This is a great blog post by Chris Chinn, a farmer from Missouri. Her number one concern is the welfare of her animals!
Did You Know McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and Sonic All Support HSUS?.
Chris does a great job of explaining her family’s reasons for adopting modern pork production practices!!!
Just a few pictures to get everyone updated on the happenings around our farm lately. We are just finishing side-dressing the nitrogen on the corn. We are currently cultivating and ridging the corn for gravity irrigation. We are also in the process of getting irrigation motors ready for irrigation season and hauling some of last years corn to our local elevator to sell.
Sometimes I think Farmers get a bad rap and are accused of being
against the whole locavore, grow your own food movement. I personally do not think anything could be further from the truth. Fact is that Farmers like to grow
things. I know, ironic isn’t it, a farmer likes to get down and plant things in the dirt, nurture it, and then eat it.
We have had a garden as long as I can remember and will always continue to do so. I remember as a kid helping plant the garden and eventually, it became my little farm as I grew up. I have always loved having fresh vegetable to eat, I just wish there w
as a way to grow them in the winter when the wind chill is -20. See, I am a whateverisavailablethatisgoodforyouavore. I grow the garden in the summer and my wife sometimes goes to the local farmers market, then in the winter I rely on the southern and western US to grow the vegetables and fruits that we enjoy during that time of year.
So, since we are talking about gardening and growing your own food, what have you done this year to grow your own food? In our garden this year we have 4 varieties of tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, eggplant, jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, green beans, yellow waxy beans, asparagus, broccoli, pickling cucumbers, burpless cucumbers, acorn squash, butternut squash, butttercup squash, zucchini, yellow zucchini, gourds, pumpkins, and some sweetcorn. Let us know what you have growing and why you grow it. What do you do in the months you don’t have fresh vegetables and fruit to pick? By all means, during theses months that the farmers market are open, go for it and go local. In the middle of winter, let’s be thankful we are blessed with a phenomenal agricultural and transpor
tation system that allows us to enjoy all of these things year round no matter where we are located. Count our blessing that we are a country that can feed itself and feed itself well.
This is a picture of some of our soybeans pushing thru the soil. The power of the plant is amazing!!!
Spring is always a time of re-newal and new beginnings on the farm as we plant crops and wait for them to grow and mature into harvest, but this year we have a new beginning in the addition of our third child.
It has been quite a year for us. New house before Christmas, finishing the basement in it, and now adding another piece to our family puzzle. Delaney was born Monday morning and came in at a just perfect 7 lbs 3 ounces. Big brother and big sister are both thrilled. It is nice to have them fighting over holding a baby, than the normal brother/sister fighting. It is almost like our 6 yr old grew up overnight when you see him settle down to sit and hold the baby. There are not many times in life you see him sitting and not moving unless he is sleeping. Our daughter of course is a minnie mom, hovering over the baby every second and talking to her just like the conversations she would have with mom’s tummy before Delaney was born.
We have received quite a little rain lately and it rained all day Monday which allowed me to focus on the moment of having our third child instead of worrying about getting the corn and soybeans in the ground. It is amazing how quickly our moisture has changed around here. In Early April we had been put back in a drought, and have now had over 6 inches of rain in the last couple weeks.
We put 500 acres of corn in the ground before the rain which is sitting in the ground waiting for the sunshine. So, on our farm this week will have the new beginning of a new baby and the new beginning of another crop year. May you all be blessed this season as we proceed through another crop year and another year of life!
“A conversation about ag”, not in person, but on the internet. Twitter, no less. I was skeptical at first when reading of #agchat, and at that time hashtags were the least of my worries as I was just trying to figure out how to tweet. I remember watching the first few conversations and thinking wow, this works, no facial expressions, no body language, just a forum to discuss the ins, outs, good, bad, new, old, trendy, tried, true, experimental, organic, conventional, genetically modified, local, large, small, diversified, specialized, organized, unorganized, independent ways of agriculture with consumers and other producers!!!
Here we are a year later and that first little tweet about having a conversation has turned into a one celebration of the AgChat Foundation, a continuing discussion held every Tuesday evening, offshoots of it all over twitter, and a group of people who have a passion for telling the story of ag and the belief that empowering others in ag to tell their story is one of their most important missions.
I was fortunate enough to attend the first conference in Chicago last August and came away more sure of myself than ever that our “Farm Story” needed to be told. I also came away knowing that I am an #agnerd, although, not as much as others!
I hope you all take a look at the #agchat website and gain an understanding of where it is going and what is happening. I have gotten to know many of the founders through twitter, facebook, etc. and have met them in person at the conference. Although we all have met only once in person, or maybe a few times at most, we have been united by a common cause which is to do the right thing for agriculture, and tell our stories. I have said it before and I will say it again. Who is telling your Farm Story?
Happy birthday #AgChat!
Here is the third item for National Ag Week. Enter your guess in the comments on our Blog and I will post the answer tomorrow sometime. For a bonus, see if you can name the attachment on the front of the machine and what crop or crops it is used for.
In celebration of National Ag Week I am asking you all to explain what piece of equipment is in the picture. Today is National Ag Day. The county where we live in Nebraska mirrors our state in that Animal agriculture is our largest industry. It is responsible for 1 out of every 3 jobs in our area.
To guess, please respond on the blog with the year it was produced and the make and model. Happy National Agriculture Day and good luck with your guesses!
Alright, here is the first piece of equipment for National Agriculture Week. Comment on this post with your guess as to what this is. I will approve all posts tommorrow sometime, so you will not see your comment or anyone else’s until then. As you can see, we got a nice little snowfall last night also.
To make this more educational, I will add a detailed description of the item tomorrow including the cost of the equipment to give everyone an idea of how capital intensive agriculture has become. Good Luck!
This week is National Agriculture Week. Tuesday of this week is National Ag Day. In celebration of this week, I will be posting pictures of equipment on our farm, both historic, and modern. Please enter a guess as to what it is as a comment on our blog. I will approve all of the posts the day after you all enter them and we will have a good laugh at all of the responses. Please do not be afraid to respond as this is supposed to be educational for those of you who are not close to agriculture, or maybe we are involved in a different type of agriculture.
Make sure you take a look at the fun farm facts as we celebrate this week. In my county here in Nebraska, agriculture is directly and indirectly responsible for 1 out of every 3 jobs. Animal agriculture is the largest economic sector of our economy in both our county and the State of Nebraska. Happy National Agriculture Week!
Days of the Weeks 