in Minnesota.  His time spanned nine plus decades from the post-civil war years forward.  He was successful and solid.  He believed to his core that he know why he was successful, it was because he was a good farmer who trusted the evidence of his years and fields and cows.  When America spawned its golden years of farming, from 1900 to 1920, Ephraim was there to absorb i and apply.  Most of his latter years were spent alone with his fields and his Guernseys.  Those pre-chemical-warfare years of farming were rich in the profitable theories and practices of a many-layered and multi-tiered agriculture.  Crop rotations, rotational grazing, and an applied respect for the finer moments of seasonal bio-rythmns made of his place an ever changing jewel of diversity.   His was a complex approach, lacing different aspects together - the livestock were allowed and encouraged to compliment crops, cropping and soil management while the harvest of feeds always took into consideration the other components be they birthing, breeding, weather, or overall timing.

For the intricate overlapping crop rotation cycles he employed, cycles that could run to six years, he designed his field sizes to advantage thinking in terms of "lands" rather than fields and keeping those "lands" at 4 to 10 acres maximum.  Of his quarter section thirty acres were in woods and farmstead, the remaining were split in changing mastic between pasture and crop land.  He enjoyed giving pieces of his land three to four year holidays as pasture as much as he enjoyed plowing those up to bring them back into cropping rotation. Great Uncle Ephraim loved to plow.  In fact he would argue fiercely that what doused farmer to fail was lack of regard for the plow and plowing.  In his last years he got wind of arguments against plowing, arguments which pointed to the moldboard as the thing which caused the great dustbowl.  Those arguments angered and confused him, he didn't understand any of it and was quick to say "I don't know what I don't know, but here farming is working the land and working with the land".  For him, if you were to farm in the hill country of Minnesota you had better learn to love the plow.  Great Uncle Ephraim was a fierce plowman.

Great Uncle Ephraim loved his Guernseys.  They were his ladies.  The herd dwindled as he aged but still, in his widower nineties, he never failed to milk the half dozen cows.  The ritual reminded him of his entire farming history and kept him alive.  His grandchildren had no interest in the farm or farming except that the land had come to be worth a great deal of money.  Every morning, after milking, Ephraim would drive the short distance to town and have coffee and eggs with an old friend and complain that now one was interested in what he knew.  

As the family legend goes, Ephraim's grandchildren became more and more concerned for his comfort and safety.  The couldn't understand how he at 90 plus years old could safely do the farm work and take care of the domestic duties himself.  On day, on a visit, they found him out in the field working while the stove was accidently left on in the house.  A family meeting resulted in the decision to move Ephraim, against his will, to a rest home.  They had to secure a court order because he was completely against it.  He argued, "who will take care of the cows?"  They promised him the cows would be taken care of.  He still resisted up until the orderlies arrived with the ambulance to forcibly take him away.  Two days later, at the rest home, Ephraim's breakfast buddy arrived for a visit and told of how the Guernseys had been hauled to the stockyard and sold for hamburger.  The very next day 95 year old Ephriam died of unknown causes.

Epilogue:  The family sold the farm and all the tools and divided the money, convinced that they had done the right thing.  The new owners of the farm ripped out the fences, bulldozed the house and barns and added the 160 acres to their 1,100 adjoining acres of corn and soybeans.

And there you have it in a nutshell folks; how American agriculture went from a  chosen way of life, from an art and a craft to the oversimplified industrial model of corn and soybeans.  Why did it happen?  Because we all, as a society, no longer value the way of life and work of the Uncle Ephraim's of this world.  And because we, as a society, see more value in the dollar amount of the farm land than we do in the farmer and the farm family.  We think that milking six cows, or raising a small flock of sheep, or milking a small herd of goats, or having a small orchard or growing a small garden or... is really not that important, really not that valuable or significant.  So we allow politicians and unelected officials to make laws, rules, regulations etc that encourage the systematic elimination of the likes of Uncle Ephraim.  

I count it a privilege to be able to stand with the Uncle Ephraim's of this world to say that what they are doing is good and valuable and important and NEEDED!!
Who would you rather buy your milk from?  Uncle Ephraim or some corporate conglomerate that milks 10,000 cows?  Where would you rather buy your beef from?  A farm down the road that raises a dozen black angus steers every year or from a huge feedlot out west where you know that the animal stood at a feed trough in knee high poop for the last 6 months of it's life?  Who would you rather buy your eggs from?  A farmer on the north side of your town that has 50 free ranging hens or a corporate farm that puts 50,000 birds in one house, knowing those chickens will never see the light of day or a green blade of grass for its entire life?  I rest my case.  

I salute the Uncle Ephraim's (and Pappy's) of this world.  Keep it up!!   We need you more than ever!!

Now go buy a dozen eggs and some vegetables directly from a farm! ! !

Blessings to you my friends!

