Things in Common

It's an unsettled day on Blue Moon Farm.  I hear Winter wheezing away, way Up North.  A touch of rain the other night and continuing winds pestering the cows and my loose fitting orange cap.  Snowing as I finish this blog, it's the season of discontent for deer here in Minnesota too.  The Sport of Kings here as almost everyone is affected by "opening day" syndrome in this land of rituals.  Christmas may still be a holiday in Minnesota, but the opening of the deer season is a call to arms and treestands testing the anxiety of all for a week or so in this state of prairie, hardwoods and conifers.

I've been reading some of the latest work on, "the commons" and how Garret Hardin's ecological thesis on the "Tragedy of the Commons" caused by over-population can now be countered by Elinor Ostrom's application of political tools aimed at resource management strategies and decisions.

From Wikipedia:

Elinor Ostrom is considered one of the leading scholars in the study of common pool resources(CPR). In particular, Ostrom's work emphasizes how humans interact with ecosystems to maintain long-term sustainable resource yields. Common pool resources include many forests, fisheries, oil fields, grazing lands, and irrigation systems.
Ostrom identifies eight "design principles" of stable local common pool resource management:

1. Clearly defined boundaries (effective exclusion of external un-entitled parties;
2. Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources that are adapted to local conditions;
3. Collective-choice arrangements that allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process;
4. Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators;
5. A scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules;
6. Mechanisms of conflict resolution that are cheap and of easy access;
7. Self-determination of the community recognized by higher-level authorities;
8. In the case of larger common-pool resources (CPR) ,organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level.

Garrett James Hardin (April 21, 1915 – September 14, 2003) was an American ecologist who warned of the dangers of overpopulation and whose concept of the tragedy of the commons brought attention to "the damage that innocent actions by individuals can inflict on the environment". He was most well known for his elaboration of this theme in his 1968 paper, The Tragedy of the Commons. He is also known for Hardin's First Law of Ecology, which states "You cannot do only one thing", and used the familiar phrase "Nice guys finish last" to sum up the "selfish gene" concept of life and evolution.

I'll explore both views in this blog and maybe take a shot at my own views now as a farmer-landower. When I lived in Montana and roamed the West, I was an unsettled victim of Hardin's Tragedy as he viewed the stresses of geometric population growth and the apparent  over-use of "public" resources ("the commons") in his long debated "tragedy" thesis.
That's about as brief as I dare get. Search for "Garret Hardin" and "Elinor Ostrom" at: www.wikipedia.org for more background on their research and ideas.


Ostrom, as summarized above, suggests a the socio-political management of the commons resources at local scales with global implications and seems to avoid the controversy that Hardin faced in his "tragedy" thesis which looks at solving resource depletion problems using population control with both local and global consequences.


And here sits little of Me trying like hell to understand the ramifications of managing an 80 acre farmstead, but involved, in my own little way, with the issues of managing resources of the commons with implications at local and global scales.


The main resources I'm charged with on Blue Moon Farm are soils, first, then water, and generally wetlands, forest and grass products on this so called "private" land.  I'm managing a "commons" too.  How I cut forest products to heat my farmhouse is a "commons" issue because our 30 acres of forest can be sustainably managed for my own and the common good.  Our grassland can be maintained for raising beef cattle sustainably as well using practices that almost eliminate erosion of topsoil and deciding against soil contamination with pest and fertilizer chemicals.  The wetlands on Blue Moon Farm are "owned" by Lyn and I, but there are also constrained by legal easements held by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in perpetuity (that's a long time) for the public good.  Those easements are protective covenants which preclude us from; draining, filling or burning those wetlands.


So, I can cut firewood at a rate that turns our forest into an upland of sapling-brush-forb regrowth.  I can continue to clear that forest to a point where it can be planted to grass to grow more beeves. Or I can make a calculated effort to cut trees at a rate that will keep our house warm in winter, provide continuing values to wildlife and humans.  I can also just leave it alone of course, but as you know, that's not how us private landowners view personal well being.  Or I can decide that the original vegetation of this land was a prairie and find a way to have a "wild" fire, reset it to a char and eventually watch it regrow into a grass-forb land with trees sprouting at some rate depending on how often that "wild" fire reoccurs.  Only one of these actions result in a situation where the forest is managed in a  sustainable way.  All choices result in soils and hydrology conserved over the long term, but a commons resource, trees, is only being managed in a sustainable manner in one scenario.  So many options, so little time....And, what commons resources am I accountable for as a land steward.  It seems to depend on who's resource point of view is being qualified.


If I think of Lyn and I living on this farm and trying to make a go of it we would have no choice but to be more aggressive in our use of the land.  In fact, it's not likely we could make it without working off the farm like many of my neighbor farmers did/do now and they, of course, have/had way more than 80 acres to make their go of it.  Most farms in this area are 600-1000 acre consolidations of the many quarter section to half section farms that were once operating here.



The population issues so near and dear to Hardin's thesis, "The Tragedy of the Commons", are a pressure not felt by us on Blue Moon Farm.  We have no children at home to bring up through today's economy; we have no demands on us to make a living off this place because we are retirees affording this farm by applying our annuities to cover costs and other living needs.  We are trying however to experience food production on this farm in excess of our personal needs to better understand "feeding the masses" and the effort and decision process involved in producing excess for our needs.  It doesn't take long to move mentally into a mindset that says, "Lyn, we have to break more ground for garden produce, we need to cut the forest for more grass, we have to work longer hours, we have to buy more land and equipment, we have to grow....like the economy we hear complained about each night on local and world news reports. When those statements come to mind I feel Hardin's "tragedy" with both barrels.  I think to myself of the lyrics, "All alone and I..."and imagine immediately the urgency of pioneers to keep plowing, keep buying, keep working to put shoes on the kids.


Elinor Ostrom enters the frey and I sense alternative somehow.  I might be too naive to understand her thesis, but I sense her view of the "commons" involves a great deal more cooperative conversation and action than me working against the forest for more grass, or me against the Fish and Wildlife Service for more drained land to plant crops or cows on.  I also sense a community market and workforce to help me makes ends, both mine and theirs, meet. 


