Jim goes on to tell the story of the day his middle son, Seth (who is in charge of the family’s pig project), said to him, “If I raised more pigs, maybe I wouldn’t have to get a regular job when I grow up.”
“It was like a light had gone on for Seth. He saw that life was about choices and decisions.”
Jim also says it’s been interesting to watch the network evolve. “Our perception of reality has changed. When we first began the group, we wanted to change the world, but we learned that that’s a big job, and it takes patience. We are, at least, changing our own lives. And we are beginning to make connections to the non-farming public. At our last pasture walk of the season, we had many nonfarming visitors. It was great!”
Setting Your Broad Goal
As I mentioned above, the holistic goal I’m talking about is actually a three-part affair:
1. Quality of life. What is it you want from your life? What would you like for your children and for your community? This goal is about happiness, health, wisdom, aesthetics, and culture.
Our decision to sell our farm in Minnesota and move back to the West was largely based on our quality-of-life statement. We wanted to be closer to family. We yearned for the vistas of the West, where a hundred-mile view was not out of the question. We missed stream fishing for brook trout, elk hunting, and downhill skiing.
2. Forms of production. What do you expect to produce from your land? Are you primarily interested in producing your own food, or are you looking for profits from livestock and crops? Do the profits have to provide the family’s living and pay for the land, or are you primarily interested in just a little extra cash above what your endeavor costs? Are you trying to preserve something — for example, historic buildings on your site, or an endangered species? Is recreation an important product of your land, or perhaps timber? Is an environment conducive to writing, music, or art part of what you’re looking for?
Don’t be too specific at this point about which crops or animals you might grow, particularly if you’ll need sufficient profits to support your family. When you develop your plans in part IV, you’ll identify the type of animals or crops.
Unrealistic expectations have sunk many of the beginning farmers I’ve met over the years. If your goal is to provide your family’s living from the farm, but a minimally acceptable living includes new vehicles, clothes ordered from Eddie Bauer, dinner out twice a week, and so on, then plan on keeping your day job and letting the farm be a fun hobby. Hobby farms can return more than they cost to run, so your operation can make money without being your primary occupation.
Your money expectations may be realistic, but not your time expectations. Each endeavor you add to your operation will add a great deal of time to your day, especially at first. Trying to manage five different classes of livestock at once will probably leave you managing none of them well. Taking on too large of an operation from the start may also leave you time stressed. Start slowly. Build up slowly.
3. Future resources. If you could look at this land 100 years from now, what would you want to see? A mixture of forest and pasture? A series of ponds? Are there gullies to be repaired, or bare patches of dirt? Do waterways need improvement? What kinds of wildlife would you like to be present?
Future resources can also include people that are important to you: your extended family, community, and so on. For example, if you want to see a strong, local community with thriving small businesses, numerous cultural amenities, or fine institutions, then list these in this part of your goal.
Goal setting should involve all the decision makers (the entire family, employees); it may also benefit from participation by others who might have a stake in your land or success (perhaps friends, relatives, local environmentalists, or bureaucrats from the National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). Don’t bypass this step, thinking that everyone is in agreement. Write your holistic goal down, and then put it in a conspicuous place, such as taped to the bathroom mirror or on the front of the refrigerator.
Although for most people, setting a goal involves a discussion of money and profits, try to get beyond money for its own sake. Paper money is the grease that keeps the economic cogs turning in this age, but people whose goal is money in its own right will probably never be happy. A recent survey indicated that people in cities make more money than their rural counterparts, but are less happy with their incomes; more highly educated people make more money, too, but they are also less happy with their incomes. Too many of these people — and we know some well — fall into the trap of thinking money will buy happiness. Money is a tool, not a goal.
Remember that your goal statement is broad, so the whole thing will probably take up just a page or two. The process is somewhat evolutionary: Over time, some aspects of the statement may be refined or clarified, but in general your goal statement will represent longer-term thoughts. Our first version was very formulaic, but as we have continued grappling with the questions of what we really want out of life it has become shorter and more succinct, yet also more lyrical. The most important thing is to get something written down to start with. Don’t expect it to be just right, the first time around. As you live with it, it will grow and flower.
Family Goals. Each family’s goals will be different. For example, Sherry O’Donnell and Virgil Benoit are both tenured university professors. They want their operation to be profitable, but it doesn’t have to pay all the bills. Their goals include maintaining the farm that Virgil’s grandfather homesteaded, using sheep in part to support Sherry’s hand spinning, having a nice place to live in the country, and being able to provide most of their own food, either directly or through barter with other farmers they know.
On the other hand, Tom and Irene Frantzen are third-generation farmers from Iowa. Their goals definitely include a form of production that can support their family from the land without outside income. Another important goal for Tom and Irene is making the farm into a place that one or more of their children may want to run after they do. They want to leave the land in better shape than when they got it, and they want to “be able to look their animals in the eye, and know they are having a good, happy life while it lasts.”
