Animal-made laneway

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Michael Burlace

If you find
Working or driving animals hard increases stress, lowers production and lowers the eating quality of the resulting meat
OR
Animals want to go in different directions to where you want them to go
Then,
Animals don’t need to be driven as much if you let them devise their own tracks.

You may have to guide them initially to minimize environmental damage but they will be more comfortable and thus easier to work when they follow their chosen path.

They also pose less danger to you and to themselves, their stress levels are lower, their productivity is usually higher and the quality of their meat is higher.

Once it is clear what is a suitable track for them, it can be turned into a laneway that makes it easy to move animals around the farm.

Of course, a lot of it can be worked out earlier and laid out for them if you have a good understanding of animals.

A good example of how easy it is to muster animals once the laneway is worked out was when my kids (Tegan aged just under 5 and Otis just under 3 at the time) for the first time brought in a mob of hundreds of sheep for shearing. Once the animals had started moving to the gate out of the paddock they were in, the kids brought them the last few hundred metres (yards) through several gates and across several wide paddocks and into the yards.

All the kids had in the way of support was a rattle each.

Their mother and I stayed way behind and watched in delight.

This worked because I had read enough about animal behavior and because I had watched how the sheep moved or didn’t.

This was prompted by the extreme difficulty we had getting them into the yards when we bought the farm. It was a nightmare.

So I:

  • installed some straight runs along fencelines through large paddocks
  • put in some diagonal fencing to take out a corner that always seemed to be a preferred spot for the sheep to head to and stay in and
  • made it so that when the sheep entered the shearing shed paddock, it was a gentle run uphill into the yards.

That basically solved all the mustering problems and meant we didn’t need a sheepdog — saving a mouth to feed, a lot of time to train it and, given the infrequency of operations, saved a dog from being bored.

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A woman’s place

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Michael Burlace

If you find
Women are often excluded or think they are excluded from farm decision making.
AND
People who marry into the family may find it difficult to become fully accepted members
Then,
It used to be said that a woman’s place was in the kitchen or the bedroom.

However, around 50 years of modern feminism has brought us to the clear understanding that a woman’s place is everywhere.

Too often, farming is still seen as largely a man’s game, but many of the best farms are run by a partnership where the woman is a full partner or where a woman farms on her own.

As part of ensuring A place for everyone it is important to take particular care to make room for those who have been excluded or left on the margins in the past, such as women and in particular the daughter-in-law.

She marries into the family expecting that things will roll forward to a time when she and her partner will have a fair and equal role and say in their joint future. Unfortunately, often she finds out that there is less room for her than she needs and less than is fair.

A woman’s place on the land is often seen in Western society today as a full partnership or as an independent farmer or grazier. But there was a time when women’s role on the land was seen by many as

  • baking cakes
  • supporting the menfolk
  • raising children and
  • keeping quiet.

Often this also involved long days of back-breaking farm and household work which went unrecognized because men got most of the credit for work done, no matter who did it.

Not that men were trying to stop women doing the work. The concern was usually about who got the credit and the value of the work done by the different genders.

Nor was it only the men. Many women held the same views, putting themselves and other women behind men.

Fortunately, those days are gone or going in most developed countries. And even in countries with much more traditional gender roles, the role of women is now seen as broader.

And of course there are many countries where the present social, political and religious situation is trying to roll things back to those old days and old ways.

However, there is an outside world which is opening eyes even in closed societies. So it is almost certainly a brief and vain hope by those who would have things go backwards.

Time will bring us all to a more humane and caring world, even as some people try to take things backwards into oppression and unfairness.

It is common for farm women to have a longer term view, a more alternative view and a view which takes into account relationships and humans, particularly children.

When I was the organic farming officer with the NSW Department of Agriculture we had a very high rate of inquiry from women for organic farming info. Often they would be the one in the family who first considered organics a real possibility. Many were very strongly supportive of anything that was more sustainable, organic, healthier or would lead to less stress.

Many men also took these approaches, but the number of women was certainly much higher than in other lines of inquiry such as technical or economic questions.

Whether you are a woman or a man, it is important to be part of ensuring that a woman’s place is an equal and valued one. To be pro-active you could:

  • BRING UP your children with traditional and non-traditional gender role models. When females have an equal role and work under equal and realistic expectations, the farm is more balanced in so many ways and the children grow up believing that they are able to do the sort of work with their father does or that their mother does or ideally that both do.
  • SUPPORT women taking on leadership roles in families, social, political and other groups
  • ENCOURAGE women and men into non-traditional roles and support them during the conversion
  • SUPPORT men taking on support roles in families, social, political and other groups
  • MAINTAIN reasonable expectations for women, rather than setting out to denigrate, undermine or find fault with their efforts
  • VOTE for women politicians and ACCEPT that some will be just as good and just as bad as the men are. Keep going until we get more decent politicians of both genders
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Survival first

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Michael Burlace

If you find
It can be tempting to focus on the expansion of the business side of farming without looking adequately at the survival of the family and the environmental underpinnings of that same business
AND
Without a solid base on the land and in our family, there is little chance that the farm business will survive the ups and downs of the market and environment
Then,
Survival must be the first aim in farming for most of us.

