Beauty in Crops

I've a bit of writer's block these past few weeks.  I can't think of a thing to write, especially about farming.  Maybe it's because I'm at school and not actually farming right now.  Whatever the reason, my writer's block lifted this morning as I was inspired by the beauty of, well, studying.  Let me explain that.  I was studying for a crop identification quiz I have this afternoon.  The various crops we need to be able to identify are geown in pots in the college greenhouse.  I had some time on my hands and went down to the greenhouse to check on my project crop (that's a crop I planted for the same class) and to study a bit.  I was pleasantly surprised to find many of the crops flowering.  After enjoying the beauty for a while, I thought I'd share some of it with my friends.

This is the flower and leaves of a Desi Chickpea plant.

This is the flower and leaves of a Field Bean plant.

These are the flowers and buds of a Borage plant.  Borage is used for essential oils.

This is a picture of a Borage plant with Corn and Sunflowers in the background.

This is a picture of the flowers of Coriander.  Coriander is a spice.

This a Tame Buckwheat plant.  It is related to Wild Buckwheat, the number one annual weed in Alberta in agricultural settings.  

This is a picture of Oats.  The head is just coming out.  The head is circled and the arrow is pointing the part of the leaf where the head is coming through.

These are the leaves of an Argentine Canola plant.  They are identifiable because the leaves clasp the stem and are glabrous (no hairs), with a blueish tinge. 

This is the flowers and buds of a Brown Mustard plant.

This is Foxtail Millet.  It is related to Green Foxtail, a weed my dad and I encountered in our barley crop this summer.

The arrow is pointing the the heads of Annual Canarygrass, also called Canary Seed.  The seeds are commly used in birdseed, but research is being done to see if it would be feasible to use them in human food, as an alternative to such grains as wheat.

This is Safflower.  The oil from the seeds is used for cooking and in cosmetics.

This is the buds and leaves of one of my Quinoa plants.  It is a crop I need to know how to identify, but it is also my project crop for the class.  I affectionately refer to quinoa as "hippy food" when I'm talking about it to my dad and our older neighbours.  Quinoa is closely related to Lamb's Quarters, a weed I take great pleasure in pulling from the garden each year.

I hope you've been able to enjoy the beauty of these crops with me.  As you can see, food is not just beautiful when it is artfully displayed on a plate.  It is also beautiful as it develops.

Wild Critters

Every so often I'll pick up a city newspaper and see that a coyote, fox, or other such wild critter has been spotted in the city.  It's always big news when that happens.  I always think it's a bit weird for city folk to get so excited about wildlife, since I see wild critters fairly often on the farm.  Eventually I remember that most people living in the city aren't used to seeing wildlife on a regular basis, so it is big news.  And, every once in a while, I see a wild critter that I don't see often and I get excited too.

Today was a day like that.  Actually, let's back this story up to Sunday morning.  My sister and I had to stop at Co-op to pick up a couple of cakes before church.  The cakes were in honour of our parents' 25th wedding anniversary and would be served at the potluck after church.  I had the heavier cake, so by the time we got to the car, all I wanted to do was set the cake in the car and give my arms a rest.  Janna opened the trunk of the car and there it was: a massive nest.  Janna stopped just short of setting her cake on the fluffy mound and stood staring at it.  "What is that?" she asked.  With my cake seeming to weigh more with each second, I answered with an impatient, "It's a mouse nest of course!  Just put the cakes in the back seat!"  Of course, my sister was none too impressed with the idea that there might be a mouse running around in the car as she was driving it, but I was really just too worried about being late for church to care much.  Once we got to church, we reported the nest to my dad.  After church, my sister went home with my parents and I drove the "infested" car home by myself, slowing a little to admire a moose on the side of the road on the way.  Later that afternoon, my dad put a live trap in the car and cleaned the nest out of the trunk.

Fast forward two days.  Janna and I were sitting in front of the television, each working on our own tasks, when we heard Dad come in form outside.  "Girls, I need some advice!"  What?  Dad never needs advice (unless we're telling him what to wear for family pictures).  We sauntered into the porch and I noticed that he had brought the live trap into the house with him.  A second glance revealed something small and white in the trap.  Where I come from, mice are not white.  What on earth?  "What is that, Dad?"  I asked.  "It's that ermine," he replied, referring to a small, weasel-like critter he had seen in the garage a few weeks ago.  We spent several minutes debating whether it actually was an ermine or not, since we couldn't get a good look at it through the small holes of the trap.  We finally decided that Dad and I would take it out to a brush pile in the pasture and set it free and I would get pictures of it.  On the way, we decided we'd release in into a 5-gallon bucket first so we could actually get a good look at it.

