McClary Hill Farm

Here’s a link to Alice’s most recent NHPR essay… she’s going native!

http://www.nhpr.org/post/different-look-what-it-means-be-new-hampshire-native

A couple of thoughts to ponder, one from South Africa and originally in the Bantu language and the other from a time not too different from our own.

“Yu, u, nobuntu.”

Translated by Leymah Roberta Gbowee to mean,

“I am what I am because of who we are.”

“It is all-essential to the continuance of our healthy national life that Republicans should recognize this community of interest among our people. The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us….”

Theodore Roosevelt, 1903.

This from January 25, 1936.

1936!

“The Plant-Patent Business is taking right hold, apparently.  We know a man who received a birthday present of a nice little azalea.  Tied around the azalea’s stem, like a chastity belt, was a metal tag from Bobbink & Atkins, reading, “Asexual reproduction of this plant is illegal under the Plant Patent Act.” It was Number 147.  Our friend, a man of loose personal habits, ripped the tag off angrily, fed it to his dachshund puppy, and sent the plant to a friend in Connecticut with instructions to bed it down warmly next to an old buck hydrangea.”

I can’t think of a more civil example of civil disobedience.

E.B., while maybe a little unclear on the distinction between sexual and asexual reproduction, knew something was coming and that it just-wasn’t-right.

Genetically engineered plants and seeds — today’s equivalent of the “patented” plants of E.B.’s time — are clever. It takes a special thought process to think of splicing fish DNA into a strawberry plant in order that the fish’s  naturally occuring antifreeze might offer protection against frost to the plant.  I wonder what E.B.’s friend of loose personal habits would have thought had he been instructed to plant the strawberry next to an aquarium in hopes that something squishy might happen with the resident arctic char.

Why do we need to engineer plants? What good comes from interspecies transfer of genetic material? What I’m talking about doesn’t happen in nature and has nothing to do with hybridization or Gregor Mendel. In the final analysis, most of us would, if we were thinking about it, get worn out by the mental gymnastics required to think this is a good idea.

If we examine our needs, we may discover we really have a list of wants.  Genetic manipulators might think it neat, and it is clever, and profitable, to have a frost resistant strawberry, but do we really need a strawberry when it frosts? Or might that be a “want?” I’m suspecting that a strawberry that won’t freeze will likely taste like a tomato that comes in a cellophane wrapper in December. In December I enjoy the thought of an August tomato far more than the ingestion of a pinkish imposter from the store shelf.

I save seeds.   I think it is important. I avoid GMO’s (genetically modified organisms) and defend the efficiency of organic principles and the role farmers can play in the creation of stronger communities. I am tempted to join the protesters on Wall St., not because I think rich people are bad. No, nor do I think the protesters are moochers looking for a handout. Unfortunately some of the priorities in our society are unsustainable. The consolidation of power, wealth and influence into fewer and fewer hands is one example. And unfortunately, genetic engineering has the potential to further concentrate food production into fewer and fewer hands as well.  By now the tales of Monsanto suing farmers for seeds that have been contaminated with patented plant pollen are well known.  When food engineers in white coats control all of our seeds we will be, quite simply, in trouble and possibly hungry.

Plants need to be open source. People must have the ability to feed themselves should they choose to do so. It is one thing to voluntarily pay a provider for the service of growing, harvesting and distributing  seeds or for the growing and processing of food, but it is another to be mandated, through the elimination of options, to pay for artificially created forms of life.

I think E.B., writing from his salt marsh farm in Maine, would have been greatly concerned about how far we have come since 1936.

P.S. Here’s an article, not sure about the source, but the content seems fairly straight forward about a legal case re: Monsanto and canola (rapeseed).

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/12/06/percy-schmeiser-farmer-who-beat-monsanto.aspx?e_cid=20111130_DNL_art_A4

Below is a statement developed in 1998 by a group of scientists in the early days of genetic engineering. I wonder what happened?

The Wingspread Consensus Statement on the Precautionary Principle, 1998
The release and use of toxic substances, the exploitation of resources, and physical alterations of the environment have had substantial unintended consequences affecting human health and the environment. Some of these concerns are high rates of learning deficiencies, asthma, cancer, birth defects and species extinctions; along with global climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion and worldwide contamination with toxic substances and nuclear materials.

We believe existing environmental regulations and other decisions, particularly those based on risk assessment, have failed to protect adequately human health and the environment – the larger system of which humans are but a part.