This means keeping the family alive, well fed and together as a unit. It also means caring for the land that supports the farm.

We tend to think of survival primarily in relations to emergencies and there is certainly a need for that sort of preparedness.

However, this is about a couple of lines in the farm plan (whether a written one or an unwritten plan) that make it clear that the primary reason most of us farm is to have a lifestyle on this land with this family.

Many farmers focus on getting bigger, more profitable etc while forgetting to cover their bases. In chasing profit, some are “too busy” to make sure they have food grown at home such as fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs and meat.

If there is a crop disaster, they may not have the capacity to buy food, pay the most basic bills etc without borrowing.

Of course, “survival” comes in many forms. I knew some farmers who had a survival vineyard which could be managed entirely with a lawnmower in about an hour a month even under drought or other difficult conditions. It produced enough grapes to make a few hundred bottles of wine, this allowed them to put a bottle of wine on the table every night. Not my most basic need, but for them it was definitely seen as a survival essential.

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Kitchen garden

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Michael Burlace

If you find
Many farmers earn a farmer income and pay a city dweller’s shopping bill
AND
Modern farming is a far cry from the old mixed farming. We tend towards monocultures or highly specialized farms
Then,
Grow food for your own family before you grow produce for sale.

If you grow it yourself you don’t need to shop where the rich do, you can do better.

Buying processed or packaged food in town at supermarket prices and selling unprocessed food at farmgate prices is a recipe for poverty.

Modern lifestyles mean that more food is processed and packaged, even the food bought by farmers.

In the old days, most of the farm family’s food was grown on the farm. So were most of the seeds (now bought as expensive hybrids which won’t perform well without fertilizers and chemicals).

Grow it, eat it and sell the surplus is a good start. This works for vegetable farmers and obviously this is not a lot of fun nor a lot of use if you farm only cotton, but in that case there is every reason for a Kitchen garden or more.

It feeds the family, trains children in what plants and pests are all about so that as they grow up they have an understanding of what underlies farming and what is real.

Your home-grown meat, humanely slaughtered plus fresh-picked, tree-ripened fruit and fresh-picked vegetables taste better and are more readily available and surely are better for you.

Such a garden might hold a few beds of vegetables which are best harvested fresh, some herbs, some edible flowers and decorative flowers in season and so on.

Even if it starts out as a minimal garden, it means that when there is a need to vary or extend a meal, it is a moment away, thus easing the pressure on the person who is cooking at what can be a high-pressure time as everyone comes in weary, particularly for the evening meal.

Once that has been established there might be more interest in expanding the kitchen garden.

I built one using all the weeds I dug out of the farm. I just piled them into some areas defined by some straw bales, put other compostables on the top, covered with more straw and then planted seed or seedlings about a cupful of soil placed into the mix.

We ate like kings and had the satisfaction of turning weeds into food.

This is one of the first steps in Survival that has to be the first aim in farming: keeping the family alive, well fed and together as a unit and caring for the land that supports the farm.

Some elements of a garden to feed the family might be:

  • Home vegetable garden
  • Home orchard
  • Home chickens
  • Fruitful laneways.
  • Home vineyard
  • House cow or goat
  • Mini-mushroom farms (available at garden stores)
  • Alfalfa and other sprouted seeds and
  • Any other things you can grow or make to put into the family diet.

And if all that isn’t enough reason to have a Kitchen garden:

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Rising plane of nutrition

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Michael Burlace

If you find
Fertility and fecundity are significant drivers of profitability in many livestock enterprises
AND
Feed conditions are not always ideal in the lead-up to mating season
Then,
When animals are on a diet that is steadily improving, it is called a rising plane of nutrition.

This is what typically happens with a lot of species naturally as they come into the mating season.

Because of this, their fertility and fecundity can be higher.

As fertility and fecundity are significant drivers of profitability in many livestock enterprises, it makes sense to use a rising plane of nutrition to boost profitability.

The effect is very marked with many breeds of sheep and you can make use of it even if pasture conditions are poor — by supplementary feeding.

The trick is to have the ewes on a rising plane of nutrition before you introduce the rams.