This detail of "Community" is what has been lost in American agriculture as far as I can tell.  "Culture" has dropped out of agri-culture and I mean that in the sense of a local people learning to use local resources and working together to produce food and fiber in a sustainable way.  How could I abuse my land by forcing maximum production from it for foreign markets if I had neighbors participating in my success as a farmer; buying and encouraging local foods or land products they can use, improve upon by adding value to them, or valuing our forests, grasslands, marshes, and gardens for aesthetic values; say hunting or bird watching or a walk in the woods.


I'm sensing that Garret Hardin got himself so absorbed in the big picture that he lost the forest for the trees, while Elinor Ostrom went at her research in a local-regional sense rather than from a theoretical-worldwide point of view.  I would like to think of her approach as a trend for the next generation to pursue with zesto.  Nature doesn't make mistakes like we do; she doesn't loose the farm during bad times by miscalculations.  She invents via adaptations to changes at landscape levels we might think of as too regional for this discussion.  Yet, I'm talking about regional change here.  Regional in the sense that if it takes a city to raise a family it takes a region to grow a community and to me a region is like a watershed, say the Buffalo River feeding into the Red River of the North.  As long as the folks in the Buffalo River Watershed are cooperating and using their products at sustainable levels for themselves they might benefit the Red River of the North folks with a bit of overflow or exchange of goods to benefit the diverse needs of both watershed subcultures.  Once we loose sight of the local and begin to operate in a global mindset the many minds are left behind for the few to theorize and guess at solutions to problems that are; 1) pretty meaningless to folks at a local or regional level of interaction, 2) not adaptable at the local level because of the great variation in resources and rituals from one nation-state or continent to the next, and 3) discourage cooperation rather than promote it and the benefits of applying long-learned local knowledge and skills to soils, waters and weather to make ends meet.


I'm not saying world population or regional population growth is not a problem for sustaining local/regional resources of common interest.  It is; if we try to envision solutions to such large issues in the vacuum of academic science dealing with issues of global scope.  Let's for instance realize we could place all 7 billion of us in Texas.  That image leaves a heck of a lot of common resource issues in the dust.  The thinking here is that we have to restrain ourselves to sustainability at a workable level, say second or

third order watersheds and get off of this mindset wagon of trying to have all the new gadgets all the time, created by people anywhere. Can we begin to make do first with what we can make at home or with trading neighbors in nearby watersheds before we try to solve the World's food shortage from Fargo, ND.  I know, I know; but what about cars and freeways and jet airplane travel and going to Mars.  Those are things we are used to and can't remember why we invented them.  Mostly, they were invented because we are not very patient beings.  We have not, until recently, had to realize the last frontier and  "last best places" are what we see in our rear view mirrors.

We are stuck with our degraded "commons" and our neighbors.  We can no longer run from them.  We have to be "stickers" as Wallace Stegner encouraged us to be.  We have to "learn to be still" as the Eagles song suggested.  We have to apply our science as my friend Mike always reminds me.  I have to envision a world from this desk by this window overlooking my marsh and the forest beyond.  All the while realizing that my cows want another bale of hay before darkness falls and for which I traded their offspring to keep their circle of life going over the winter.  So, too, don't we give up our offspring if we cannot learn to sustain ourselves.  Yes, we do.  And that was what both Garret Hardin and Elinor Ostrom really worried about, each in their own way: Hardin with population control at a vague global level; and Ostrom via consumption control at a local cooperative level.  The threats of nuclear terrorism or global warming are two ways to curb overuse of vital resources through paranoia, but from my experience selling produce at the Richwood Farmers Market this summer, I have to believe that solutions involving community cooperation are worth a try.  It works according to Elinor Ostrom in some places.  Why not try it in your backyard.

When an Old Friend Calls Out of the Blue

Yes.  Some days a phone call missed is an opportunity gone to the answering machine or as my iPhone likes to designate such calls: Voicemail.  So, I get this call from Chris L. of Great Falls, Montana and being in the act of hunting grouse in Northern Minnesota my iPhone hesitates to ring me and instead sends Chris right to the Voicemail in the Virtual World we now can live in.  When I finish my hunt and enter "tower space' I get a one ringy dingy alert message on my pocket pal letting me know someone has been virtually stored in my Voicemail.  It's so simply done now, so taken for granted now, so common I have a tendency to think of it as trivia.  So.  Are my old friends like Chris trivialized by this marvel of engineering I call an iPhone now? 

I'm not sure how to go on from here.  I'm letting myself just babble here a bit, because I know locked up in that opening paragraph is a theme I want to Blog to death.  I called Chris back tonight and we had a hell of a good time catching up on Life's minutia and grandness along both our paths.  It was inspiring to hear about his life since we parted company in 2005 so I could go farming with Lyn and he could carry on in Great Falls.  Since that departure we have each lost both our parents to the Grim Reaper:  His parents dying traumatically in his presence; mine dying more traditionally normal in a slow dramatic style, one day at a time over the period of a year or so.  Sorry, but becoming an orphan is a non-trivial wake up call no matter how your parents are taken from your life stream.

I'm thinking now about the way it is on the farm.  Our cows are all less than four years old, so pretty prime animals.  Our chickens are of mixed ages, but only one is nearing a long life for a chicken, say five or so years old.  Our dog, Tess, is five.  She has congenital hip dysplasia, but overall acts pretty healthy and rarely shows signs of her rear differential going out.  Our parrots, Luci and Pepper exemplify "one day at a time" and most likely will be found laying on the floor of their cage one of these days, dying out of the sky blue for no apparent reason.  Life and death on the farm are like sunrise and sunset only the certainty of sunset cannot be looked up on my iPhone celestial APP for a specific time of occurrence. 

Where is this going?  Well, I'm bothered by taking things for granted tonight.  Somehow I feel that Things like iPhones, computers or laptops, digital TVs, etc., are reducing life values without us really thinking about it.  They're like devices planted on us to take our mind off of the moment to moment workings of our lives.  I can now travel around the world in seconds retrieving information never before available to me; saving me time, fuel, money, sweat, preparation stress, ...  "Around the World in 80 Days is now possible in an extensive sequence of digital photos and videos in about 8 minutes.  Am I living longer because of these virtual expeditions?  In a way I am, in other ways, I'm not living at all; I'm just seeing and emoting if I can relate in any way to the images coming forth from the virtual world I ask Google to recite to me in images and text and sounds.  We'll know we have arrived when I ask Google what a volcano is and I get an image, the sounds of bubbling magma, the smell of sulfur and the heat of the virtual volcano burns my lungs and hide for being too close. 

