This is a puppy mill?
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Fri, 07/17/2009 - 12:46pm.
Went to a puppy mill on Wednesday, except that I would call it "puppies for profit." It was an Amish farm and my visit was in the company of a group of 15 graduate students from North Carolina State University. All but two of the students are full time extension educators in North Carolina. They were on a week-long five-state bus tour designed to broaden their points of view by exposing them to the workings of farms and extension offices outside their home state.
If this had been the standard horror-fantasy puppy mill with hundreds of caged, dirty, miserable dog-like creatures, it definitely would have broadened their points of view. And mine as well. The farmer showed his guests the tidy dairy barn with its 55 milking Holsteins, the lush garden that is his wife's obsession, his alfalfa and cornfields, his hay barn and his massive, propane-fueled kitchen.
And he showed them his puppy mill. It was a lawnsized enclosure that had two English bulldogs snoozing in a shaded corner, about half-a-dozen tan pugs running around, and a couple of Burmese mountain dogs who had the run of the house and the barns. The farmer said he sells 55 pups a year to individuals that he reaches through ads in local newspapers. He doesn't sell to dealers. He favors pugs and English bulldogs because they are harder to raise than many other breeds, and therefore command a higher price. The bulldogs, especially, have a hard time whelping, so there have been times when a mother and her young have spent a week or two in the family kitchen.
He sells pups for anywhere from $500 to $1200. He said it's more of a hobby than a business. But it's 55 pups a year, at an average of $700 or $800 each...
You do the math. It's a business. And, I believe, a good business. It's a good income base for a small family farm, which may be helping this particular farm to stay profitable. It's good for the dogs, which looked comfortable, well-fed and well-cared for. And it's good for the individual buyers who, for all appearances, get healthy pets.
I could never endorse a puppy mill/factory. But I could certainly endorse this farmer's approach as a business model for a humane and caring way of providing for a market - people who want puppies - that will not go away.
And he showed them his puppy mill. It was a lawnsized enclosure that had two English bulldogs snoozing in a shaded corner, about half-a-dozen tan pugs running around, and a couple of Burmese mountain dogs who had the run of the house and the barns. The farmer said he sells 55 pups a year to individuals that he reaches through ads in local newspapers. He doesn't sell to dealers. He favors pugs and English bulldogs because they are harder to raise than many other breeds, and therefore command a higher price. The bulldogs, especially, have a hard time whelping, so there have been times when a mother and her young have spent a week or two in the family kitchen.
He sells pups for anywhere from $500 to $1200. He said it's more of a hobby than a business. But it's 55 pups a year, at an average of $700 or $800 each...
You do the math. It's a business. And, I believe, a good business. It's a good income base for a small family farm, which may be helping this particular farm to stay profitable. It's good for the dogs, which looked comfortable, well-fed and well-cared for. And it's good for the individual buyers who, for all appearances, get healthy pets.
I could never endorse a puppy mill/factory. But I could certainly endorse this farmer's approach as a business model for a humane and caring way of providing for a market - people who want puppies - that will not go away.
Health insurance for a family of four can cost more than $1,000 a month, which can put a strain on any family budget. Matt and Jackie Matter, who operate a 400-acre crop farm in Millerstown, Pa., developed a strategy that significantly reduced their expense. They use a health savings account (HSA), a high-deductible policy, and a signoff on their ability to sue for malpractice. Lancaster Farming special sections editor Charlene Shupp Espenshade talked to the Matters and wrote a report of their conversation in the issue due in your mailbox tomorrow.
Feeling musical? Strap on your 'blades. http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=3841853
Coop review, part 2
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Tue, 07/14/2009 - 8:07pm.
Chickens were a big part of Michael Perrry's rural fantasy, and the title of his latest book, Coop, proves he's not ashamed to note that there were a few side trips on the road to turning that fantasy into reality. Or, more accurately, the road to knowing that realities can only, at best, approximate fantasies.
When Perry started on the coop, for example, he had 13 chickens. By the time it was built, there were six. His favorite, and his six-year-old daughter's favorite, was Little Miss Shake-N-Bake. The hen had a bad case of tremors. She did survive to see the finished coop, but she had trouble, because of her condition, getting into it.