The cutest, and only, ermine I have ever seen.

Dad and I drove out to the brush pile in the side-by-side, with the trap and bucket in the back.  I got a lovely video of Dad trying to get the ermine out of the trap and into the bucket and then a couple of pictures of the ermine as it explored the bottom of the bucket.  It was so cute that I couldn't help but take another video of it, during which I may have...squeaked...a bit when it jumped out of the bucket.  In the end, we released the ermine into the brush pile.  It was a pretty exciting afternoon, and that ermine was awfully cute, but wild critters do not belong in a car.  Still, that one didn't deserve to die (a mouse would have quickly made the acquaintance of our barn cats).  It's always fun when we can release the wild critters back into the wild and out of the way of our activities on the farm.

The Disconnect

Have you ever finished doing something, taken a moment to feel proud of your accomplishment, and then realized, "oh shoot...I'm not done"?  I just did that.  I wrote out a whole long blog post, posted it to Facebook, and then realized that I left out a huge part of it.  Maybe it's okay that I did, though.  The part I left out is pretty long and that post was already getting to be too long to hold people's attention .  As a result of my mental fumble, this new post will cover what I left out of the other post.

In the previous blog post, I discussed social license and the fact that the general public just doesn't know a whole lot about agriculture.  What I forgot to say is that this lack of knowledge isn't your fault.

Today, only about 2% of Canada's population works in the agriculture industry.  Just one short century ago, agriculture employed a far greater portion of the population.  People who grew up in towns and cities knew people - friends and relatives - who lived and worked on farms.  They knew where their food came from.  Today the amount of people growing up in towns and cities who personally know farmers is much smaller.  There is a disconnect between the people who grow the food and the people who eat the food.  Because of this lack of personal connection, people just don't know how their food is produced.  For example, I have a cousin who, for many years, thought that potatoes came from a can, and when she first saw her mother peel a potato, she didn't know what it was (for the record, this was before my cousin spent time on a farm).  My cousin isn't stupid, and neither are the other people who don't know where their food comes from.

People are just ignorant.  Now that I've typed those words, they seem awfully harsh to me.  What does ignorant mean?  Let me check the dictionary: "ignorant adj. 1a. lacking knowledge or experience. b. (foll. by of, in) uninformed (about a fact, subject)" (Oxford Canadian Dictionary of Current English, 2005).  That's not so bad.  It just means that ignorant people don't know.  In fact, I think it's good for one to know if one is ignorant.  If I know that I'm ignorant about a subject, I can work on learning about it.  That's a good thing!

My earlier blog post focused on how people should go about learning more about agriculture.  I'd like to use this blog post to further discuss that topic.  People growing up in cities don't know where their food comes from because they don't personally know farmers.  Therefore, they have a hard time getting first-hand information about their food.  Now, before I go any further, I'd like to say that I am not advocating for the local food movement.  If you want to only buy food from local producers, be my guest.  But I raise beef and beef is a major export for Canada, so I rather like it when people don't exclusively buy local (although I also really like selling beef to nearby family and friends).

To get back on topic, if you want to learn more about where your food comes from, talk to a farmer.  If you don't know a farmer, ask someone who does to introduce you to their farmer friend.  Farmers aren't so rare that you can't find us.  You just might have to look further than your regular circle of friends.  Talk to people with farmer relatives.  Talk to college students you know, because they have probably met a farm kid at school (farm kids need an education, too, you know).  If all else fails, go to a farmer's market and talk to the people there (just be aware that they are probably big fans of the buy local movement, and maybe of the organic craze, too).  Whoever you find to talk to, remember that we all have a bit of an agenda, whether we know it or not: we want you to like us.  Ask sincere questions.  Ask about the things that worry you.  Ask about the latest food marketing strategies.  Talk to more than one expert (refer back to the earlier blog post).  Do not rely solely on what you see and hear on the media and from other uninformed persons.  In short, if you choose to educate yourself about the agriculture industry, make sure you get a well-rounded education.

It is possible to overcome the disconnect between producer and consumer, but it will take a bit of effort from both sides and a genuine interest in each other to close the gap.