Then again, I'd just as soon not arrive then.  Chris was missing his parents tonight.  The intellectual connection he had with his parents was a substantial comfort to him, no less the millions of zillions of other feedbacks he got from his folks.  It made me think of my folks in personal ways just talking to him and as I recall this to write about it, I believe I can smell my parents; each had a distinct odor that was theirs and it became mine to carry with me until my mind gave up it's amazing ability to recall minutia; really, really important minutia.

As I listened to Chris and we commented to each other how good it was to hear each others voices again I have to laugh at the trick our phones were playing on our minds.  Just for a few minutes as we spoke I was sure Chris was really in my earshot, like on the other side of the kitchen table.  I would have been drinking tea with him had he really been there.  He would have been chomping away on one of Lyn's freshly made peanut butter cookies and nursing  coffee I suspect.  And now I sense I'm experiencing double speak in this blog of mine.  But, maybe not.  Maybe this real mind of ours has invented these virtual gadgets to make it easier for us to use our minds all the time and our senses are just obeying our mind and it's creations by being able to experience our fellow minds more constantly and at greater distances than ever before.

Say what?  Now back to you Chet.

Brinkley.

"Green side Up"

OK.  I'm posting a lot lately.  Seems I'm teeming with thoughts that need some symbols around them so the casual observer can see into the beast.  I'm thinking about this most unusual August in Northwestern Minnesota, at least on our farm, between doing lint inspections in my belly button, working this years wonderful garden with Lyn, moving the cows between paddocks and chatting with drop-ins at the Richwood Farmer's Market.  I don't remember an August like this since I lived in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska in the early 1970's.  Temperatures in the 70s in Minnesota in August can make one wonder what's up.  This past week we've been pretty dry, not so unusual for August, but the temperatures being relatively cool this August does make me wonder about climate change.  So, has the climate in Minnesota changed since I was a kid living with my parents in White Bear Lake through the 1960's?  How long does it take to grow a "climate" anyway.

I first heard the term "green side up" while working with a biologist named Carl Madsen.  Carl wasn't a fan of Industrial Agriculture in the late '70s when I first met him and his fellow habitat restoration buffs.  They were working the area of Minnesota I now live in and collectively they were working with farmers and others in this area to restore wetlands and grasslands primarily for ducks.  Sure they knew they were benefiting all sorts of little live things with their mantra and dogma to retard the declining numbers of ducks in Minnesota and the region (they knew it was happening everywhere, but they were keen on focusing in the area they lived in).  Carl was a great salesman for the idea that doing more for ducks had to happen off protected Federal and state lands and had to involve private landowners who owned drained wetlands and plowed ground that they might be willing to set back into a more natural situation than corn, soybeans and wheat. 

So, the idea of keeping the 'greenside up' came from their dogma of cooperative ideas generating better stewardship of the land in areas where ducks used to have adequate wetlands and uplands during the breeding season to do what ducks are supposed to do up north.  Eventually the ideas of these few hayseeds spread to a nationwide program of habitat restoration within the US Fish and Wildlife Service and became known as the Partners for Wildlife Program.  But I digress....

My point in all this finger pecking I'm doing tonight is to linger on this idea of the "green side up" in relation to some pretty radical weather we've seen across the US and the world lately.  Sure, severe weather on any given day is not an indication that global warming has arrived, but I'm thinking and writing here more about the patterns we're supposed to expect based upon findings by climatologists that we have increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to a point where climate patterns or weather events are likely to change in ways that are detrimental to our well being, no less everything else on earth.  Green side up is now a great way to think about it's corollary, brown side down or better still, carbon sequestered rather than burned and/or released into the atmosphere as CO2.

What's this thing about the arctic permafrost melting.  Seems to me there is a huge amount of methane stored under that permafrost and methane is more serious as a global warming agent that CO2.  There isn't any serious number of folks living on permafrost you know.  So who's going to notice when the tundra starts belching methane into the atmosphere at a rate that makes the methane released by all the  cows on the planet barely a fart in the bucket.

Having lived in Montana a good long time and not that long ago, I can't help but think about all those Rocky Mountain glaciers that are melting like marshmallows over an open fire.  I wonder if my pals and family in Montana might find their backyards warming up faster in the summer.  Hey, think of those glaciers as huge ice cubes dropping cold air down those headwaters into valleys and prairie areas.  Less glaciers has to mean less of that cold air sinking down.  And less reflective ice in those heads also means faster warming of mountains by sunlight.  Collectively doesn't that spell some pretty warm days in Western Montana during the summer than in the good old days?

Lets not get into Somalia and Kenya right now, OK?  We're talking about a migration of people away from some pretty serious drought that, across the board in Africa, China, Texas+, and elsewhere, looks like a pattern that spells serious trouble for local folks with spill over effects on others: like moi.  And, anyway, why are all those Mexicans crossing the boarder into the US of A anyway?  Worse yet, think of all the cops we've put on that boarder to keep them out.  How about the conflicts in Somalia?   Ever stop to think about why they raise poppies in Afghanistan?  Drought, that's why.  Any conflict going on in that country that hits close to home?  Three guesses why China is building some really big dams.  Sure hydropower, but also to stop some of the water leaving China because there is less of it coming down the pike.  Yup, I suspect the issues in Tibet are about water shortages too.  Crap, man, Pakistan is one of the driest places in the world and India is building dams to keep the water from going to Pakistan.  Wonder if that is a climatological iron curtain between those two countries.  I think humans get pissed when the climate goes south.  What do you think?

I'm thinking 'green side up' has come full circle for me, but what to do about global warming is still a bit out of sight for most of us.  For now I'm going to keep grass on this farm and do less driving in my GMC Subdivision.  I do wish our government under Obama would be more aggressive in implementing change in it's purchases of climate friendly buildings, vehicles, etc., etc.  Well, maybe after the election, right?  What the hell, when in doubt buy local food, that'll help.

When in doubt, keep the green side up.

Once Upon a Time in August

Most days on Blue Moon Farm are great days.  Lately there have been some exceptionally great days even if it's not clear to me the difference between "great" and "exceptionally great".  But, here goes...