We believe there is compelling evidence that damage to humans and the worldwide environment is of such magnitude and seriousness that new principles for conducting human activities are necessary.

While we realize that human activities may involve hazards, people must proceed more carefully than has been the case in recent history. Corporations, government entities, organizations, communities, scientists and other individuals must adopt a precautionary approach to all human endeavors.

Therefore, it is necessary to implement the Precautionary Principle: When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.

In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.

The process of applying the Precautionary Principle must be open, informed and democratic and must include potentially affected parties. It must also involve an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action.

Looked into the yard today and spied three unusual circles.  The circles were arrayed neatly in a triangular pattern.  They were perfectly round, like the impression left by the feet of some heavy object. What could it be? What force of nature, earthly or … unearthly, could leave such marks? Who would know how this came to be?

Mojo knows!

I opened the door this morning and November stormed in.

It had not been obvious that she was even around,

until now.

A week ago, her younger sister, October,

had played older-colder-dress-up

for Hallowe’en.

Gave me a start,

but her rustling russet leaves peeking from under,

gave her away.

And when her cloak melted,

 November riled up a wind swirling her to the sky.

October was gone.

“Good riddance,” she says huffing to the kitchen for the kettle.

“Too pretty, all gold and garnet and garish last gasp green.

And just not serious enough.”

Dropping her chin to level a look

over her quickly cooling cup she smiled,

“Now we get serious.”

The cavalcade of small animals continues around here.

Mini is doing well, still eating well, starting to eat grass and she even gets around a little better.

Got milk?

Sometimes she runs down to the barn in the morning on her way to her morning meal with Mom. She is kind of “hunchy” and looks crabbed and stiff, but she seems happy enough and LOVES to be talked to and petted.

Here’s a sound file of Mini sucking (she still gets a bottle) and Mojo slurping up his bowl of milk and grain. Mini and Mojo Dinner time 11_14_11  These are the sounds of enthusiasm.

Mojo is an extremely happy pig.  He has caught on lately in the growth department, he is almost as big as his siblings now.  He comes down to the barn most mornings, provided he’s not too busy with his breakfast.

A couple of days ago, when he wasn’t annoying his bovine sister, Mojo spent chore time walking the fenceline that separated him from his porcine siblings.  Mojo and one of the bigger piglets walked back-and-forth side-by-side on their respective sides of the fence. At first glance it looked kind of cute… piggy bonding, if you will. But there was something a little ominous about it, they weren’t boinging around like playful piglets.  They were pacing in a very workmanlike way.

I had gone back to chores when I heard the squealing.

The bigger piglet had shimmied under the fence and was proceeding to hand Mojo’s piggish pride to him.  I ran out, shooed the bully piglet back under the fence and tended to the scraped and bleeding Mojo. Mojo didn’t want to leave. He had a sort of “put me back in, coach” demeanor to him, but he needed to head for the showers.  His day was done.

I’m happy to report that his scrapes and cuts have healed up and that he is still helpless when presented with a good belly rub.

The future is bright for Mojo, I’m still not sure about Mini.

Frequently I am presented with things that I can’t explain.

Here are a couple.

Mac-Ram-e

He did this himself -- all without the assistance of an opposable thumb. Farm chic, no?

Some of my chickens have developed, what I can only call, incontinence.  In the morning I find eggs that have dropped out of them overnight while they are roosting. Three mornings ago I found this.

That is an egg that fell perfectly on end and impaled itself on the handle of the feeder. I couldn't do it if I tried, but chicken did it on her first try.

I had a package of mouse poison — no, it’s not organic — under the sink in the kitchen.  Apparently the mice couldn’t wait for me to put the tasty little bricks out.  They helped themselves.

And a truck face. I bet there’s a website with nothing but pictures of car and truck faces.

Well it’s not ALL planted, but the kale, three varieties, has sprouted in the new greenhouses!  More stuff planted, but not yet up.  Pretty exciting stuff (for a farmer).

Kale in neat little rows

5 weeks old. October 9, 2011

Some pictures to show how the piglets are coming along.  Today they are 5 weeks old and they are growing well.  There are 13 in total.

Piglets at 5 weeks

They are being raised on Mom and are supplemented daily with three to four pounds of organic pig mash mixed up in 2 or 3 gallons of yogurt.  The yogurt is fermented here on farm using skim milk left over from butter making.

Newborns. September 2, 2011