AgriCulture: The Rod, the Staff, and the Magic Wand
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Mark writes:For a number of unfortunate reasons, I’ve heard the 23rd Psalm a great deal lately, most recently last Friday morning at a cousin’s funeral. I have nothing against this beautiful work of poetry, but it seems to be called upon most often for comfort in times of sorrow, and I’d be happy not to hear it again for a while.
Friday morning, I was struck by one line in the Psalm: “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” It has a lovely cadence in a syntax we would never use, but what was most striking was how it conveys an odd kind of paradox –that one can derive comfort not only from gentle guidance, of the sort provided by a shepherd's staff, but also from the pain of strict discipline, as meted out by the punitive rod. As Peter pointed out to me, the rod represents the harsh justice of the Old Testament's God.
This imagery from the pastoral society of the Bible made me think about whether we, in raising our flocks, also strike a reasonable balance between strict rules and nurturing. Do our animals have a sense that we've created a safe space for them, and is part of their concept of that safe space derived from the strict rules we sometimes make them live by? It does seem that the flock for its well-being depends on both our strict discipline and our loving care.
It should not be surprising that animals can derive comfort both from nurturing indulgence and from strict discipline, because humans do so as well. Two weekends ago, I attended the 80th birthday party of Wyatt MacGaffey, my college advisor, an anthropology professor who was my mentor and who I feel deserves the credit for teaching me to think analytically. I had a long period, when I initially began taking courses with him, characterized by abject terror at the consequences of not doing things to his standards. But once I became comfortable with the rules, my education really flowered. I'm not sure I would have achieved the benefits of the relationship without the initial fear. Only by learning to live up to a strict and at times not entirely comprehensible standard was I able to have the confidence to take full advantage of the nurturing insights and guidance this professor gave me. 
I think we can tell when we’ve struck the right balance between discipline and nurturing on the farm when our animals interact with us in an atmosphere of calm cooperation. Do they do what we’d like them to do without our having to resort to force? Take, for example, the process of managing our turkeys and geese. One important tool in that management is neither a rod nor a staff, but rather long bamboo or wood garden stakes which we use as wands to herd these sometimes unruly birds. We didn’t see them advertised as poultry handling instruments in any catalogue. We might have hit upon their value had we thought back to the illustrations in children’s books of young farm girls in pleated bonnets herding their geese and carrying large wands, or if Peter had understood fully how the peasants he saw herding turkeys along the roadsides were using the wands. But we didn’t. Instead, the use of these wands was something that Peter developed, organically, over time. He reinvented a time-honored tool.The challenge we faced was to move the turkeys and geese from the pasture into secure pens every night where they would be free of the threat of predators. This practice became imperative when, several years ago, while indulging the turkeys' instinctive inclination to roost in trees, we lost a total of 19 turkeys over two successive nights, probably to a horned owl which took off their heads (it is the brain they eat) and left us just the carcasses.
At first we tried simply shooing them into a secured sleeping porch we had constructed for the purpose. But shooing them in a couple at a time can lead to chaos. Peter found he could do much better if he took advantage of their flock instinct and their keen sensitivity to our every movement. It's something he picked up from kinetic theatre, in which actors move responsively to one another. Peter found that if we used slow-motion, gentle, nonthreatening movements to gather the birds together as a flock, we could play on the inclination of the flock to move as unit. By setting up a kind of harmony between us and the flock, in which we through the cues of small bodily movements indicated the direction in which they should go, they would respond as a group. Extended arms, we found, increased our field of control, and using the sticks as wands increased the field of control even further. Once the group got the message to move in a particular direction, they would carry the rest of the flock along, flowing like a river into a recently opened channel.
Geese tend to move like a disciplined squadron, very military in style. Turkeys are considerably more chaotic and individualistic in their style. Nonetheless, once they are disciplined into the steps of this dance – and it is like a dance – they tend to cooperate. Last summer, a visitor who was touring the farm as I was herding the turkeys in from one field to another and then into their sleeping porch, commented that the whole process seemed like a ballet. I don’t think he was referring to my graceful movements, but rather to their movement as a flock. I recall a few years back when the fellow we had hired to carry our 100-plus turkeys to market asked how we would get them into the trailer. He scoffed when Peter said he would walk them in, but walk them in he did, in the space of less than ten minutes, to the amazement of the trucker.All sorts of conditions, including our emotional states, to which the turkeys are exquisitely sensitive, can affect the process. If I am I frantically rushed and reveal my desperation, they won’t cooperate. The angle of the sunlight and atmospheric conditions can also affect the process. But because it’s a strict and unvarying routine, the turkeys do expect it, and mostly go along. I’m always surprised that on some days when chores are running late to find that some of the turkeys have gone in of their own accord, and the rest have often assembled, waiting to be guided in.
