Terra Madre.. Why a donate button?

In my last post, I spoke of Beth's impending trip to Terra Madre and included a "Donate Now" PayPal button to help raise some money to defray some of the costs of the trip.

Some readers may ask "Why ask for money?" "It's your choice to go, shouldn't you pay for it?" Indeed, these are questions that Beth wrestled with in making the decision on whether or not to go to Terra Madre. The fact that Slow Food Chicago is already footing a good part of the bill made Beth hesitate to pass the hat herself.

But... the funds from Slow Food Chicago exist because of their fundraising. They raise money to send local food leaders to Terra Madre because it is important that their community is represented by articulate, knowledgeable, and passionate food producers that understand the issues of our region, AND because those leaders will use what they learn in Italy to further the Slow Food cause when they get home. Beth is such a leader...and why she was chosen as a delegate.

Beth will represent the Slow Food community at Terra Madre.  She will, also, represent the Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm community. Although there are definitely intersections of the two, we decided it was appropriate to allow the CVSF community to be able to support Beth's efforts as well. After all, isn't that what our agriculture is all about?

Terra Madre Redux

Okay... So back in the spring Beth and I each applied to be delegates to Slow Food's biennial conference in Torino, Italy. Beth was selected as an alternate - I unfortunately didn't make the cut at all.

Beth viewed her "alternate" status as a pretty firm "no" as who would give up a trip to northern Italy? As the busyness of spring and summer on the farm and at the farmers market and at soccer practices and various points in between, we pretty much forgot about Terra Madre.

Well.......

.... about a month ago, Beth received word that spaces for alternates had opened up, and we had to make a decision about whether or not she would take one and go.

For me it was a no-brainer, "You're going!"

Beth went back and forth for about 24 hours weighing the pros and cons of going. With overwhelming support of family, friends, and farming colleagues the pros soon outweighed the cons - by a long shot.

Never the less, learning about an international trip with just 8 weeks notice adds some logistical and scheduling challenges -farm chores still need to get done, kids need to be fed, clothed, etc, and markets attended - as well as some financial decisions..,.

Although the Chicago Slow Food chapter is very generously providing much of the funding for the trip there will undoubtedly be additional costs. A rough estimate is that the trip will cost about $600 above the support from Slow Food Chicago. We've been saving for a family trip this fall and can reallocate those funds to Terra Madre and just delay our family trip until spring.

Another thought is to raise some of the money from our community of  farm supporters, hence the Pay Pal donate button below. For everyone who donates and provides a mailing address, Beth will send a postcard from Torino. Beth will blog about her trip; and we are brainstorming ideas of how she can share her story with supporters when she returns. A "farm dinner" is one of the primary ideas at this point; of course we are open to suggestions!

Crock Pot Packs

A couple of weeks ago I saw an idea going around Pinterest that looked interesting, make ahead crock pot meals.  I liked it!  I love using the crock pot, it's almost like someone else made dinner, and I often cook things like spaghetti sauce and soup in big batches to put some in the freezer.  So I decided to give it a go.

First stop, gather the ingredients.  I started with recipes from a couple of different sites (although I never follow recipes exactly, these are pretty close to what I did).

I made a total of 5 different recipes from these two sites:
http://www.ringaroundtherosies.net/2012/02/freezer-cooking.html
http://mamaandbabylove.com/2011/04/05/freezer-cooking-with-slow-cooker-recipes/

I made Teriyaki Chicken, Healthy Mama BBQ Chicken, Peppers & Sausage, Beef Fajita, and Cilantro Lime Chicken. (These all link to the blogs where the recipes are, you'll have to scroll down each page to the right spot.)

Next it was time to do the prep.  This is the step that makes this worthwhile.  It took me about an hour and a half to wash, peel and chop everything, which is quite a while, but now I don't have to do that each time I want to start a meal in the slow cooker.

It took about another hour to make sauces and assemble the bags.  Regardless of the recipes (told you I didn't follow them exactly!) I did not add any of the meat. I just put in the veggies, sauces and seasonings for each meal into a ziplock freezer bag and labeled each.