Perry, his wife Anneliese, and her daughter Amy, the six-year-old, from a previous marriage, share love, laughter, some tears, a lot of manual labor and a sense of wonder at the things that are happening on their 37-acre farm. They also share the at-home birth of Jane, a sister for Amy.
There's a lot of the romance of farming in the book, and much of the gentle humor that Perry is noted for. For example, a couple of feeder pigs nearly gain pet status before they become an anatomy lesson for Amy on their way to the freezer.
Here's one of the cute things the pigs did: Perry installed a nipple waterer in their rough-hewn pen. The pigs captured water in their mouths then dribbled it onto the dirt until they had formed a wallow. Smart, cute, playful they were, but they wound up chops, ham and bacon anyway.
Perry is a freelance writer who's on the road a lot for major magazines, book tours and speaking engagements. He muses late in the book about spending too much time away from his family, his home and his livestock. If you've lived on a farm for a while, much of what he writes about in Coop will be familiar. But through Perry's eyes, the familiar can wear a very fresh face.
And if he wants to give up the road to stay home and write books, I think he could make a go of it. As long as he keeps the freezer full.
The Depression was tough on Detroit. But you know what's even tougher? Now. That's according to Tracy Sutton's grandfather, a Detroiter and retired auto executive who is deeply troubled by the state of his city today. At 91, he thought he'd seen it all, but he never imagined this. Tracy Sutton is Lancaster Farming's regional editor and visited her grandfather over the Fourth of July holiday. She writes about her grandfather's feelings - and draws some interesting parallels to the state of agriculture now - in our current issue.
Cats are always good for a laugh. http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=3903091
"He can't do that!"
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Mon, 07/13/2009 - 5:04pm.
There was the sound of a chair being pushed violently into a file cabinet. "Have you seen this? Has anybody seen this?" It was the voice of Homer Luttringer, director of advertising and PR for the New Holland Machine Co. (actually Sperry New Holland by then, late 1960s) who appeared in the door looking left and right for anybody who had seen "This."
"This" was a product brochure for the John Deere Haybine. "They can't do this!" Luttringer said. "They can't!"
And he was right. John Deere could, of course, develop and bring to market a machine to cut hay crops, crimp the stems and lay the conditioned product in a neat row behind the machine, a feat that New Holland had pulled off a few years earlier. But John Deere could not call their machine a "Haybine." The Haybine was one of those perfectly named machines, like the first Caterpillar tractor, or the Dodge Caravan (it's a car, it's a van). The Haybine described exactly what the machine did, and the name was so unique that it could become a registered trademark. And so New Holland had the name Haybine ®ed and TMed to the full extent of intellectual property rights law.
While the New Holland Haybine was a mower-conditioner, anybody else who came up with a mower-conditioner would have to come up with their own name. And what most of them came up with was mower-conditioner, popularly known by the catchy moniker "mo-co."
I was reminded of this incident while reading Coop, a new book by Michael Perry. Perry is a freelance writer and humorist, who recently began farming on 37 acres in rural Wisconsin. He talks at one point about his adventures with a John Deere haybine - no capital "H", no ®, no TM, and I could hear Homer Luttringer's voice roaring down the years, "He can't do that!"
To me, a tiny transgression in a very nice book. Lancaster Farming readers may find much of the material a bit Farming 101, but Perry's impressions as he reacquaints himself with farm life might help you see and appreciate the everyday things around you in a new light. I'll talk more about Coop in tomorrow's blog.
State ag department budgets are being slashed right and left, some down to basic core services, some even farther than that. But a few departments are holding their own. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres talked to departments from New Hampshire to Virginia to get an up-to-date picture of what's going on. His article is in our current edition.
Do you really need to know what the farmer is saying? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_05SslcVjgE
Saying goodbye to the little things.
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Fri, 07/10/2009 - 12:30pm.