I think it helps that once inside the turkeys know what they will find – comfortable perches where they have the sense of being beyond reach of most of their predators. If the sleeping porch did not offer them a commodious place for the night, they would undoubtedly resist. They find security in being high up, unlike most of our other animals who find security indoors, in cozy safe places.
Wands are not universally useful tools. Sheep, cows, and pigs don’t have the same extremely fine sensitivity to our movements as turkeys do and one cannot get the same level of kinetic action. We did for a while have a shepherd's crook, which Peter used until it was destroyed. But we found that the larger mammals respond much better to following favored food, like grain or apples. Attract Orhan, our 10-year-old whether, with a bucket of grain, and the rest of the sheep herd will fall cooperatively into a single file and follow you into the barn. Among these animals, too, there is a group instinct that leads them to go where the other members of their herd are going. You can herd them a bit by walking slightly behind them, sufficiently to one side that they see you in their peripheral vision. But if they realize you are guiding them into an area that they would prefer not to be in, they will pretty readily circle ahead of you and run behind you, leading to great frustration.Staffs or wands have some uses with these animals. Sometimes a light prod from behind can guide the animal’s direction, and in any event a stick of any kind can serve as a protective weapon to buy one some time to run out of the zone of danger, in the event a sticky situation arises, such as an unexpectedly enraged bull upset by some unanticipated stimulus. But a 400-pound boar or 1500-pound bull is hardly going to be intimidated by any stick we could conveniently carry.
As with the turkeys, it helps if you are leading the larger animals somewhere they want to go. The sheep are so attached to the barn, as home space, that they will run there for safety from any corner of the fields if something spooks them. When we had a barn fire a few years back, it was all the local firemen could do to keep the sheep from trying to run into the burning barn for security from the chaotic scene. Their feeling of security may end up betraying them.
The most powerful influence on the ability to guide these animals to where you want them seems to be that the action takes place as part of a set routine into which they are disciplined, rules that create the structure in which they feel comfortable. The sheep, like the turkeys, line up near the barn to go “home,” as it were, as dusk approaches each evening.There are other types of comfort and security important to our animals. They have a keen sense of the arrangement of things, and of what constitutes a safe space. But our peaceful kingdom depends mightily on the calm discipline of routine and order, into which we need only coax, not prod, its members to do what’s expected of them. —Mark Scherzer
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Posted by Bess Hochstein on 05/13/12 at 02:24 PM • Permalink
AgriCulture: The Secret Language of Farms
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes:
We have discovered that the farm world has a language all its own. Before starting the farm more than 11 years ago we were not much further along in farm language than the “duckie, goosie, piggie” terms we had learned as infants gazing intently at the fascinating images in our little cloth books. True, by the time of our farm incarnation we had evolved to the point where we had dropped the “ie” endings and had more of a sense of what these animals were —as well as the horrible realization that they were intended for eating. But not much more than that.
For instance, in a vague way I associated “steer” with cowboys and the West, assuming it was just a cowboy term for beef cattle. But, of course, now that we have not only learned the meaning of the term but actually participated in the process of creating steers we know a steer is a castrated bovine, one usually raised for beef. The steer’s equivalent in the sheep world is a “whether,” a castrated male whose role (if he is not sent to market —which most are) usually becomes a bell-wearing leader of the flock, hence our term “bell whether.”
We have learned that the practice of castration evolved in part because having more than one bull or ram to a herd usually leads to fighting, as well as posing certain dangers—and that a castrated animal grows and puts on more weight faster, and, importantly, has meat with a more pleasing flavor.
I vaguely sensed before owning one that a “heifer” was a young female cow but I now know “heifer” refers to a cow under three years of age that has not produced a calf, hence one that is probably a virgin. We have also learned, to our dismay, that bulls are extremely fascinated by heifers. And, consequently have learned that “to freshen,” which means “to give birth to a calf“ (and hence to become a milk producer) signals the end of heifer status.