Ask An Expert

This post is written mainly for my friends who are unfamiliar with the agriculture industry.  Please feel free to ask me or any farmer you know any questions you have about what you read here.  Also, any farm friends who have comments are more than welcome to make them.

Today, like many days, I decided to take a few moments to ignore my self-assigned tasks for the day and check out the Facebook world.  One of my Facebook friends posted a video about the dairy industry.  I had seen this video posted one or two other times, but had never actually watched it.  I have better things to do with my time than watch every single video posted by my Facebook friends.  However, I wasn't quite ready to return to my work, so I clicked on the link and watched with disgust as some YouTuber I had never heard of painted the dairy industry in the worst possible light imaginable.  I'm no expert on the dairy industry, but I know enough to know that this girl was obviously not giving a balanced representation of the industry.  I told my Facebook friend that if she wanted to eliminate dairy from her diet, that's her choice, but she should ask an actual dairy farmer about how the industry works.

It turns out that my friend has her own reasons to take dairy out of her diet.  Fine, whatever.  It's none of my business to tell anyone how or what they should or should not eat.  I don't have a problem with anyone's personal choice of diet.  However, I do have a problem with people sharing these random videos, blogs, etc. that tear down industries, ways of life, diet choices, traditions - anything really - without checking to see if person who made the video or wrote the blog actually got their facts right.  Just to be fair, I did a bit of research on the YouTuber before I got down to writing this blog post.  She describes herself as a vegan and an activist, among other things.  I don't know exactly what kind of activist she would call herself, but she seems to be pretty involved in animal rights activism.  She also appears to have absolutely no background in agriculture.  She may be well informed about some things, but she is definitely not an expert about agriculture.

So if you have questions about the dairy industry, who should you ask?  Ask a dairy farmer, of course!  Oh but, wait.  Dairy farmers have a product to sell.  Of course they would never reveal the truth about the less acceptable parts of dairy farming.  They want us to believe that the dairy industry is all sunshine and roses so that we buy their products, right?  Well to be completely honest, I don't know.  Some farmers likely would want to tell just the good sides of the story.  All farmers (all humans, actually) are likely to get defensive if you present them with a bunch of accusations and ask them to prove themselves worthy of basic levels of respect.  If you really want to know what farming is all about, though, and if you are willing to accept that every industry has areas where it could and should improve, then ask a farmer.  If you have questions about the dairy industry, ask a dairy farmer.  If you have questions about the beef industry, ask a cow-calf producer or a backgrounder or a feedlot operator.  If you want to know about the egg industry, or the poultry industry, or the cereal grains industry, ask an expert from that industry.  Most farmers will welcome sincere questions.

Why do farmers welcome questions, though?  You would think that as busy as we are, we wouldn't have time to answer a bunch of questions from people who know little about the industry.  Well, that isn't the case.  Our interest in your questions has to do with a little thing called social license.  In simple terms, social license is an abstract social construct that allows consumers to dictate how producers produce their products.  So, if consumers all want farm animals to be treated properly, farmers have to take a look at how they treat their animals, check how consumers want the animals to be treated, and then work to get their practices in line with what consumers want.  There's just one BIG problem with that.  Consumers aren't experts.  In fact, many consumers have no clue what they're talking about.  They don't even know how farm animals actually are treated and if they do, they don't know the reasons behind the methods.

Farmers are experts in their fields.  A dairy farmer knows how to produce milk as efficiently as possible.  He also knows how to keep his cows as healthy as possible.  He knows exactly how and what to feed them to give them exactly the nutrition that they need at different stages of their life.  If something does go wrong, he knows how to figure out what is wrong and how to treat it (or if he needs to call the vet).  Unfortunately, as I mentioned, the general public doesn't have all of this knowledge.  All they know is what they see, most of which comes from social media and illustrates the actions of a few grossly negligent and irresponsible people (to put it nicely).  But since that is what the public sees, that is reality for the public and so they are shocked and horrified (rightly so in many cases) and demand that all farmers suddenly do a lot better.  This is where social license comes in.  The farmers, who have been working hard all year to produce the food that people need for basic survival, come home to rest for a few moments and suddenly find out that they are evil people who have no idea what animals really need (or just don't care) and have no regard for the environment AND are pumping us all full of chemicals and GMOs (which actually aren't bad - but that's another blog post).  Since this farmer, who is actually a decent human being, needs to feed his family, he still needs to sell his product, but he knows that the public won't accept it unless he changes his ways to fit their idea of acceptable, even though he knows far more than the general public about how to care for livestock, soil, water, etc.  Do you see the difficulty?