I use our meat, of course, so that means no boneless, tasteless chicken breasts, but the recipes work great with whole or half chickens in the crock pot. It just means that when you serve them you're pulling the meat off the bones.  (We usually just do it as we eat, but you could bone the chicken and put the meat back in the pot before you serve.)

Finally, the clean up.  It looked bad, but really only took about half an hour.  All together I prepared 10 meals in about 3 hours.  That works out to about 18 minutes per home-made, veggie-filled, processed-food-free meal!  It takes just a few minutes to put the meal in the slow cooker and dinner time clean up is easy too, just one pot.

This is definitely an experiment I'll repeat!

Q is for (Pat) Quinn

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn

I've mentioned in previous posts that I am a member of the Illinois Local, Food, Farms, and Jobs Council. Council members are appointed by the governor, so I've got a big official certificate signed by the governor.

In reality, I've had more contact with Lt. Governor Sheila Simon as she chairs the Governor's Rural Affairs Council and as such has taken an interest in the Food Council's work.

Lt. Governor Sheila Simon meeting with local food advocates.

Last spring, she hosted a group of local food advocates, after the Illinois Stewardship Alliance sponsored Local Food Awareness Day in Springfield which the whole Osmund family attended.

Lt. Governor with Beth and Jack

M is for Marion Street Cheese Market

As the CVSF meat CSA has grown and we've wanted to add delivery sites, we've looked for places similar to where we've already had success - namely wine and cheese shops. (See my post on K is for Kellner).

One of the best in the Chicago-land area is Marion Street Cheese Market. We're proud to deliver our meat CSA to the best wines shop, cheese shop, and bistro in Oak Park, IL. We are continually impressed by co-owner Eric Larson and executive chef Leonard Hollanders commitment to local, artisansal food and sustainability.

Eric Larson

                                                          Leonard Hollander


              Leonard Hollander

Marion Street Cheese Market is a Greeen Certfied Restaurant and recently earned a three star rating (one of only three "three star" Green Restaurants in the region - we, also, deliver to one of the other 3-star rated restaurants in Chicago, you'll learn about them in a future post!)

K is for Kellner

That's Tracy Kellner of Provenance Food and Wine, in Logan Square and Lincoln Square in Chicago.

CVSF has had long relationship with Tracy and her husband Joe Patt. We first met Tracy at the Logan Square Farmers market five years ago. She was the markets cheesemonger when we started vending meats and delivering CSA shares there.

As the market season was coming to an end and we hadn't gotten all of our holiday turkeys pre-sold, we asked Tracy if she would like to offer them to her store customers. She said "Yes", and we went from there. On a cold November day we delivered turkeys - indoors- to about forty of her customers. That was a nice change from our outdoor market stall that cold fall.

Seeing the success of this venture (and the fact we hadn't really considered the logistics of delivering meat shares on brutally cold winter days or wet and dreary spring ones) we aske Tracy if she would like to host our CSA delivery as well. Again, "Yes."


When Tracy and Joe added a store in Lincolns Square, we added a CSA delivery there. Tracy and Joe are huge supporters of local foods and farmers and we're grateful for the relationship that's developed over the years. We even attended Tracy and Joe's "surprise wedding!"

It has definitely been a mutually beneficial relationship between Provenance and CVSF! We're definitely richer because of it - most of the riches are non-monetary; but the we've earned a fair number of dollars as well.

Thanks, Tracy!

I is for Illinois Local, Food, Farms, and Jobs Council

Local Food Lobby Day in Springfield

Awareness and demand for local foods continues to grow across America. However, as is often the case with new trends, peoples' longing to know more about the "where?" and "by whom" of their food began on the coasts with the mid-western states lagging behind.

This Illinois' local food movement picked up the pace in the late nineties as Angelic Organics farm grew into one of the largest and most iconic CSA's in the country and nationally know chefs like Rick Bayless committed to sourcing from local farmers.

Things really took off in 2006, when Debbie Hillman of the Evanston Food Policy Council, approached then State Representative Julie Hamos (now IL director of Health Care and Family Services) about the concerns her urban constituents had about food and farming issues. From this initial discussion, legislation was drafted (titled the Illinois Local and Organic Food Farms and Jobs Act), and a statewide coalition formed to press for it's passage.