I don’t believe it has a benefit with the rams — they need to be well fed and not overweight if you want them to get among the females and deliver lots of fertile sperm into the right places.

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Cash crop

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Michael Burlace

If you find
Long-term ventures are necessary and so is short-term income and it can be hard to combine them sometimes
Then,
This is a crop produced for a quick cash return.
Some examples:

  • Growing a crop of melons between a stand of young trees in an orchard. The trees won’t produce much income for some years, but the melons will produce an income this year
  • a grazier has good conditions and lets the Flexible females mix with the Sperm bank to produce a new generation, and some or all of them can be sold for cash.
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Ready for opportunity

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Michael Burlace

If you find
Being unprepared leaves you with fewer options when situations change
OR
Not knowing ahead of time what is happening means you are disadvantaged
Then,
You might as well exploit your advantages, everything else in nature does including every other human on the planet.

One of the key ways to do this is to be Ready for opportunity.

In this way, surprises are reduced and so are their results. You are able to take advantage of and can use any Windows of opportunity. As a result, almost anything which happens can be used to advantage.

Louis Pasteur put it simply: Chance favors the prepared mind. He wasn’t saying that preparedness made you more lucky, it just made you more able to take advantage of whatever happened to you.

Think of a primed pump or a self-priming pump – it is always ready to take advantage (pump) the moment it is turned on. If you still had one of those old pumps that had to be primed, you needed a container, water and the time to do it. Not quite as handy if the fire is already out of control.

In a similar way, if you are ready for the things that are about to happen or that may happen, you can adapt to the change quickly and effectively. If not, you may struggle to make sense of it and then struggle to develop an appropriate response to it.

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Sperm bank

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Michael Burlace

If you find
It’s not always convenient to keep a stock of frozen sperm on the farm so you can join your animals whenever you want to
OR
It would be handy to be ready to breed more animals if the season or the market went your way
Then,
We usually think of a sperm bank as a building or container full of preserved but revivable sperm, just waiting to be artificially inseminated into a recipient.

But a bull lounging around with no females waiting at the fence is just as much a sperm bank. So whether your sperms are in liquid nitrogen or dozing in the bull, they are half your future generation, waiting for the opportunity to spring into action (with your Flexible females).

Because a male may be used at just 2-3% (2-3 males to 100 females) under good conditions he is of higher value than a female and needs more care and attention. If he’s not worth 30-50 cows or something like it, why keep him?

NOTE: This value ratio doesn’t apply to humans — I’ve yet to hear of a society where the ratio of males to females was much different from one to one, nor where one gender was worth multiple times the other. Thankfully also, most human males do not get eaten straight after mating. Instead we humans are All in it together. But I’m biased, after all, I am male. 🙂

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Litter

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Michael Burlace

If you find
Soils are fragile
AND
Bare ground is ripe for weed invasion and soil erosion
AND
Bare ground loses more moisture than ground covered by living or dead plant matter
Then,
Any living or dead material lying on the soil surface is litter. It litters the ground and is a good thing.

This is distinct from the other litter that is thrown out by humans. That is mostly packaging waste and the like scattered around the town or countryside. It is definitely not a good thing.

Plant litter breaks down and in the process provides food for soil organisms and eventually for plants and as a result for your crops and animals.

It also

  • protects soil from raindrop impact
  • protects soil from erosion
  • protects soil from compaction by vehicles and the impact of animals’ hoofs
  • protects soil from drying out
  • slows water and as a result increases the amount that soaks in or infiltrates
  • retains nutrients and organic matter that you have paid for or grown; as well as
  • makes it harder for weeds to establish.

Basically any ground that is not covered by living or dead plant material is at risk of eroding, drying out and losing nutrients.

Litter is one of the best defences against losing the real capital of the farm — the soil and its productive capacity.

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Top mob

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Michael Burlace

If you find
There are good genes in most collections of animals or plants but they are not evenly distributed and some individuals make better seedstock as a result
AND
Keeping the best genes to breed with the best genes is difficult unless the individuals bearing the genes have been identified
Then,
A top mob is just the pick of the gene pool kept for mating to each other to create more animals (or plants but it usually works best with animals) of that quality or better.

It is a good way to increase the overall quality of the gene pool by having some higher quality animals to supply better genes into the pool rather than letting animals mate randomly because that can lead to good genes being mixed with lousy ones.

By selecting out and maintaining a top mob, you can choose which to mate to which and then can let those genes cascade into the rest of your seedstock.

Having a top mob means you also have a non-top mob.

The best way to boost the quality of genes overall is to have a top mob, a middle mob and a bottom mob (culls).

When times are good, all members might get mated. When times are bad, the bottom mob finds itself on the way to the saleyards.

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