First, in Minnesota, August is like a curse you know is going to happen to you.  You learn to expect August each summer like a dog expects fleas or ticks.  One day, let's say, July 31st, you're cruising along having a gay old time doing summer chores in a long sleeve shirt sans T-shirt and sweating up a mild storm, but in general feeling pretty good about 80 degrees and just enough wind to keep to "skits" (as mom used to call them) at bay.  For some reason you check the calender to see when the bull is going to join the heifers and cows and BLAM!!! there it is AUSGUSTA FIRSTA. "Oh Mon Deu" you cry aloud, "August 1st already?" and immediately your paranoia meter jams the needle max right.  Your body and mind start communicating worst case scenarios like temps and humidity getting married at 95 on the Fahrenheit scale.  Somehow this year the actual and the preconceived have not coincided and we have been on holiday for most of August.  That is not just great, it's exceptionally great.

Then, my anticipation of some great fishing in August was bushwhacked by a failure of the engineers at Mercury Outboard Motor Company to communicate with the Oil and Gas industry on a fuel that would actually work in a four-stroke outboard engine.  For the third season in a row, my outboard has croaked on the juice that keeps America in the race; gasoline.  "Nope, ain't fixin' it again" I jeered at the mechanics at J and K Marine in lovely downtown Detroit Lakes, MN.  If I have to be a motor geek to run a tillered 25 HP outboard motor I don't want one.  So, what's so exceptionally great about living in Becker County, Minnesota with it's 400 fishable lakes and owning a boat with an outboard motor that has gummy bears in the carburetor jets?  I get to do something else that's what.  I don't have to feel any obligation to spend two hours rounding up fishing gear, two hours trying to get the lights to work on the boat trailer, one hour untangling rods stuffed in a corner of the basement with last years line, hooks and dehydrated night crawlers on rusting hooks all bound together in a cobweb of Water Gremlin slip sinkers and bobbers.  Exceptionally great too is not having the repeat experience of trying to launch and land an 18 foot Crestliner boat from an antique trailer hitched to a '94 Suburban that when strung out reaches 18X3 or 54 feet in length at a public boat launch designed for a reasonably sized vehicle, a normal sized boat and a standard sized trailer totaling about 40 feet when all are daisy-chained at launch or take out.  Imagine if you will this suburban backed into a relic boat launch up to the back tires, a boat trailer behind it and into the water over the back tires so the boat will float off of it.  Then, try to see an 18 foot boat free-wheeling off that trailer into the lake with a 95 lb. woman holding onto the anchor rope white caps coming straight into the landing ahead of 25 knot winds.  The guy in the drivers seat is Moi and my German wire-haired pointer is running around this Cirque daa China Closet like she's on speed as she alpha females every dog scent ever left at this port.  An exceptionally good day is not having the option to recreate in this manner.

Lyn and I had an exceptionally great day with our customers at the Richwood Farmer's Market today.  Good people stop at farmers markets.  We spend our morning picking and sorting the very best produce our farm grows, packaging it to look delicious, safe and clean, chilling it as needed so it is delivered nearly as fresh as that which we eat at our own table.  We load up our market shelter, a table, some chairs, coolers of produce, a cash box, some bags, a scale and off we go 1.5 miles to Richwood to meet our fellow local food fanatics on their way to their lake homes from Fargo-Moorhead or just regular old local folks like us looking for some August tomatoes or sweet corn.  Imagine the conversations we have with these people as they fondle our offerings.  Imagine me trying to find out what lake they are on and whether they fish or just hang out eating for two days.  Imagine the exchange of coins for the red tomatoes, the 'Half Dozen' ears of corn or the surprise when a majority of our customers like beets.  How about the story today from Jeff of Moorhead that he makes the best liver and onions of anyone, anywhere and yes, he'll take all the onions I have left.  And, "Ooh, by the way Ron, if you have more onions than you need for winter at your house, I'd love to buy a 25 or 50 lb. bag from you.  We'll be coming back over for Labor Day Weekend and I'll pick them up then, if you can spare that many."  And Virginia C. who was searching for pickles for her friend who didn't "raise" a garden this year.  Were we the "Richwood Market" that her husband had called to hold a bag of pickles for her?"  How can you not like these people.  Even the locals coming from 5 to 10 miles away looking for sweet corn at the end of our market session and not bothered a bit if we had 'just ran out'.  I went almost into a seizure four or five weeks ago when a guy came looking for sweet corn; another potatoes, and a woman asking if we had onions.  These requests in June made me realize how badly our food system has failed us.  Everything is always available at Walmart or the other chainstores.  Why wouldn't a farmers market have late summer items just after the frost went out of the ground at 47 degrees north latitude?  We have lost our way a bit in this regard.  But, for me, the sum of this experience is an exceptionally great day.

Amen.

The Clay Oven Caper

I've always liked making bread.  I suspect it's the same as potters throwing pots.  There is something in the formless gooiness of the preparations that takes a mind out of itself and turns the world into a sensual mass ideally suited for a countertop concerto for two hands.  Since finding our anchorage along marsh-front property in Becker County, Minnesota and with three years of engagement in our fertile Blue Moon Garden we have come to the conclusion that a day without homemade bread on the table is a day wasted.  A lingering issue is how to make bread in Minnesota in the summertime without baking the bread and the occupants of the farmhouse, namely; Lyn and I, the parrots and our dog Tess.  A bright idea has found me and the caper goes like this.

Somehow the bread baking has to occur outside the house.  I've heard of Basque sheep herders building their own rock ovens in the mountains of Montana (and elsewhere of course too as Basques have been world travelers since Basques became Basques or so I'm told).  Here, on the White Earth Indian Reservation in Northwestern Minnesota we are blessed with some essentials for making an outdoor baking oven.  Maybe I'm not blessed with ingenuity like the Basques, but that shouldn't keep me from finding the keys to the kingdom of clay oven building.

We live on a glacial ridge loaded with lakes and marshes as I've already mentioned, but also blessed with more glacier tumbled rock than there are fish in the sea.  Ask any farmer from this area if he's ever picked rock before spring plowing and she'll look at you like you barfed up a goldfish.  So, the Basques in the mountains don't have anything on us there.