I joined the effort at the behest of Kendall Thu an anthropology professor at Northern Illinois University who had joined our CSA the previous year. I joined conference calls with local food proponents from throughout the state, called my representatives, and spread the word to all our farm contacts to support the effort. In 2007, the act passed and the Illinois Local Foods Farm and Jobs Task Force was formed.

The task force spent a year working on a comprehensive document to present to the legislature that detailed the state of local food in Illinois and recommendations for building the local food economy in Illinois. In 2009, the report generated follow-on legislation establishing the Illinois Local, Food, Farms, and Jobs Council.

I have served as a council director since 2010.

D is for Duncan

An A-Z blog theme on our farm's community needs to include some mention of family. Today, I'm going to introduce you to Duncan. He is our farm's naturalist and the one who always up for a walk in the woods or explore the creek. This week, he was hanging out/helping me trouble-shoot a shorted out electric fence.

As I worked, he climbed trees and explored. Walking along the pasture's edge, I told him that the best place to find night crawlers was under old cow pies. So, we started to turn some of them over. Not only did we discover worms in the well rotted manure but many other living things from fungi to grubs to a sprouted honey locust seed (the cows eat the pods in the fall and deposit the undigested seeds all around the pasture - a perfect seed starter medium).

Yesterday, we ate a salad that Duncan had foraged with Beth and his little brother, Jack. The salad included water cress that grow along one of the many natural springs on farm, and sorrel a perrenial that is great as a cooked green (scrambled eggs and sorrel is favorite of our friend John Breslin) but works in a salad when the tender leaves are picked. It's so gratifying to have our kids so connected to our farm way of living.

 Duncan is a Lego designer as well - hopefully those design skills will translate into useful stuff for the farm as he gets bigger!

Here, he takes a break with Beth on a recent trip to the Field Museum.

Chicago Honey Co-op

Again this departs from the A-Z format (wait no it doesn't - it's my "C"), but I want to wrap up  the Terra Madre thing. (Also, Michael Thompson is part of our farm's community - which I'll be posting about today as well.)

Terra Madre - Short essay #4

Please describe 1-2 experiences, if any, that highlight your relationship to the Slow Food or Terra Madre networks. If you have not previously interacted with Slow Food or Terra Madre, please tell us how you or your organization might build a relationship with these networks.

Michael Thompson is a founder of the Chicago HoneyCo-op.  He vends honey and beeswax products at the same market our farm does. I’ve gotten to know him well over the past seven years – from the market as well as running into each other at various local food and farming functions through the Chicago region.  Michael has been a leader in local foods, biological diversity, “slow food,” and urban agriculture for decades.

In 2008, Michael and his partner, Sydney, attended Terra Madre as delegates.  When I asked him about his trip, he told me: “Jody, I generally don’t put a lot of stock in the phrase ‘a life changing experience,’ but I have to tell you; it (Terra Madre) changed my life.” Ever since that conversation, I’ve wanted to be a Terra Madre delegate.

Terra Madre - essay 3

This probably doesn't fit in the A-Z blog challenge; but I just submitted the delegate application, I thought would go ahead and share:

Why do you want to go to Terra Madre/Salone del Gusto?

Globally, the food we eat, how it is grown, processed, distributed, and who grows and controls it has changed radically in the last fifty years. These changes adversely affect our lands, our waters, and our people.   Awareness of our broken food system is growing. People are fearful and sometimes overwhelmed by the enormity of problems; but there is hope and there are solutions.

To bring these solutions to the fore, the Slow Food, Good Food, Local Food, Responsible Food, Just Food, movement et al. needs leaders. Since I started farming, I’ve grown into leader/advocate for local and sustainable foods, but I can get much better. Traveling to northern Italy this fall, tasting traditional foods from all over the world, and engaging in the stories of growers from all over the world will expand my contacts, give me new knowledge, and inspire me to continue to change the world.

B is for Butcher

Okay, we run a meat CSA - that's community supported agriculture. (If you're new to this and would like to learn more our farm and CSA visit us at Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm. If you'd like to find a CSA in your area got to Local Harvest. If you're in Chicago, visit The Local Beet.)