And we have learned that baby turkeys are poults (as an aside, we just received our 120 poults destined for Thanksgiving tables yesterday). The question of why a turkey, a relatively recent addition to the European/American farmyard, should have its young referred to as “poults,” a term obviously related to “poultry” (the generic term for most barnyard fowl), remains something of a mystery. As, for that matter, so does the name “turkey” itself—an odd name for a Europeanized bird that originated in Mexico and Central America. Now “ducklings” for baby ducks and “goslings” for baby geese make sense. But “poults” for turkeys? And then there is the moniker “keets” for baby guinea fowl.
But one of the richest farm vocabularies for some reason seems to have to do with pigs. What, I began to wonder, when confronted with these critters, is one to make of “pig,” ”hog,” or “swine?” I was surprised to learn that “pig,” which I thought was the generic term for the species, actually refers to a swine of either sex weighing under 120 pounds, while “hog” refers to a swine weighing over 120 pounds, destined for market. It came as quite a revelation to me that “swine” is actually the generic term for what in common usage is a domestic pig, that is, the genus sus scrofa domestica, regardless of weight or destiny. So, I learned, after all these years, that my little cloth book was wrong: it should have read “swinie,” not “piggie.” And that one should restrict the term “hog” when applied to greedy, objectionable people, as in “oh you big hog,” to those weighing over 120 pounds.
You probably know the difference between a “boar” and a “sow.” But there is more. What, for instance is a “barrow” or a “gilt” or a “shoat,” or for that matter “farrowing,” you may ask. With “barrow” we return to an earlier subject, for a “barrow” is a castrated male—the pig version of a steer. “Gilt” also takes us back to an earlier subject, for a “gilt” is a female swine that has not yet produced piglets or is not evidently pregnant—the pig counterpart of a heifer. A “shoat,” a strange term deriving from the Flemish ”shote,” is a weanling piglet, that is, a piglet that has just stopped taking milk from its mother (and is, therefore, no longer a “suckling pig”).
“Farrow” which can serve as both noun and verb, also strikes me as a strange term. It can refer both to a litter of piglets, a “farrow,” and to the process of giving birth to a litter of piglets,”to farrow.” And this takes us back to the cattle term “freshen.” The oddness of “farrow” is explained by its descent from the Old English term “feahr,” giving this farm term a very long history. However, “farrow” is, perhaps, now in competition with “to pig,” as with “to calve” for cows and “to lamb” for ewes.
Apparently what we neophytes refer to as piglets were once called “piglings” as in ramlings and ewelings. Remember the term “pigling bland?” To my surprise, “piglets,” I have lately learned, is not really a legitimate farm language term at all, but instead an expression used by newcomers to farming like us—a sure sign to established farmers in the know that we are not to the pigpen born.
Strangely, farm language, despite its richness of vocabulary, has—with the mysterious disappearance of “piglings”—left today’s pigherds (as in shepherds or cowherds) with just the mundane terms “little pigs” or “baby pigs.” But maybe we newcomers are on the way to changing all of that by introducing into this ancient farm language “piglets” or at least resuscitating the equally attractive term: “piglings.” To which a momma sow might raise her head from the trough and, turning her mind to Shakespeare, ask “What’s in a name?” —Peter Davies
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Posted by Bess Hochstein on 05/02/12 at 08:15 AM • Permalink
AgriCulture: The Farmer’s Role in Feeding the Poor
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Mark writes:
I’m not usually a Wall Street Journal reader, but yesterday on the subway a nearby passenger’s paper caught my eye with an article entitled “From the Field to the Food Pantry.” The subject of the article turned out to be an anti-hunger program started by Howard G. Buffett, the middle son of Warren Buffett (of Berkshire Hathaway, and Buffett Rule fame), encouraging farmers to support rural food banks.
The younger Mr. Buffett is a major philanthropist. His $225 million foundation supports agricultural development projects, primarily abroad but with about 10% of its funding allocated for use in the U.S. He and his foundation also own 3,780 acres of farmland in Central Illinois, where he farms corn and soybeans. He put up $3 million for administrative and promotional costs for the new project, which seeks to get farmers to donate one acre worth of crop proceeds a year to support 53 rural food banks run by an anti-hunger organization, Feeding America, primarily in the Middle West. The farmers will, in essence, be funding food banks in their own communities.