The name "White Earth" comes from the workings of the glaciers as well.  Under the 9 to 15 inches of nearly black topsoil of this area lies several feet of a whitish clay, slightly loamy subsoil that, although not a pure clay, it is a very suitable base for making adobe.  What would be added after removing some of the pebbles and other minor impurities would be some straw.  Luckily, the normal crop rotations in this area are corn, wheat and soybeans followed by corn, wheat and soybeans ad nosium.... There must be some straw in there somewhere, right?

Now if only the glaciers had left some sandy outwash plains nearby.  Well, shucks if they didn't.  There is no sand on Blue Moon Farm, but within two miles there is a gravel operation with enough sand to fill the new Twins ballpark.

So.  I need some wood according to the recipes I've seen for building and heating an outdoor clay oven.  No shortage of wood here either.  We are situated in the transition zone between the prairie and mixed conifer vegetation types mapped in Minnesota.  Lyn and I heat our little farmhouse primarily with hardwood from our 25 acres of woodland on our 80 acre farm.  There.  The ingredients for constructing a clay oven are available and abundant.  So what's the holdup.  Certainly it's not the bread dough I have waiting in the refrigerator.

No!  It's my lack of confidence that I can pull off this caper without a trusty Basque or Hopi or kiln builder guiding the way.  That's really nonsense when I look at the addition I just added to our house so we had an entry room to take off muddy or wet boots before entering our dining area.  Should be the same skill set as that endeavor was:

0.  Design the project if you have time.
1.  Gather materials.  Then, make a materials list after redundant trips to Menards.
2.  Consider the order for constructing the project after you have some of the work done.
2a. Re do the design.
3.  Throw away all designs and keep working toward the image you have in your minds eye.
4.  Cuss your way through the mistakes.
5.  Start over if necessary.
6.  Get help when things really turn to crap.
7.  Start over.
8.  Hire someone to do it for you.
9.  Go in the house and make bread dough if that's what you're good at.
10.  Wait until the oven is finished by the Basque you imported from Northern Spain or Southern France, depending on your country of origin.
11.  Go outside and throw some bread dough in the oven and wait for the black smoke to come out of the chimney.
12.  That means the College of Cardinals have elected a new pope, and;
13.  Start over....

Well, you know what I mean.   And thus, the title of this post.  Lyn said I can't start anymore projects this year.  I guess that means I have already spent beyond our means on the 'mudroom' and constructing 5 or 6 prototype clay ovens all over the farm might mean further bankruptcy filings for us (we are small scale non-commodities farmers you know).

Stay tuned as this frivolous, carefree episode continues, and please; keep the green side up or remember the old saying; "If it's brown flush it down, if it's green feed it to the cows or make salad out of it."  Let me check my notes on that one again, but I think that's pretty close.

The Blue Moon Farmer-Baker-Not So Basque Clay Oven Builder

The Unplugged Scientist

The Unplugged Scientist drinks his tea on a Saturday morning in the green glow of a rising sun filtered through the flush of summer on his Blue Moon Farm.  How, after so many years of taking things apart, checking their oil (so to speak) and writing tales of how the world works, do I find myself now in the midst of a world view collapse.  Yes, the 'scientist' is supposed to put Humpty Dumpty back to together again after the myriad dissections, but for some reason that doesn't seem to be happening at political levels. 

Let's get serious here.  First, I have no idea what I'm talking about.  Second, I have no idea what I mean by that first paragraph.  Well maybe I do.  I mean, since coming to this farmstead and digging in four years ago, my inner scientist has found himself in a vortex like reversed world view.  I find myself consolidating.  I see things in lumps rather than pieces.  I find myself gathering rather than taking apart.  I don't see "cattails" in a marsh now.  I see a marsh woven with cattails, sedges, Reed canary grass, ....  Our chickens are not, "Ribbons and Curly, or Sophie and Hobbes, but a flock of free ranging omnivores constantly in search of their well being and a south facing building foundation to dust against.  When I go to move the cows to a new paddock I'm walking in a sun-soaked tame grassland supporting cow pies, flies, frogs, hoppers, thistle, fences, cattle, salt skidders, marsh, surrounded by forest, sky, warmth, wind and me; yes me!  Pushing myself through this maize of connectedness and like the wind causing a ripple, albeit, a slight one, in time.

I put on my rubber knee-high boots the other day.  Took to the marsh to check my aquatic insect traps and found that the dragon flies larvae had once again evaded my trapline.  Hummmm.  There I was again, trying to take the system I depend upon apart.  The empty trap was like a sign (about time I get a "sign" around here) signaling; "STOP.  You can't see anything by taking this apart".  Years and years of study and conditioning standing at attention in the marsh with this sign slapping me "smack" in the forehead.  Off in the distance a combine is spewing dust above the neighbor's wheat field as the harvest is underway in every direction except east (Ha! The forest gets in the way of harvest to the east.  Three Cheers for that luck!).  They are taking apart the wheat field, counting their "beans" and putting them in a basket.  Dismantling.  Great word with "man" locked inside it.  We are a beast that takes things apart.  Then, we engineer until we attempt anxiously to reassemble our restless behavior.  We try to make it better with our sliderules (oops those are artifacts now, so I mean our computers) and our ingenuity and what I'll see of that wheat field in a while is a baler going hell bent for election to role up the straw leaving a stubble as frisky as a hog haired brush each bristle pointing to the sun.  How ironic.  Most of the farmers here will fallow those fields for winter hoping to get back in them in spring as soon as the drains move the spring melt to the sandbags protecting Fargo from the annual 100-year flood of the Red River of the North.

We have learned to take it apart, whatever it is.  We believe we are putting it back together again.  (Sorry, Humpty).  Yet each year I find myself in a sulk of inter sadness.  We all feel it.  We all mostly ignore it.  Even politicians feel it, but I have to believe they interpret their feelings as symptoms of the stress of their work and so take analgesics to counter the pain.  Our intuitive emotional fabric is working, but we are trying to fix it with a mis-ID and a pill.  Each year that we take it apart it comes back together a bit shabbier than the last.  But, those incremental bits of difference are almost undetectable and thus the lawmakers and the policy makers fail to fix anything as well.  A scientist worth her salt will take the pieces, thrice examined, shine them against her hypotheses and draw some conclusions.  Not definitive conclusions since by nature science is incremental in its truth telling.  Those conclusions are turned to recommendations and sent up the line for lawmakers, policy makers, and decision makers to deal with.  The result is they take another pill and pass the buck to the future overwhelmed with the complexity of the mouse trap we find ourselves walking into.  Even with their constituents dropping like flies in the human pies we have spread in our wake, the leaders of our communities, our counties, our states, our nation, the world do little more than sidestep the 'pies' for fear of it sticking to their loafers.