Raise our animals in ways that nurture their true natures. We're mindful that their well being is dependent upon us, just as our sustenance is dependent on them. It is a relationship grounded with respect and reverence.

But, to become the nourishing goodness that goes into our monthly shares, their lives must end. We take great care with our animals and work to ensure that the same care is taken when they become meat.

Luckily, we have a fantastic  butcher who does his job as thoughtfully as we do ours. His name is Scott Bittner.

Scott runs the only buthcher shop in the state of Illinois that can do certified organic butchering for red meat animals (beef, pork, lamb, goat). Although we are NOT a certfied organic farm, this is important to us and our customers as it means that only organic methods and ingredients are used in the processing of our meats (no MSG, added nitrates etc).

Bittners (Scott and his wonderful staff) are an important part of our farm's community, and we appreciate all they do!

 

April Fools!

Keeping with our family tradition tonight we had a mixed up April Fools dinner. Sundaes (pulled pork topped with bbq sauce &coleslaw) for dinner and grilled cheese (pound cake & orange frosting) for desert. Yum :-)

Ellen Malloy and the U.S. Farmer and Rancher Alliance

Before I post for the A to Z Challenge I HAVE to share this post from my friend, Ellen Malloy. She is one of the people that will help us reach the "tipping" point where sustsainable farming and good local food "spreads like wildfire."

Ellen:

Thank you, thank you, thank you for attending and for asking tough questions and for getting pissed off, and for not backing down and for dropping the f-bomb! Hopefully, it was a "thought bomb" as well!

http://backyarditarian.com/2012/03/29/just-because-the-canary-is-alive/

 Here is Ellen's bio:

Ellen Malloy is the creator of Restaurant Intelligence Agency. Founded in 2007, RIA connects restaurants to audiences that matter — the media and diners — via simple, easy-to-use software. Her goal is to help chefs use the internet to promote themselves and their restaurants by redefining restaurant marketing and by building a strong, sustainable community of chef-focused restaurant industry professionals, diners, and media.

 After a successful career in PR and Marketing, Ellen was determined to learn the business of cooking from the ground up, working for two of Chicago’s most esteemed chefs, Michael Kornick and Jacky Pluton, and then rounded out this on-the-job training with a culinary education from the Culinary School of Kendall College, where she graduated at the top of her class, and later earned a Sommelier Certificate from the Court of Master Sommeliers.

After completing culinary school, she opened up shop as a restaurant publicist. From 1997 to 2008, she turned her company, Paperclip, Inc., into one of the country’s premier restaurant PR firms, representing Michael Jordan’s restaurants and nationally acclaimed chefs such as Paul Kahan and Rick Tramonto.

Identifying the coming shift of information distribution, back in 2007 she anticipated how inefficient those practices were becoming. Jettisoning the standard structure, she moved her PR operation online, building a service to handle the foundation of good restaurant PR — information distribution — at a fraction of the cost of traditional PR. The RIA website was designed to house and archive an affordable digital version of a paper press kit with room for marketing events and promotions.

As an expert and insider in the restaurant industry (recenlty ranked #9 in the list of the most influential people in Chicago's food scene) Ellen is building tools that help chefs discover that they can support their business by honoring their craft and expressing their individuality; help media discover the true voice of the respected artisan chef; and help diners discover new chefs they can follow over the arc of their careers.

A to Z blog challenge

So.... beginning this Sunday, we will be posting nearly daily (A-Z through April) to this blog. I'd like to say that I'm prepared and have a backlog of posts all ready to go.

I don't, but I've got a theme. I'm going to focus on COMMUNITY, specifically, on Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm's community. As I've thought about it, delivering food to over 200 families a month is definitely a group effort!

Over the next month, I hope to give an overview of what our farm's community is and just how important it is.

Terra Madre 2012

Over the next 10 days or so, Beth and I will be writing applications to be delegates at Terra Madre 2012. We will share them here on the blog as we go along. The bolded text comes from the application, our response is below. Please leave comments and help shape our application!