Driving through Virginia yesterday on the way to a family wedding in North Carolina, I saw signs before every rest stop on I-77 saying the stop ahead would be closed as of July 21. I thought it odd that the state would be closing its rest stops - probably for renovation, I thought - at the busiest tourist season of the year. Then I learned they aren't closing for a redo, they are closing to cut costs.
And it's happening not just in Virginia, it's happening all across the country, and could affect all 2,500 of the nation's interstate rest stops. Virginia figures it can can save $19 million a year by closing its 19 rest stops. Those numbers give one pause, indeed, and strictly from an accounting point of view, it's hard to justify a million-dollar-a-year outlay just to maintain what is basically a bricks-and-mortar porta potty. Schools can use the money. Libraries and roads can use it. Dairymen in desperate need of low-interest financing could certainly use that money.
But I must say I've always been comforted by the ease of travel on the interstate system - except for I-95, which deserves its own non-travel category - and knowing that, every 50 to 100 miles I could stop, use the facilities, stretch, buy some stale crackers, a bottle of outrageously expensive water and a cup of the world's absolutely worst coffee.
(The official unfounded rumor I am starting today is this: interstate rest stops recycle used Dunkin' Donuts grounds in their coffee vending machines. You heard it here first, and this could be bigger non-news than Michael Jackson's funeral, God rest his troubled soul.)
But I digress. Rest stop convenience isn't that big a deal. There are plenty of interchanges with truck stops along the way, and plenty of bushes between interchanges. And big problems are all around us, causing pain and grief as people lose their homes, jobs, businesses, abandon their dreams and succumb to despair. As a people, I like to think we've always been able to tough it through the big problems - wars, racial strife, economic travails, terrorists from within, terrorists from without - and we've been bloodied and battered, but always been just a tad stronger and straighter for having fought back and won.
I know rest stops are a little thing. What's scary to me is that my country can no longer afford the little things.
Milton Hershey is known around the world for his candy and, closer to home, his philanthropy. The Milton Hershey School, founded in 1909, has been a haven for disadvantaged young people for a full century. For decades, it was a home for boys, providing them with educations, trade and farming skills and a safe and secure place to grow up. The student body now includes 1,800 boys and girls from low income families with at least one parent absent. Lancaster Farming correspondent Sue Bowman paid a visit to Dearden House which has been repurposed first from a farmhouse to student housing and, most recently, an administration building. Her story is in Section B of the edition due in your mailbox tomorrow.
Animal ID across the pond.
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Wed, 07/08/2009 - 10:30pm.
Brits have given up on tagging people, but they're still going after sheep. Hilary Benn, the UK's secretary of agriculture, has been getting flack from shepherds who say the cost of tags would be a significant expense to them. Sheep tagging is already in wide use in other EU countries, especially Spain and Italy, so the British sheep producers aren't getting a lot of sympathy from their neighbors on the continent.
Sounds kind or like our NAIS issue currently roiling the waters in the U.S. There's an article about the animal ID in the current issue of The Economist. The article is here
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13962582
The Humane Society of the U.S. has been waging a campaign against farming operations that depend on animal confinement. Is the HSUS engaged in an evil conspiracy to drive family farmers out of business, or are they a reasonable organization interested in working with rather than against farmers? You can decide for yourself after reading an interview by Lancaster Farming correspondent Andrew Jenner. His interviewee was Paul Shapiro, senior director of the HSUS Factory Farming Campaign. Jenner's report appears in the Lancaster Farming issue due in your mailbox Saturday.
No stupid people were injured in the making of this video.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=funny+farm&qpvt=funny+farm&first=61&docid=963007938863&mid=F6BE8B7CF974A15E1F72F6BE8B7CF974A15E1F72&FORM=VIVR35
Water worries in the Golden State.
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Wed, 07/08/2009 - 7:33am.
As if California didn't already have enough problems, drought is costing the state's imploding economy thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in revenue. According to an AP story in USA Today, Fresno County, the country's top agricultural producer, farmers did not plant 262,000 acres this year because of the water shortage. Statewide, as of May, water shortages in the San Joaquin Valley have cost the California economy an estimated 35,000 jobs and $830 million in farm revenue.