I'm going out now.  I'm going to walk outside this post into the fresh air and make a small wrinkle in time again.  On my way, you come too, I'm going to unplug my scientist and lean into the day like a cog in the wheel.

Ah, the greenside is up on Blue Moon Farm.  And it is richly overwhelming....

Hello my fellow Debt Ceiling Refugees.  Is that the correct phase for how I'm feeling about having the American Debt Ceiling increased?  Somehow I feel like I'm on a sinking life boat somewhere between Miami and Cuba in shark infested water, but my president and a bunch of lunatic extremists in Congress have thrown me a cement life preserver with a new Visa Card in the vest pocket. 

Why do us average Americans even have to know about this Debt Ceiling stuff anyway?  It's not like I get to discuss or even know what the options are.  I have two Senators and a District 7 House Rep. there in Washington, DC taking care of me on this matter and we Minnewegians pay them well to tend the chicken coop for us and keep those big bad Republican Wolves away from our free range chickens: Here Little!  Here Red!  Here Riding!  Here Hood!.  All secure and tucked into the coop for the night.  I can rest assured.

Rest Assured?  Rest assured about what?  I don't even know what the Debt Ceiling looks like.  Did Michael What's His Name paint on it or am I thinking of a chapel somewhere in Rome?  I guess I'm supposed to be reassured that the "full faith and confidence" of the world has been restored in our ability to pay back our debts.  But, since when would a guy like me worry about paying back a debt to China or France or O'Canada for that matter, when I'm going down in shark infested water clinging to a cement life preserver with an unsigned credit card in the vest pocket just behind my emergency Acme Thunderer black plastic whistle (only to be used in case of emergency)?  I, being a life-long debt monger (I should have been a fish monger), have never had to worry about paying back my borrowed debts.  If I didn't there was a contract that specifically stated I would be thrust behind bars for eternity if I defaulted.  Hells Bells man, the good old US of A has a nuclear arsenal to back up it's "full faith  and confidence" should we ever have to default.  I mean, to me that says loud and clear: "Hey schmuck, we'll pay you back when we get the cash.  Right now we're in a spiral to hell economy and the Tea Mongers (who are really spouting terrorist tactics while holding us all hostage to their radical position that if we don't curb the spending we won't see God) are trying to slow the economy even more by curbing government spending whilst all their corporate booking agents are holding two trillion dollars in escrow (aka hording shareholders money) because they know the average American (that's me and you unless you're a corporation reading this) doesn't have a dollar to spend on anything besides food, clothing and shelter and many of us low lifes don't even have money for more than one of those three items.

OK.  So, we less than upper class folks are busted.  The wealthy 1% now own 70% of American wealth.  Uncle Sam has his hands tied behind his back so he can't press the keys at the ATM.  THEY are cutting my social security and my annuity by not allowing any increases in cost of living and more cuts are promised by this new law.  God knows the cost of living isn't going up anyway,  according to the latest poll conducted by the 1% that own 70% of the wealth. 

I think this is a perfect lead into the title of this post.  I've been contemplating turning my bull, Joey Mauer, in with my cows so he can breed them and I can get rich on the seven or eight calves they might produce next spring.  See, I like my calves to slide onto a green carpet on the opening day of their ballgame.  When I lived in Montana and I wasn't the cowboy I am now, I observed many ranchers calving in February and never really understood why calves wanted to be born in a Montana blizzard, why a cow would like going into labor when she was at the peak of her annual malnourishment and why a rancher would want to participate in pulling a breached calf or even just watching  calves be born when the wind is howling, the snow is flying sideways and their breathe is freezing their mustache to their nose hairs.  There certainly was a reason for choosing February in Montana, but I see no reason for anything before mid-May in Northwestern Minnesota.  Unless.  Unless you are raising cows for the commodities market and that's the best timing for getting calves ready for the finishing feedlots in Kansas or Nebraska.  Well, I raise grass fed beeves and I don't know if I have a market from one day to the next, one month to the next or one year to the next.  So, why not have calves on this farm in mid-May after the cows have fed on green grass for at least two weeks, the temperatures have moderated somewhat and spring blizzards are at least three or four days apart rather than non-stop in February.  So, I'm thinking tomorrow I'll let Joey in with "the girls" and that'll be that until next May. 

And of course this brings me full circle.  Yesterday I was locked in a debate with myself over the National Debby Sealing and today I'm all flustered trying to figure out if Joey should be with "the girls" now or in a few days.  And before I knew it all my troubles were over.  The National Kentucky Derby was passed and President Obama signed it into law and tomorrow Joey Mauer the Angus bull will step into the greenest pasture he has seen since last August.  His upper lip will be doing curls like a weight lifter and life will go on. 

I love farming.  I made this procreative bovine decision without any negotiations with President Obama or Congress, there was no Bill to be signed into law and I'm not in prison for defaulting on my debt.  I do have seven grandchildren though, and now I'm wondering; just how I explain "debt ceiling" to them.  I have to find a way to tell them what we are putting off for them to pay for.  They are the ones who really got stuck with the Bill as far as I can see and this little old farm I'm loosing to the bank one day at a time is surely not going to be a nuclear arsenal they can brandish in front of their World contending to be broke.  Maybe they won't have to worry about it.  Maybe by then the world will be one nation under China with liberty and justice for all.

Green side is up and it sure is purdy....

No, I'm not strangling that calf.  It's not at all interested in being photographed and I didn't want it out of my grasp, so to speak.  This little guy had a bout of scours and pneumonia earlier this summer and he's just back from the Vet's shop in this photo. 

Boy, it's been a while since I've done this; posted.  I've actually been off trying my hand at setting up a website for this blog, it's own domain name, the works.  Well, it didn't work.  Even my trusty iMac and iWeb failed me in this effort.  I mean I got totally crashed out trying this.  Sure it cost it me plenty to purchase all the gookimpucky it takes to do that, but just now I went to GoDaddy and cancelled the whole works.  I even cancelled the website for the farm that was really nicely done if I do say so myself.