The Tools
We humans have three major tools to make things happen. The first is the mind. Through our creativity and ingenuity, we are often able to solve problems or make things happen. The second major tool is our labor. Through physical work, we can create or build something. The third tool is money. With money, we can buy something already done. I think of the three major tools as Brains, Brawn, and Pictures of Dead Presidents.
Of course, money is nothing more than a trade medium. Its availability is related to either our brains or our brawn (though sometimes it may be the result of someone else’s efforts, as in the case of an inheritance). Unless your hobby is collecting pictures of dead presidents, having money for money’s sake isn’t usually part of your goal, yet in this day and age money is integral to everything we do.
Ken and Carol’s Holistic Goal
First, we want to live in places off the beaten track. We want to feast our eyes on spectacular views of rugged mountain vistas. We want a place with lots of sun, abundant wildlife, and minimal light pollution. We want to sit out at night lost in a sea of stars, listening for the serenade of song dogs (coyotes). Beauty is, in itself, worthy of effort.
Second, we want to be as independent as is feasible in this modern age. We want a significant portion of our energy to come from renewable sources, and much of our food to come from the work of our own hands, whether hunting, gathering, or growing. We want the bulk of our living to come from our own endeavors, not jobs.
Third, we want to be honorable and honest in our dealings with each other and with other people. We want to be compassionate and respectful in our treatment of other living creatures. We want our actions on the land to be beneficial to the ecosystem; we want to understand and work with ecosystem processes. We want to be contributors, not just takers, from socie
ty and the earth. And we want the world to be a better place for our having passed through.
Fourth, we want to do meaningful work, both physically and mentally. Our work needs to keep us in the outdoors, and to keep us surrounded by animals. We enjoy work, and take pride in it, and believe that work keeps us healthy and happy.
Finally, we have little interest in material possessions, but financial security with little or no debt is important to us. We want a small but comfortable home. More important to us than money is time: We want to make time for reading, writing, art, music, travel, and a loving relationship. We want to keep our minds open and expanding; our hearts full and content.
The other tools listed in the model (rest, fire, grazing, animal impact, living organisms, and technology) are what we apply with our creativity, labor, or money. These tools are used to move us toward our holistic goal.
Rest
Rest refers to allowing an environment to be undisturbed — by human activity or grazing animals — for extended periods of time. In a crop-farming system, this would mean allowing a field to lie fallow for a season. In a livestock system, it means keeping the grazers off, or keeping their numbers so low that many plants mature without ever being bitten. Rest in this context refers to fairly long periods, not to the short time required for a plant to regrow.
Rest is sometimes good for the land in a nonbrittle environment, but overrest may cause deterioration, particularly in a brittle environment, where perennial plants that are allowed to reach maturity become extremely coarse and shade out the basal growth point near the base of each plant. As the plants die at the end of the growing season, the tops accumulate dead material, which is slow to decompose.
The dead leaf matter that accumulates begins to reduce growth in subsequent years, thus weakening the plant’s roots. Eventually, some plants die, and more bare earth shows up between the remaining plants, reducing all four ecosystem foundation blocks — community dynamics, water, energy, and minerals.
Fire
Fire is a natural rejuvenation method for land. Early peoples used fire not only as a source of heat and light, but also as a tool to drive away wild animals and freshen grasslands. Fire is now overused in some areas, while others have adopted a complete “no-burn” policy — even for naturally occurring lightning fires. Both these extremes have negative consequences.
In the Southwest ranchers are beginning to let natural fires burn themselves out. Historically, this method controlled brush and refreshed the grass, but for the better part of this century, fires have been completely suppressed, allowing brush like mesquite to proliferate.
The problem with fire comes when it becomes a habit. For instance, where we lived in central Minnesota, spring burning was a practiced ritual and had negative impacts on all ecosystem blocks. Used repeatedly, fire favors certain woody plants, reduces the organic content of soils, and kills many soil microorganisms.
Grazing
Figure 3.2. Grazers prefer grass; browsers prefer trees and shrubs; intermediate species prefer forbs. Despite this, there is regular cross over between the three types of feeders.
Grazing — and when I talk about grazing you could substitute the term browsing — is one of the tools we are most interested in as livestock farmers (Figure 3.2). Most animals can get a significant, if not complete, portion of their diet from fresh forage (grass and leaves off shrubs and trees). (See chapter 6 for a detailed discussion of feeding livestock.) Forage plants protect our soil from erosion, convert solar energy into food, balance carbon dioxide and oxygen levels in the atmosphere, and provide an aesthetically appealing environment (green is soothing and beautiful).
Effective grazing requires balance, and when that balance is reached, the four ecosystem processes move to a higher and more stable level. Balanced grazing provides for good gains by stock while also improving the land. Grass that is overgrazed, like grass that is overrested, moves the ecosystem processes to a lower and less stable level and, most importantly, reduces profitability.