At loggerheads over water are farmers, fishermen, environmentalists and ordinary citizens drinking water from the kitchen faucet (although who knows how many Californians actually drink water straight from the tap).
To read the story, click here: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/drought/2009-06-29-california-drought_N.htm
Wool-gathering writ large. Or at least medium sized. When Jennifer Elgrim left the corporate world in 2007, she and her husband, Drew, visited the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, and came home with a spinning wheel. Then they bought some used wool processing equipment, and, finally, some sheep. Lancaster Farming correspondent Toni Keller visited the Elgrims in Allentown, N.J., to find out how the Cloudberry Sheep and Wool Mill is doing, which is quite well. The story is in Section B of our current edition.
I want to see her do a bicycle kick.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=funny+videos&qs=AS&first=121&docid=956293906719&mid=C856D6F544CEAA72B528C856D6F544CEAA72B528&FORM=VIVR15
Wall Street Journal says "Yay," for food stamps.
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Tue, 07/07/2009 - 11:20am.
Farmers markets have benefited from a significant boost in food stamp benefits, according to a report in today's Wall Street Journal. Reporters Roger Thurow and Timothy Martin interviewed farm marketer Ed Kraklio, Jr., in Davenport, Iowa, to find out how the food stamp increase has affected his business. He now takes in several hundred extra dollars a month, according to the WSJ, which has enabled him to hire an assistant to help tend his fruit and vegetble crops.
That assistant spends her income in nearby stores, restaurants and gas stations. Which is good for the economy, according to the USDA, because every $5 worth of food stamps that goes out generates $9.20 worth of economic activity. A Chicago mother whose monthly food stamp allowance went from $525 to $606 in April, told the reporters that she has introduced her two sons to things like cauliflower, cabbages, lettuce and cucumbers with the increase.
According to the USDA calculator, that translates into $1,115 worth of economic activity. Some 80 percent of food stamp money is spent with the first two weeks of its receipt, and 97 percent is gone by the end of the month. Which means the extra food stamp money could be considered an almost immediate stimulus to the U.S. economy.
I don't understand government math, e.g., giving out $5 and getting $9.20 back. If I could find a store that gave change like that, I'd give it all my tens and twenties. And all I know about the food stamp program is that it feeds people who need food. I've been in line atWeis Market behind people shopping with food stamps or with WICI vouchers, and they were buying honest to goodness food.
Farm raised food.
I know part of my tax dollar goes directly to food recipients and indirectly to farmers and I don't begrudge a penny of it.
What surprised me about this WSJ story was the sympathetic tone it took towards food stamp recipients. What did not surprise me were the over-the-top free-market-at-any-cost comments from the paper's readers. They were more fun than the story itself, which you can read here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124691958931402479.html
If the energy bill recently passed by the House gets the nod from the Senate and the President, farmers could find themselves in the carbon offset business, according to an AP story in the current edition of Lancaster Farming. According to the article, "Farmers that till their soil differently or apply new environmental techniques can get money by cooperating with a polluter as a carbon offset." Sounds like something to look into.
I think you'll flip over this new drill. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2026208/very_funny_commercial/
Battles in the ethanol wars.
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Mon, 07/06/2009 - 4:01pm.
I picked on Fortune Magazine the other week, so maybe I shouldn't be at them so soon again. But it's hard to ignore them when they hang a big target. This time it's a story about General Wesley Clark, retired four-star general and NATO commander, and one-time presidential candidate. In February, Clark signed on as co-chairman of the ethanol trade group, Growth Energy.
He's also on the board of Juhl Wind, a Dutch turbine maker, is on the board - and very active with - Emergya Wind Technologies, CEO of Wesley Clark Associates, and chairman of Rodman and Renshaw, a New York investment bank.
When Fortune reporter Jon Birger interviewed Clark, he focused on his Growth Energy work. From the tone of the article, it seemed as though Clark was paying most of his attention to the battle to save ethanol from the crazy ups and downs in the oil and corn markets, internal sabotage by Archer Daniel Midlands, and outright hostility from the Grocery Manufacturers of America.