Using what it says is a “conservative estimate,” the Wall Street Journal article pegged the value of a one-acre produce donation, at current corn prices of $6 per bushel and a yield of 150 bushels per acre, at $900. The program will be promoted in partnership with agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, a grain processor for 80,000 farmers who on average farm 1,500 acres each. The program will also serve to educate these farmers about the ubiquitous problem of hunger in their own communities.
Mr. Buffett’s effort is significant and worthy, and will help struggling charitable institutions. It also helps remind farmers, even agribusiness farmers who produce a commodity that is processed and then reprocessed before it reaches the consumer, that their endeavor is ultimately all about feeding people. But I hope, in a number of respects, that it’s only a first step.
Let’s start with where the benefits flow. It is great that Feeding America’s 53 rural food banks will benefit from the program. But what about the nearly 150 other food banks run by Feeding America? Located in urban or suburban areas, they undoubtedly serve even larger populations of hungry people. We must remember that the community of which farmers are a part includes consumers in urban areas as well. You can see this in tangible form every week at farmers’ markets in major cities, but the urban, rural bond is just as much a reality for major agricultural commodity producers. The bulk of their profits come from the vast majority of the population that lives in urban and suburban areas. These farmers are in a symbiotic relationship with the big metropolitan areas, and should recognize that they are part of that larger community.
Let’s also consider the amount of the contribution. The average Archer Daniels Midland farmer described in the Wall Street Journal article would, according to their conservative estimate of crop prices, have about $1.35 million in crop revenue this year. Is $900 really a significant donation for that amount of revenue? Our tiny farm, with less than 3% of that revenue stream, has given roughly that amount of food, at its market value, to a local food pantry in the past year, and I would suspect that many similar farms give at least that much. Maybe you have to start small, but I would hope they’d set their goal higher than $900 a year for higher-revenue farmers.
Finally, let’s consider the issue of why there are so many hungry people in these rural areas. By all accounts, the agricultural Midwest is thriving. Other articles in the past couple of months have described rising farm property values (up nearly 6% last year) being driven by high commodity crop prices. Pension plans have begun investing in such farmland, as have Japanese investors, helping to drive up values. Indeed, some economists believe that the Midwest is in a nascent property bubble, similar to the housing bubble of the last decade. Farmers are borrowing large amounts against their inflated crop and land values, and if those values burst they will be underwater, just like homeowners in Las Vegas and Phoenix. We can only hope their banks don’t go into a similar free fall.
But right now these rural Midwestern areas are thriving. Why are there so many needy people in the midst of this prosperity? In part, it seems, the poverty is the result of a continuing process of mechanization that requires less and less labor to produce the agricultural plenty. A single farmer with a large combine and tons of pesticides and fertilizer can manage a huge spread. We know about the environmental consequences of that type of agriculture but we should also consider the human consequences of displacing so much labor. Perhaps Buffett’s foundation is already addressing this issue, but one hopes that as part of its agricultural development program it is considering developing other models of agricultural productivity that are less industrial in nature and require greater dedication of human expertise and labor.
Since the article appeared in the Wall Street Journal, I thought I’d take a look at the comments on the paper’s web page, to see if its readers were asking the same questions I was asking. Perhaps I should not have been surprised that their reactions were quite different from mine.
For some Journal readers, Mr. Buffett’s project proved that we don’t need government coming in and taxing people in order to give poorer people enough to eat. Apparently their perception is that voluntary charitable activities of the richer folks can take care of the problem. Of course none of these responders addressed the limitations of depending on such voluntarism apparent in the Buffett project itself. If we transitioned to a voluntary safety net system, what would happen to the urban poor for whom nobody has established a similar program? Are we supposed to have faith that the generosity of farmers will be contagious? If charitable giving is so effective, why do we still, five or so years into a recession, have so many hungry rural people, many of them even living in areas of agricultural abundance? Assuming full participation by all the target farmers in the Buffett program, how far will $72 million go in alleviating hunger, even just rural hunger?
In researching the history of our house and going through town meeting records at the Columbia County Historical Society a few years ago, I was interested to see, in the late 1700s and early 1800s, that one of the things voted on in the Germantown budget was a local tax to house and feed the poor. Even in that idealized time of American liberty, our local governments realized that help for the poor among us could not be left entirely to voluntary gestures. True, the government was not the federal one, but society was then organized on an entirely smaller scale. Peter similarly remembers that in the 1940s and ‘50s in Hinsdale, Illinois, an affluent Chicago suburb, the old community center had on its attic floor apartments for indigent families.
