A Different Perspective--Rebanks

 James Rebanks is a skilled writer whose book I enjoyed.  He's got a new book for sale, already released in the UK and now in the US on August 3.

I haven't read the new book, but anticipate I will, likely from the library. Civil Eats has an excerpt from it, describing his visit to Wendell Berry in Kentucky and to Iowa.

While he calls Iowa farmers the "best farmers that ever lived", he doesn't like our production agriculture, mourning the transition we've made over the last 60 years or so.

I agree with him there have been big tradeoffs, but I'm not as negative as he is about current agriculture.  I don't know how well his sheep farm could support his family without, I'm guessing, significant support from his writing.  

But he's worth reading. 

Boundaries Are Important, as Are Perspectives

From the Foothill Agrarian blog:

"From a predation perspective, our lambing season comes at a time when the coyotes and mountain lions don’t have many dietary options. From a dog’s perspective, lambing season offers all sorts of gastronomic and maternal delights. Our dogs love to clean up afterbirth! We’ve had young female dogs that decided they should care for newborn lambs - their maternal instincts drive them to steal lambs from the ewes. Both predilections can create problems. Ideally, we need a dog that is attentive but respectful of lambing ewes. We need a dog that gives a ewe her space while lambing, but that keeps the predators at bay."

A Problem of the Small Diverse Farmer

One of the boasts of a farmer is she is a jack [jill?] of all trades.I've seen this a number of times over the years; even used it myself in writing about my father.  It's true enough: being a successful farmer requires a broad spectrum of skills. What's often not considered though is the difficulty a small diverse farmer has.  This thought was triggered by this post on learning to be a stockman.  It's from a blog I just discovered, the Foothill Agrarian blog (mostly sheep), a farmer in California.

He's relatively specialized, compared to some.  The accumulation of knowledge from academic research and the more efficient sharing of knowledge means there's more and more to learn.  It's one of the ways in which the market economy leads to greater specialization.  Not only can a larger more specialized operation cut costs, but the operator can learn more and put it to use more effectively.

There are still people like Walt Jeffries of Sugar Mountain Farm who are able to combine many skills and out-compete the rest.