CHICKEN PAIN AND BULLSHIT FARMING

Not doing so well on the prep issue this week. But the week ain't over and things can happen. Still looking for a good place to build a couple of chicken coops. With all of this land you would figure I could build a coop most anywhere. And I can. But I want to be able to guard the coops from the vicinity of my home and that narrows it down quite a bit. But the available land is used up for a big pond! Pain and suffering. Must be God's way of punishing me for making fun of the Catholic Clergy.

But I have a couple of options up my sleeve and I will get a spot. I might not get everything I want but I will get some of it and life is a compromise a lot of times. Especially for us poor folks. The main thing is the availability of eggs and chicken meat for the good guys. Pale Rider is always telling me he is ready to do it and I will have to get the show on the road. He is just too damn big to keep putting off. IT is in the low 60's outside this afternoon and is a perfect building day but I need some dozer work before I begin the building. Good chickens have to have room to move around and eat bugs and grass and such. They also need to be accessible from the road for easy feeding and egg gathering. It makes it easier for picking up manure for compost too. I want healthy ground and It takes "feeding" the soil to get it healthy. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure this out but American farmers seem to be a little slow on the up-take in this area. They are ruining our national soil just as hard and fast as they can go in the same of "successful" farming. Too bad, I say. But farmers are the slowest learners on the planet. They will do like Daddy did for generations if it works. They ran into some trouble with that method a few decades ago. Their 17 cent a gallon farm diesel became a part of history that is probably not coming back. It might though. The cost of running a tractor went though the roof however, and something had to be done.

Something was done. Herbicides and pesticides were invented and formulated for various crops. Since America is basically full of monocropping morons, planting one crop over hundreds or thousands of acres, the poison had to get pretty strong to knock back the weeds and the bugs. Large scale monocropping really brings in the bugs that can hurt the crop. And they did this and the crops came in as promised but no one wants to do any soil testing to see what is screwed up and what ain't. They run their NPK test and buy their chemical fertilizer accordingly. The poisons go in the ground via no-till and things go right on via our industrial farming methods. After all, the balance of payments on our foreign exchange rate is at stake here. Gotta get that crop to Asia and get money coming in. Our scrap metals and our farm products are what we use to stay in the global game. You read the statistics about shipping picking up but it is bullshit. It is our food and our metals going over seas that make us look like we are exporting. But it ain't finished goods, folks. It is for foreign stockpiles. Screwed again. When our soil is depleted and worn out and full of poisons, the money boys in the food trade will move to Africa and South America while we will be left to recover from our folly. Mr. Market is not the answer to all of life's problems. It might be the answer if everyone has money running out of the pockets but that ain't happening these days. As they say, money talks and bullshit walks, and we will have put our money into growing our own gardens to feed ourselves and let this industrial farming do the walk. I ain't going anywhere. Stay alive.



Michael



mboone@rtccom.net