Todd

Chicken butchering day was Sat. July 19.  The day starts very early - I go out to catch and crate them up while it is still dark.  The main reason for this is that chickens are much easier to catch when it is dark (I guess they are still half asleep).  If I wait til broad daylight I'll have total mayhem on my hands.  As it is I have a little trouble catching the last two.  All told, I have 22 chickens in four crates.  I head back up to the house to wash up a little, grab a quick bowl of cereal and then Marla and I are on our way to Lancaster County by 7:15 where we have a butcher awaiting us.  We pull in the farm yard a little before 8:00 am.  I've never met the butcher before so introductions are the first order of business.  Merlin is in his early 20's I'm guessing.  He is not Amish but I suspect Old Order Mennonite.  The butchering will take place outdoors (thankfully its not raining or to hot) in the yard between the main house and the barn.  It doesn't take long for other helpers to begin appearing.  There is to many for formal introductions all around so we just say "hello" and move about the task at hand.  As we continue working we find out who everyone is; all the helpers are Merlin's siblings.  There are nine children; three boys and six girls.  All help with the butchering except two.  The middle boy is away taking his "hunter safety course" and the youngest girl is to little to help so she just holds cute puppies all morning.

Before I go any further I will warn you that some of the pictures are a bit graphic.  If you would rather not view them I understand.  The reason I am showing them is that I believe way to many Americans are to far removed from the growing, raising and processing of the food they consume everyday.  The cold, hard fact is that plants and animals must die in order for us to live.  It's not pretty but it's a necessary part of everyday life.  While we should not really "like" killing things we need not feel shame or guilt in doing it properly.  It's the way God ordered His created world.  "Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant."  Genesis 9:3  So, if you want to continue - here we go...

  

The first step is to place the chicken upside down in the cones.  A small incision is made in the neck area and the blood begins to slowly drain from their body.  This allows the heart to keep beating and pump as much blood as possible out of the chicken.  The chicken barely feels anything and they appear to just slowly fall asleep.  It takes about 4 or 5 minutes for them to expire.  

Once the chicken is dead it is held by the feet and dipped in a kettle of hot (but not boiling) water (approx. 150 degrees) for a few minutes.  The purpose of this step is to loosen the feathers to make them much easier to pluck.

After being dipped in the hot water the feathers are loosened up and they are then placed in this ingenious homemade chicken plucker.  The plucker looks like a 55 gallon drum cut in half.  The side walls contain a myriad of black, hard rubber "fingers".  The bottom looks the same but the big difference is that the bottom fingers spin at a fairly high rate of speed.   The spinning action jostles the two birds around significantly and in about 20 seconds the birds have completely lost all their feathers.  

Once out of the plucker the actual butchering begins.  Merlin and his assistant (me) have been the main players up to this point but now the girls take over.  Each weilding a sharp knife, they go to work.  At this point Marla joins in.  She is a veteran chicken butcherer.  She and her sisters grew up butchering chickens on their farm in Ohio.   In fact, her Mom always said to all her daughters (all 6 of them) "you're not ready to get married until you can bake a pie and cut up a chicken".  Now thats an agrarian upbringing!!  Kudos to my in-laws, Henry and Anna, for teaching their daughters these and many other important domestic skills.  At least once a year Marla's mother, Anna, would take all the girls to the family chicken butchering event.  Here, all Anna's sisters and their daughters gathered together to help each other butcher chickens.  This was a combination of a work party and social event.  The old agrarian proverb of "many hands make light work" certainly applied to this situation.  And not only did it make the work "lighter" but it made it more enjoyable.  Butchering chickens is not a particularly enjoyable job so I'm sure gathering with aunts and cousins, telling stories, laughing, catching up on family and community news etc. helped to make an unpleasant task more tolerable.  This type of family/community cooperation used to be common on the farm; now it is practically nonexistent.  I guess it's not surprising though since small family farms and farm communities are also almost nonexistent. And it is our loss.


An interesting observation:  while Merlin wears almost knee high boots, all the girls walk around bare-footed.  But I'm not surprised; I never take my shoes/boots off outside.  Marla does occasionally.  It takes her back to her childhood when she hardly wore shoes all summer.

 

In a little over an hour, we leave with three coolers full of chicken.

We are home by about 9:45 am.  Chickens are gone over one more time, wrapped, dated and put in the freezer.  A little clean up and all is done by about 10:45  Not bad; for a mornings work we have chicken for a year!  

After a little accounting I figure our chicken costs us $1.70 per lb.  That includes buying the chicks, shipping (which was outrageous), buying feed and paying the butcher.  Not real cheap - but if you compare it to the organic/pastured chicken you buy at the store it is probably significantly cheaper.  

 

Just a little reminder to please keep praying for the Marine.  Even though things are suppose to be winding down in Afghanistan he continues to be in harms way on a regular basis.  Thanks for praying for him!!   SEMPER FI

Hope you are having a good summer and thanks again for stopping by the Lil Bitty Farm blog.

Todd