Here's the rub.  I just couldn't justify my ego any longer.  I mean, why else would someone go to all that trouble unless it was making him rich and famous or at least one of the above.  Why am I still doing this blog on "Bloddger"?  I have no idea.  At least five of you are following my  writing adventure, but to be sure, I'm not sure I'm following myself all that well. 

Sure it's fun to goof off with a Blog like this and it does get me to sit down and drop some nonsense on the page for Posterity's sake, but I'm not sure Posterity reads this stuff.  At least Blogspot is free and someone other than me has to maintain it.

So, for a while I'll keep this blog going and try to make it interesting, helpful or useless; whatever strikes you as correct. As you can see there is no rhyme nor reason for the timing of my posts.  If I was a real blogger I'd do one everyday.  I'm a fake blogger.

By the way, the calf is doing fine and I ended up calling him "Pneumo" even if he's destined for a trip to the Ballpark in a couple of years.

Ta ta, chit chatty and all that.  It's summertime lets go fishing or do something outside.  Since its late I might just turn on the Twins game as they are in LA tonight and I suspect it's the Angels night to win.  Maybe I'll think of something important to write about, like the passage of a Bill by Congress to raise the debt ceiling.  Say What?  I think they ought to pass a law that whatever has been biting me these past few days knocks it off.  My legs look like little groups of cells have blown up and left bright red circles under my skin.  Itch.  Damn straight they itch.  That's how I know it's summer.  Sometimes I hate antigen/antibody reactions.

Farmer Ron

Linchpin

Poems come out of nowhere sometimes.  The farm is a great place to find poems laying around in daydreams.  Here's one that jumped out at me as I realized the work of a linchpin and how vulnerable we are to the failure of such a simple little device.  Somehow in the middle of maintaining my 1950 Allis WD, I was reminded of the value of elders in the same light.  Hope you enjoy farm work as much as I do and appreciate, as I do, how long it takes to be any good at it.

 Ron


Linchpin

The winter discontents.
Even my old Allis-Chalmers
Has seen better days
Piling snow from roads,
Alleys, corrals, stock pens
Like igloos uninhabited.

Looking down while skidding snow
Allis firing on all four,
I notice the right front wheel
Wobbling; an old man
On a bad knee like me.
I need a warming day
To unhub and pull the linchpin.
The threat of extended time
Disassembled in mid-winter is worrisome.
Once pulled the whole tractor
Waits while the bearings and races
Spindle and seals are declared
Safe or sorry.

My father died an elder not so long ago.
He took his time ending it all.
His life, one of projects, skills,
Precision thought through to the end.
I knew some of his friends, not many.
He said they all died before
He could wear himself out.
So he carried their weight forward;
The things they knew
So he didn't have to learn everything. 
Contacts are bridges;
Knowledge needed to repair, restore create anew.

He left me hardware and things his hands befriended.
He welded blindly his last year or so;
Something scarred that aiming eye retina.
He took aim dropped the hood
Sparks flew, twains did meet well enough it seemed.
As I thought again of doing without him
I realized the questions unasked anew,
Needed in days ahead as I would try
To repair, restore and create without him.
The web of characters in his working life
Gone with him that day he died.
That day he became memories incomplete,
A frame of lifeless parts disconnected,
Disassembling.

I  reassemble the wheel
All parts good enough for another chore.
I spin on the lock nut,
Greasy like me,
Reach for the linchpin and hesitate;
And begin to understand a life.

Farming: It's a Dirty Job

I'm stalled in my rocking chair looking out over a sunrise coloring a marsh and distant woodlot as a mild tempered Nemo.  Absolutely watercolor inspiring corals washing the limbs of black-trunked and spread-limbed hundred year old oaks serving as backdrop to frosted willows, sedges and cattails.  The last blizzard left all vertically stacked straw and round bales, berms and drifts throwing shadows around like blue brush strokes depicting receding hills in a foothills painting.  How can I just stare into this empty minded and yet enjoyable confusion it creates without taking on my coverall costume and heading out.   If this depiction of a farm can evoke such white silence how can I think of this occupation as 'a dirty job'?

Those three mounds by the corral that reminding me of the Three Sisters of Oregon's Cascade Range are really piles of manure.  How can I see manure under such majestic mountains.  What kind of metaphor is a pile of cow pies capped in crystalline white?  Such is the irony of farming.  I know the cattle are taking their time coming out of the shelter this morning in this stillness.   Windless mornings with temps in the teens below zero don't inspire Angus cattle to get alone like little doggies.  Now, as the sun peeks into the shelter and begins to warm their sides and melt the frost from their backs they'll mosey out to the bale ring and begin the routine of grinding huge mouthfuls of meadow hay for later cud chewing.  The bull calf and the young bull will probably lead and it'll take almost as many minutes to empty the shelter of their black bodies as there are cows in the string headed to the bale.  Left behind is a growing pile of urine soaked and manure topped straw for me to fork out into the growing pile in the corral.  Recovering from surgery I've been avoiding heavy lifting, but sneaking in some manure flinging to keep the shelter from heaping up with organic debris left by those sun to grass to meat conversion critters we call cows is another form of barn dancing.  I'll fetch a couple of bales of straw later in the day and top the shelter accumulation with a  pitchfork spreading of straw, some of which the cows will eat when they return; most of which they'll trod on and leave their token 10 pound piles of twice eaten rumen composted  hay.

Lyn will do a similar effort with the chickens in the make-shift garage stall barn.  The straw she has spread around on the concrete floor is a scratch field for the winter-bound hens.  She entertains them with corn and oat scratch and household left over greens by scattering them in the strawscape and encouraging the hens to scratch about as if they were on the prairie or savanna looking for crawlers or seeds as they free range their way about the homestead and windbreak.  Lyn is constantly turning the straw to encourage the chicken droppings to become a duff with the straw and make a compost starter for taking out during the January Thaw she anticipates like folks in Seattle wait for sunshine this time of year.   For this we get to collect eggs.  We eat all we can and hand cartons through car windows as neighbors come and go after checking in on us to make sure we are alright.  Seems a fair exchange.  Eggs for occasional human contact.  This may be how farmers fend off the sickness going around the townsfolk.  Casual interchange at arms length in the country does not spread the flu virus like a nice walk about in Walmart pushing a cart and fondled items that have been well coated by virus toting hands.