I wish I could explain this all better, but this post is getting a lot longer than I intended it to be.  I also know that I have just brought up a whole host of issues that cannot all be dealt with in this post (or even in this blog).  If you take away nothing else from this post, remember this: If you have questions, or if you are presented with information that upsets you, ask an expert.  An expert is not someone who does a bunch of research.  An expert is someone who does the work, who lives the life, who knows the industry.  If your questions have to do with agriculture, the expert is a farmer.  

I hope I was not disrespectful in this post.  I tend to get a bit irritable when people don't check their facts.  Now if you'll excuse me, I really should get back to that work I've been avoiding...

My dad is an expert fence-builder, among other things.  That comes from 40+ years of working and living as a farmer.  Not even my formal education can help me keep up with his knowledge.

Strength

Today I tested my strength.  I've been in school for four months.  My summer muscles have gone the way of my callouses, just as they do every school year.  But now it's Christmas break and I get to help Dad with chores.  I helped one other day last week, but that was mainly driving the tractor.  Today I actually worked.

Usually I help out more over Christmas, but this year I hadn't been feeling well for about two months (it turns out I have bronchitis), so I've been taking it easy.  Today, though, I was raring to go!  Chores started with feeding grain, as per usual.  We aren't a big operation, so we feed by hand (well, actually it's by bucket).  After the first two pails full of grain, I wasn't too sure I'd make it through chores, but I pushed on, trying not to think about how much strength I've lost in the last little while.  After feeding the grain, Dad and I fed a double portion of straw and hay to the cows so we would have fewer chores tomorrow.  My skills with the bale fork on the tractor are a bit rusty, but other than that I managed to get through with my pride intact.  When we'd finally finished up with all of that, we drove into the bush and cut some firewood for our Boxing Day get-together with Dad's family.  Dad cut an old tree up and I hauled the wood to the Ranger.  By then it was time for lunch.

Over lunch Dad talked about all he had to do yet today.  When he mentioned chopping the firewood and loading it on the truck, I said I could do that.  I've done it before, after all.  So after lunch I put my warm clothes back on and got down to work chopping the wood.  I was a bit apprehensive to start.  In years past, it has taken me a ridiculous amount of effort to get a few chewed-up, slivery blocks of firewood.  I expected I'd wind myself pretty fast and have to let Dad finish up.  That didn't happen, though.  This year I somehow found the right technique, that perfect swing of the axe that sends the two halves of the wood flying out to either side, split perfectly in the center.  Who knew it was so easy?!  But I digress...

Why is it so important for me to be able to do these things on my own?  Why do I have measure my strength each Christmas break to see how much I've lost while I've been in school?  I've always been a  very proud person (and I know that's not a good thing), and for most of my life I've been able to take pride in the fact that I can work past people's expectations of me.  Having been born with certain physical limitations, I was always working to keep up with the other kids and I was generally pretty successful at that.  It wasn't even all that difficult, especially as I got older.  Soon I developed a competitive spirit that drove me to want to be one of the best at everything.  Of course, no one can be the best at everything, but I still took pride in at least being able to keep up with those around me.  To this day, without even really thinking of what I'm doing, I always expect myself to keep up with the people around me.  Unfortunately, these days my companions tend to be grown men who are used to working year-round on the farm and I forget that they just are stronger than I am.  Sometimes I think I would work myself into delirium if no one noticed and stopped me.  I remember some friends of mine almost prying a shop broom out of my hands and telling me to stop after we'd cleaned out a barn once.  I was just trying to keep up with the boys.

It's a terrible thing to take pride in physical strength.  It makes me keep going long after I really ought to quit.  When I lose my strength, I push myself even harder, trying to prove, even if only to myself, that I still have what it takes to farm.  Worst of all, looking to myself for strength takes my focus off of God, who is the source of my strength, both physically and emotionally.  Psalm 46:1 says, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble" (ESV).  I ought to remember that before I get myself into trouble by relying on my own strength.

When I was born, my dad named me Valerie, which means "strong one," because he knew I would need to be strong to fight my way through the difficult days ahead.  I made it through, but not on my own strength.  I made it through because God gave me His strength and I will continue to make my way through life with God's help, and not on my own strength.