Overgrazing, or overbrowsing, occurs when a plant is bitten a second time before it has had a chance to regain the store of energy it lost from the first bite. Figure 3.3 shows what happens to two plants, each bitten for the first time at approximately the same moment. Plant A is only bitten the one time and then allowed to regrow to its full energy potential. Plant B is bitten again before that full regrowth takes place. If a plant is either severely overgrazed, or overgrazed lightly, often, it will weaken and eventually die. The time it takes for a plant to regrow to its full energy potential is called the recovery period.
Traditionally, the definition of overgrazing was simply too many animals, or overstocking. But although overgrazing is often caused by too many animals, it isn’t always; it may also be caused by animals being allowed to selectively feed, even when overstocking isn’t a concern. Carefully timing the grazing of plants so plants have an adequate recovery period is the key to preventing overgrazing.
In the most common grazing method, the animals are let out into a big area and kept there for long periods of time. Like kids in a candy store, they first go around eating the things they like best. Then, before their feed of choice has had a chance to regrow to its full energy level, they come along and bite it again. Meanwhile, a plant they don’t like quite as well becomes overly mature. The paradox is that both plants continue to lose energy — one plant because it is bitten too often, the other because it isn’t bitten often enough. This method of set stocking results in overgrazing and overresting of plants in the same pasture, at the same time. Sometimes the overrested plants do well in the short term, and many overrested plants are noxious weeds, so weed infestations usually increase with set stocking.
In managed-grazing scenarios, the animals are moved before they have a chance to regraze the same plant, and kept out of the paddock until the plant has had sufficient time to recharge its batteries. Timing becomes critical to maintaining a balance between livestock gain and moving the ecosystem foundation blocks forward. During the highest flush time of the growing season, the recovery period for plants may be as few as 10 days; during the drier periods of the growing season, a plant may take 90 days to recover; and during the dormant period of the year, it may be 180 days or more before a plant can recover.
To control timing, large fields are broken up into smaller paddocks. Generally speaking, the more paddocks are available, the better. Paddocks can be permanent or temporary; chapter 4, Grass-Farming Basics, goes into more detail.
Stocking rates increase with managed grazing. Depending on your management level and the health of your land, doubling the stocking rate from the level that’s typical in your area is not unusual, even early in the managed-grazing process. As the land becomes healthier, even higher stocking rates are possible. Animal Impact
Figure 3.3. Plants A and B are both bitten the first time on day 1; plant A is not rebitten during the 10-day recovery period. On day 8, plant B is rebitten. Its recovery is stunted and would require more than 20 days to fully recover.
FARMER PROFILE
David and Deb Bosle
Goals can change over time — and that’s exactly what happened to David and Deb Bosle. David and Deb grew up near Hastings, Nebraska. After they married, David farmed in partnership with his dad on their home place, and Deb owned and operated a child-care center. The farm was a typical commercial grain operation. “We grew corn and soybeans,” David recalls.
The farm was a struggle. Poor prices, high taxes and operating expenses, and long hours soon tarnished the dream of continuing the family farm, at least as it was. In 1994, David attended a meeting hosted by the local County Extension Agent. “He was trying to spur some interest in some alternative enterprises to bolster farm income. At the meeting, the agent talked about a farmer named Joel Salatin, in Virginia, who was raising chickens on pasture in portable cages, and direct-marketing them.” That meeting resulted in a small number of growers getting together to form a pastured poultry group
.
The group jointly purchased a mobile poultry-processing unit from two brothers in Iowa. The brothers had started their own poultry operation by building a processing facility in an old “refer trailer” (a refrigerated box trailer, like those used to transport food over the road), but their business had grown to the point that they had built a permanent facility.
In 1995, the initial group of four growers began raising and marketing chickens. Each farmer was responsible for selling his or her own birds, but they helped each other at butcher time. In 1998, David and Deb marketed 2,500 birds — “less the seven that we kept out for ourselves” — and could have marketed more.
By 1997, David and Deb were going through some major changes. “Getting into raising the birds on pasture, naturally, helped us begin to see the connections that exist between health and the environment. We ‘retired’ from farming, except for raising the chickens, and Deb sold her child-care business. We began marketing alternative health products and environmentally safe cleaning products, direct from our home via mail and the Internet. These products meshed with what our chicken customers were interested in.”
Today, David and Deb are rethinking their goals. “We can direct market the products we’re selling from anywhere in the country, and we can raise pastured poultry on a small piece of land anywhere. As it is, we’re only using about 10 acres for the poultry production.
“We’re seriously considering selling our poultry customer base to a young couple who want to continue farming here, and then looking around for someplace else to live. Hastings was once our dream, but it’s changed, and so have we.”
Small-Scale Livestock Farming Page 4