In spring I'll hook up the spike harrow and go about the winter feed yards scattering the manure from the randomly placed bales rings and the round bales the cows have consumed.  They do waste some hay, maybe 50 pounds per round bale, but when scattered by the spike harrow with the accumulation of manure it makes a nice composting material for the winter feedlot area.  As I go about this chore after the rainy season in spring the dust will billow out behind me and the straw and manure will be rolled around and around as I go over it several times with the harrow.  When finished I'll have done the job of a giant dung beetle rolling balls of manure all over the two or three acre site.  Throwing a cyclone seeder over my shoulder filled with annual ryegrass I'll seed it down and jump on the Allis WD again and harrow it all together into one big happy family we call a pasture seeding.  By late summer when the cows have been around the pasture paddocks two or three times or when the rains come hard and I need to protect the paddocks,  I'll bring the cows into this area and let them graze for a day or two and they will be joyful, almost exuberant for the time they have access to it.

Lyn will load the skid with pre-composted straw from beneath the hens as soon as spring breaks too when the hens can go out into the snowless

Year after year we do these chores of collecting and piling animal waste to be stirred or spread over our pasture and garden soil.  It's a dirty job and yes in our case somebody has to do it.  All farmers do it; at least all farmers who are caretaking soil do it.  The model of course is Mother Nature.  Good farmers have seen how nothing is wasted in nature.  She is 100% efficient, we are not.  Over the eons, the process of life and death, deposit and decay has affected a diversity of living organisms to fill every role in the recycling of life at it's end ensuring that life can spring again from the dirt.  Lives that seem to show up smiling, hungry and  just in time for chicken and dumplings or a rack of beef rib roast surrounded by a rainbow of vegetables.  What could be finer than such community on a cold winter's day in January or after a day of screaming kids chasing dragon flies and itching mosquito bites in July.

And Suddenly 2011 at Our Place

The 'dome' has collapsed.  Not the Vikings Metrodome, the dome over our farm.  We are wrapped in snow after this last blizzard and the farm is a clean sheet.  Slowly Lyn and I dig our way out.  My recent surgery has not helped, but caution prevails as this healing is more to me than the scaping away of this white patena.  This is 'our place' as folks around here say and topic of my work here today.

I recall as best I can all the places I have been in these 62 years.  If having been somewhere makes it part of your 'place' I believe I have exhausted the definition.  Maybe like most biologists I should tally all the places I've been in my life; my career, my curiosities and consider those romps as my "home range".  That feels better immediately as there is a connotation or requirement, maybe, in defining "home range" that the ranger get something from such bounds to sustain himself.  I certainly have acquired sustenance in my range.  Think of my personal home range then as that which is contained within the lines connnecting,  Alaska, Minnesota, Virginia, Florida, Texas, California, Oregon, Washington, Montana and back to Alaska.  Good grief; that's not a home range, is it?  Appears to be more of a trip on the 'wayward bus'.

So, how about this home place as Place.  Much better.  I'm contented immediately when I imagine it.  Sure, I trek to Brainerd for surgery, even complete dozens of runs to White Bear Lake to assist my parents since moving to the farm.  Detroit Lakes and Fargo and runs to Bemidji seem to round out the range of travels from the home place and certainly the bulk of our sustenance is obtained within this tighter circle than that obscure home range I circled above.  And it would not be fair to say I'm a significant user of the Mississippi River Watershed just because I make occasional trips to Bemidji or White Bear Lake, but like Schoolcraft and others, I did look, walk and pee on the other side of the Divide.

A Watershed.  Make it third or fourth order if you can, but narrow it down if you want to call a place the "home place".  Lyn and I focus on the Buffalo River of the Red River of the North Watershed and it instills a confidence.  We just borrow those other nearby watersheds keeping the same 'rules' in play as we cross those minor divides between 'sheds.   I'll consider "Rules for the Watershed" in another blog sometime if you don't mind.

I can see the Carlson's Place south of us from our livingroom windows.  I am aware of them.  Danielson's, Winter's, Somdahl's Thompson's, Christensen's all are neighbors of 'our place'.  We all affect the watershed in some sorted ways, but we are a unit within the unit and thus have an awareness hopefully, that we affect our place as a community, likes ants upon and within the mound.  Being social like ants we ought to work together to make our mound, this place, functional and sustaining.  Why else be here with these folks?  Why contribute that which we have brought from afar to ensure a durable mound, a solidarity, a commitment to quality, a sense of well being?

Our neighbors will be out shoveling the snow from the collapse of our 'dome' today as we will.  It's time to dig out, to move some fresh feed to the cows, to air out the barn-coop for the chickens and the rabbits.  We have been sealed in this layer of white for two days and an urgency builds from within to stack a ga-zillion crystalline jewels out of the pathway, out from upon our slumbered hesitation to get back to work.

When the 30 MPH wind subsided and the sun came out in dropping temperatures yesterday afternoon the cows made their first move out of the shelter of the corral and windbreak.  Quietly 839 led them across the marsh to the winter feeding pasture.  A string of black beads plodding in line pushing knee-deep fresh snow.  Black on white my mind was confused by what was moving; cows or snowscape.  I watched from behind the breathe fogging my glasses as the herd moved, not to the bale ring to feed, but into the young aspen, willow, chokecherry woodlot that serves as a windbreak for winter feeding out from the corral.  There was the usual shoving and milling by those rotund black, legless bovines.  Quickly they settled more than I expected.  They had found a comfort in the sheltering woodlot, turned their backs to the sun and stood chewing their cuds as if there was nowhere else to be for a time.  I could sense the bubble of heat the sun was creating around them.  I had felt it on winter ski or snowshoe trips.  That spot where suddenly there is a calm and a warmth in the frigid air that causes a hesitation for the body to capture some micro-burst of solar heat not to be found in the shade or open this time of year.  They had defined a place for themselves if only for an hour and although I felt some need to go out and count them, kick the bale ring of snow, mill with them, I knew anything I did would be a disturbance and unwelcomed as I raised their instinctive fear levels and spoiled their pilgrimage to their heat sink.



It's a good day when I'm connected to our place like this.  It makes me want to layer myself with gear from the hallway closet, take up the shovel and get out there in it.  Do a little facelift if you will.  Make a dent, a very small and renewable invasion into the headwaters of the Buffalo River where I dwell for a moment connected to our place and everything else sensible to a transient being human.

White side up, for now.