Tell us about yourself! How has your community's food history, culture, and system shaped your identity, values, and sense of purpose? (Max. 150 words)

I grew up on a diverse grain and livestock farm in northern Illinois. This medium sized farm (500 acres) provided a high standard of living for our family of six and two business partners. Much of what we ate came from our farm. Grains and livestock were sold into competitive markets. However, in 1987, I left the tradition of family farming for university when the farm credit bubble burst.

Leaving the farm left a void in my life. When we moved back to ancestral land ten years ago, farming was different from what I had known. It was no longer possible to make a living on a small (or medium sized) farm growing commodities. I could not come back farm like my father. I had to reach back into my grandfathers’ heritages and produce food for sale directly to my community. Looking backward, I’ve become a 21st century farmer.

A Breakfast Favorite

Biscuits & Gravy have been a favorite of Beth and mine since we were learning to cook together as newlyweds in Salt Lake City, Utah. Back then, before farming and kids we would spend leisurely Sundays making breakfast and reading the paper. We still enjoy breakfast; but lazing away hours reading the paper is a distant memory. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy this breakfast as much as we do!

Drop biscuits recipe (this comes from Betty Crocker)

2 cups flour

1 T. sugar

3 t. baking powder

1 t. salt

½ cup shortening (Lard is our favorite & makes the best biscuits)

1 cup milk (whole is best)

1. Heat oven to 450

2. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Cut in lard using pastry blender, until mixture looks like fine crumbs. Stir in milk until dough is soft and sticky.

3. Drop onto ungreased cookie sheet – 10 to 12 spoonfuls

4. Bake 10-12 minutes – biscuits should be golden brown. Remove immediately from cookie sheet. Serve warm.

Sausage Gravy

1lb CVSF Italian Sausage

½ gallon milk

4 T. butter

4 T. flour

1. Gently brown sausage and crumble.

2. When fully browned and crumbly, add milk.

3. While milk and sausage heats, make a roux.

4. Melt butter in sauce pan.

5. Add flour to melted butter and stir smooth.

6. Continue heating and stirring until roux turns brown

7. Remove from heat.

8. When milk and sausage is steaming, stir in roux.

9. Continue stirring as gravy thickens. If gravy is not as thick as you like, prepare additional roux 1 tablespoon buter/flour at a time.

10. Serve over warm biscuits.

Foods Resource Bank

On October 15th, while Beth was delivering shares to our Oak Park drop off, I attended a Foods Resource Bank (FRB) Harvest Celebration just a couple of miles from Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm.

FRB is a Christian NGO that works overseas (in 30 countries on every populated continent but Australia and North America) to help alleviate hunger. Although my proclivities tend toward the secular and humanist, this is an inter-denominational religious organization that has a really good approach to food and hunger.

Basically, FRB, raises cash to implement programs in food insecure regions that help people to create their own food security. First of all, FRB does NOT provide direct food assistance. Simply distributing free food is counterproductive to building food security as it puts farmers already growing and selling food in the area out of business. It's hard to compete with free. In starvation situations, FRB will allocate up to 25% of their aid to emergency food assistance - however their overall goal is to build the knowledge and infrastructure needed for resilient, sustainable, local food systems.

How do they do this?

• Focus on the specific needs of community being served
• Develop local assets
• Invest (modestly) in tools and seed
• Commit strongly to education, training, and community organizing

How do they raise the funds?

FRB volunteers organize Growing Projects to raise funds. Corn was the crop being harvested at the harvest celebration I attended. For this project, suburban and rural congregations work together, and for the past two years have worked with local farmers to raise a corn crop. This crop is sold at the local grain terminal and the cash proceeds are donated to FRB.

The farmer donates the use of land and his farming expertise to the project.

Once the land is secured, money and donations are raised to supply the inputs needed to raise the crop -GMO seeds, fertilizer,  diesel fuel, herbicide, pesticides, etc.

Why donate cash instead of the crop?

The logistics and high cost of shipping the actual grain to the hungry make this approach unfeasible. FRB says it is almost always best to buy food from nearby when there are emergency food needs. Wow, what a refreshing departure from government food aid program. Besides, the corn raised is not suitable for human consumption.

Anyone see the irony here?