Birger's article in the July 6 edition is here:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/23/news/economy/wesley_clark_fights_for_ethanol.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009070217
A June 24 TV interview by Poppy Harlow with General Clark set a different tone. In that interview, Clark was all about wind energy and Emergya. The interview was interlaced with file footage that was supposed to tie in with the storyline, and sometimes did. That interview is here: http://money.cnn.com/video/fortune/2009/06/24/f_wesley_clark_wind.fortune/
The Fortune article was much meatier than the thrown-together TV piece, but neither reporter asked the question that begged to be asked: "Are you really just a figurehead for all these groups? If not, how do you keep it all together?"
Oh, and here's the kicker. In a photo taken to illustrate the article, General Clark is shown holding two bushels of corn. Bicolored sweet corn.
Some people keep alpacas for the sheer fun of it, while others use the South American cousin-to-the-camel for shear profit. Alpacas are sheared once a year and the fleece - alpacans call it "fiber" - can weigh from two to four pounds per animal. Fiber sells for $5 to $8 an ounce, which certainly helps with the feed bill. There's an interesting story about alpaca shearing in our current issue, written by Lancaster Farming reporter Michelle Kunjapu.
Grow your own racer and win big money in Easton, Pa. (Thanks, Anne.) http://buylocalpa.org/event/view/481
It's not a surplus, stupid...
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 6:01pm.
...it's market manipulation that's destroying dairy farms. That's according to Leslie Hatfield, a regular contributor to the Huffington Post on issues relating to food and agriculture. With dairymen struggling to cope with their worst price drop since the Great Depression, Hatfield believes half the nation's milk producers could be out of business by the end of this year.
And she points the finger of blame not at a supply surplus but at market manipulation by groups like the "cooperative" (her italics, not mine) Dairy Farmers of America. Increased imports, a lack of government oversight and a credit market collapse are all bearing down on dairymen, particularly the small operators, like four freight trains from four different directions.
Under a 1938 law, according to Hatfield, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsak actually has the power to set a floor price for milk of $17.50, which obviously hasn't happened. And it would probably take two small armies of lawyers, one on each side of the issue, to determine if Vilsak actually does have that power.
But it's a thought-provoking post from someone who obviously cares about the welfare of family farmers. You can read it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-hatfield/for-dairy-farmers-the-dep_b_214538.html
Next time you're spending the night in Louisville, head on over to Churchill Downs for a little after-dark fun at the track. Except that you'd better check the schedule first. The nation's most august racetrack is staging night races this summer on a trial basis - just three nights this summer. Night racing has long been a staple at lesser venues, according to a story in the current issue of Mid-Atlantic Horse, a monthly feature in Lancaster Farming.
I am cow. Hear me moo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WFp4kozlOU
Carey, Carey, how does your garden grow?
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 3:49pm.
With 7,000 tobacco plants, all in a row. Don Carey, a smoker and a building contractor who lives near Akron, Ohio, has taken offense at the skyrocketing tax levy on his favorite herb.
So, man of action that he is, he's grow his own, roll his own and smoke his own tax-free cigars and cigarettes. And it's legal. He checked.
Carey bought seeds, started them, and planted 7,000 seedlings of 40 different varieties on three-quarters of an acre near his home. The plants are doing well - other than the 50 or so that were taken out by slugs - and Carey could end up with a 2,000 pound harvest. He needs about 17 pounds of tobacco a year to support his habit.
No word on his plans for the 1,983 extra pounds.
Carey's crop was the subject of a story in Saturday's edition of the Akron Beacon-Journal. You can read it here http://www.ohio.com/news/49365072.html
Financial analyst by day, sheep shearer by night. Jason Seibert spends his official working hours thinking about money, and his unofficial working hours thinking about sheep. The 33-year-old from Lebanon, Pa., has been relieving sheep of their winter coats for 20 years, continuing a family tradition begun by his father, Glenn. Seibert's hobby/part-time enterprise is the subject of a feature by Lancaster Farming correspondent Sue Bowman, which appears on page B10 of the issue due in your mailbox on Friday.
Be scared DeLaval. Be very scared. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLj4UsVRu5E