High input industrial agriculture is being used to raise money to support low input, sustainable agriculture in areas of food insecurity.

Why was Jody at the harvest celebration representing CVSF?

Partly for entertainment...

Once people get over their awe of the massive, technological marvel of a modern combine (the grain harvester) watching corn get harvested is a bit like counting train cars or watching paint dry.

There were several farming demonstrations going on. A local sheep breeder did a sheering demonstration. Another had and old fashioned miniature baler and turned a large bale of straw into many small decorative bales.  My cage of hens that kids could feed popcorn, blades of grass, and grasshoppers were a big draw. Plus getting to talk to an actual farmer away from a noisy machine was pretty novel, for kids and their parents,too.


Partly out of nostalgia...

People of a certain age remember when their grandpa or uncle had a farm with animals that they would visit. Or they had  a neighbor that kept hens and a garden and sold them eggs and vegetables. It's harder to connect to one's food as it once was.

Partly for education...

I talked a lot about community supported agriculture and how local foods contribute to the health of our communities and our economy.

Partly as a counter balance...

Even as the combines raced across the fields sucking up bushel on bushel of grain and disgorging it into the semi-trailers, the people visiting my table understood that their current food system is out of whack. Being able to speak to someone farming on another path shows them that things can change and with the support of a community, that change can be for the better.

Food Soveriegnty

I recently read an article about Wisconsin judge Patrick J. Fielder's ruling that Wisconsin citizens do not have a fundamental right to consume the food of their choice. This decision was in a case involving raw milk and Wisconsin's ban of it's commercial sale.


Here are the specifics of his ruling that the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection did not violate the constittutional rights of the plaintiffs:


(1) no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairyherd;

(2) no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;

(3) no, the Zinniker Plaintiffs, do not have a fundamental right to board their cow at the farm of a farm;

(4) no, the Zinnikers Plaintiffs' contract does not fall outside the scope of the State's police power;

(5) no, the Plaintiffs, do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice;

(6) no, the DATCP, did not act in an ultra vires manner because it had jurisdiction to regulate the Zinniker's conduct.


Judge Fielder did not limit his decision to milk alone or to commerce and agriculture regulated by the state.

(Here is a link to the full text of Judge Fiedler's ruling clarification: http://www.thecompletepatient.com/storage/WIorder-clarification9-11.pdf)

If this broad ruling is left to stand, it will set a dangerous legal precedent about all our food choices and the role of government in deciding what we can and cannot eat or grow. It, also, brings into question basic rights of personal property.

Standing alone this ruling is alarming; however, I learned Sunday (from a customer at the Logan Square Farmers Market) that just six weeks after his ruling Judge Fiedler stepped down from the bench to go to work for Axley Brynelson (http://axley.com/services) a law firm whose work includes defending Monsanto (retirment article: http://host.madison.com/news/local/crime_and_courts/article_f25f22b3-4a89-50e3-8d32-06da1adb92f2.html)

If you are unfamiliar with Monsanto, they are intimately involved in the dairy industry with their Posilac product (http://www.elanco.us/products/posilac.htm), recombiant bovine growth hormone (rGBH), a synthetic hormone injected into dairy cows to prolong lactation and boost output. Milk from rGBH cows DOES NOT have to be labeld as such, and Monsanto has fought long and hard to keep it that way - even to the extent of prohibitiing milk from being labeled as rGBHG-free.

But, Monsanto's reach extends far beyond just milk - they have patents on much of the feed and fiber seed planted in the United States (corn, soybeans, cotton, sugar beets, alfalfa), andthey are aggressively expanding expanding into the realm of fruit and vegetables. (http://westernfarmpress.com/agribusiness-monsanto-buying-leading-fruit-vegetable-seed-company)


Most of Monsanto's patents in the feed and fiber arena include genetic modifications. Now they are working hard to transfer that technology into the produce we eat (http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/gmo-sweet-corn-variety-coming-soon.aspx).

It is disgusting that the very judge that said food choice is not a constitutional right now effectively works for the same corporation bent on monopolizing the world's food supply for its own control and profit.

It is not much of a stretch to think that Judge Fiedler's decision was influenced (bought) by his current employers.







.

F is for Farm Bill

Every five years or so, national food, nutrition, and farm priorities are debated and set with omnibus policy and appropriations legislation know as The Farm Bill.

And, the process is already under way as the fiscal year 2011 budget debate rages with a government shutdown barely avoided this past week.

Over the coming weeks, I will be posting more about the current and upcoming Farm Bill debates and sustainable agriculture issues an priorities and ways YOU can get involved. For now, here's a run down of the current Farm Bill.

The farm bill encompasses a lot!

There are currently 15 titles in the Farm Bill:

I. Commodities – wheat, feed grains, cotton, rice, oilseeds, peanuts, sugar, and dairy. Direct payments, counter-cyclical payments, and marketing loans. The government also supports commodities with purchases of dairy and marketing quotas and import barriers for sugar. $8.3 billion per year.

II. Conservation – farmland conservation, preservation, and protection. $4.8 billion per year.

III. Agricultural Trade andFood Aid – Agricultural exports and international food assistance programs. $400 million per year.

IV. Nutrition – Domestic food and nutrition and commodity distribution programs, aka SNAP - supplemental nutrition assistance program. $38 billion per year.

V. Farm Credit – Federal direct and guaranteed farm loan programs. (FARMER-MAC).

VI. Rural Development – Business and community planning and feasibility assessments and coordination activities with local, state, and federal programs, including rural broadband access.

VII. Research – Agriculture research and extension programs including bio-security and response, biotechnology, and organic production.

VIII. Forestry – USDA forest service programs, including forestry management, enhancement, and agro-forestry.

IX. Energy – Bio-energy programs and grants for procurement of biobased products to support development of biorefineries and assist eligible farmers and rural small businesses in purchasing renewable energy systems as well as user education programs.

X. Horticulture and Organic Agriculture – (new title in 2008 bill) Covers fruit, vegetables, and other specialty crops (food) and organic agriculture.

XI. Livestock – (new title in 2008 bill) Covers livestock and poultry production, including provisions that amend existing laws governing livestock and poultry marketing and competition, country-of-origin labeling (COOL) requirements for retailers, and meat and poultry state inspections, among other provisions.

XII. Crop Insurance and disaster assistance – (new title in 2008 bill)

XIII. Commodity futures – (new title in 2008 bill) Covers reauthorization of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and other changes to current law.

XIV. Miscellaneous – Other types of programs not covered by other titles, including provisions to assist limited resource and socially disadvantaged farmers and agricultural security, among others.

XV. Trade and Tax provisions - (new title in 2008 bill) Covers tax-related provisions intended to offset spending initiatives for some programs including those in nutrition, conservation, and energy titles. This title also contains other provisions, including the new supplemental disaster assistance and disaster relief trust fund, and other tax-related provisions such as customs user fees.

What does is Cost?

The estimated 5 year cost of the 2008 farm bill is $284 billion.

An overwhelming amount (97%) of that is spent on four titles:

Nutrition - 67%

Commodity Support payments – 15%

Conservation – 9%

Crop Insurance – 8%

E is for Eggs.

Well, it's mid-April.

The sun is shining, the air is warmer, the grass is greener, and the hens are busier, much busier.
A little over a month ago, we were picking at most seven dozen eggs a week. Short winter days, inclement weather, and the inevitable seasonality of eggs from free-ranging hens not forced into a year round "production model" had imposed its annual respite.

I don't know why, but it's always a little alarming when egg production crashes. Even though it's expected and happens every year, I still wonder if this is the time that the hen's vacation will be permanent. I guess we're not that far removed from the ancients who feared that winter's cycle might not end.

Fortunately, the season has changed and the ladies are done with their rest – we're currently collecting over twenty dozen eggs a day. In addition to laying a bunch of eggs, the hens are GRAZING. With the green and bugs and worms now in their diet, the hens are eating a quarter less grain than they did a month ago, while laying 20 times as many eggs.

Wow!

GRASS IS GREAT!

Also, the yolks are much more orange than they were just a couple of weeks ago. We think this is a good thing. Many satisfied customers and members of our Meat CSA, agree as they rave about our eggs.