To my mind, getting farmers to contribute part of their production to local food banks is a laudable idea. It would be even more meaningful if the contributions involved edible produce itself rather than commodity produce translated into money. A gift of actual food, like the sale a farm makes to a paying customer, is an exchange which creates a real bond. But we cannot pretend that programs so limited in scope, modest in contribution, and voluntary could ever be more than a supplement to the sorts of assistance only government, with its power and resources and obligation to treat all equally, can effectively provide. —Mark Scherzer
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Posted by Bess Hochstein on 04/25/12 at 01:16 PM • Permalink
AgriCulture: The Off-Label Uses of Basil
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes:
One of the minor mysteries that nagged at me while living in Turkey years ago was the pots of dwarf bush basil I saw on the sills of the village cottage windows along the Aegean coast. The mystery was that I never saw basil used in any way in Turkish cuisine, nor did I ever hear much mention of it. Turkish cookery is so herb oriented with its heavy use of mint, dill, oregano, and rosemary that the absence of basil seemed strange.
To me, it is very odd, given that Italy and Turkey are both Mediterranean countries, sharing so much culturally and climate-wise, that, while basil plays such a prominent role in Italian cuisine, it is virtually absent from Ottoman/Turkish cookery. Even odder, given that Turkish and Greek cultures were so intermingled for centuries, is that basil seems to be so much a part of Greek myth and folk belief while in Turkey it seems relegated, seemingly bereft of all associations, to village window sills.
I was thinking of this last month while potting the dwarf bush basil plants, labeled “Greek Basil,” I had started in the greenhouse in the late spring. This variety of basil is the one with the tiny leaves that mounds so beautifully if its end leaves are constantly pinched (thus both creating a little topiary and providing a convenient kitchen source for brightening up salads and other dishes).
I had similarly potted this variety, or one like it, about eight years ago after returning from Turkey with a tiny packet of miniscule black seeds, wild basil, which I eagerly planted with great success. But for some reason I had let the practice lapse (probably because I did not act soon enough collecting the seeds). The seeds were a gift from Erkan, the owner/captain of the yacht I usually charter for my trips. I had been in Bodrum, on the lower Aegean, making charter arrangements and was invited up into the surrounding hills to see the tiny subsistence level farm Erkan had grown up on.
I remember sitting outside his family’s farm cottage enjoying the fantastic view. Through a large cleft in the mountains, the turquoise waters of the Aegean sparkled, except where three barren cone-shaped islands, ancient mountain tops, poked through, barely rising out of the sea. As I sat mesmerized, looking at this strangely primitive scene, Erkan asked me if I would like some of the basil seeds his father had foraged recently on the mountainside.
I knew that the Turkish peasantry still foraged a great deal, particularly in the spring. I had recently seen peasants carrying baskets overflowing with some kind of greenery, which, upon inspection, turned out to be wild marguerites. On further inquiry, I learned that the villagers sautéed them as a spring vegetable. This was a dish I had never seen in Turkish restaurants or in urban Turkish homes.
I also knew that the Turkish countryside was rich with herbs. In my first months of living in Izmir, Turkey, in the early sixties, I remember having made out a list of vegetables and herbs I wanted our school buyer to get us from the market. He laughed when he saw rosemary, oregano, bay leaves, and thyme on the list and said “Oh, we don’t need to buy those. I can pick them for you in the fields.” And he did. Subsequent hikes through the countryside revealed paths redolent with herbs, especially thyme, rosemary, and oregano but not basil. However, in Bodrum, possibly because it was once primarily Greek-populated and the climate is right, basil seems to have naturalized.
Once I had Erkan’s gift seeds in hand, it seemed an opportune time to solve a few mysteries; for one, the purpose of the tiny pots of basil on cottage window ledges and, secondly, its absence from Turkish cuisine
“For deodorizing the rooms, and sometimes we use it,” Erkan glibly replied in such a way as to say “End of subject.” And this answer satisfied me for a time but, gradually, it occurred to me that in this part of the world everything was so fraught with meaning and symbol that this could not be the entire explanation.
I had learned from attending several Turkish funerals, for instance, that the bunch of rosemary dropped on the filled grave, the water poured on it, and the smashing of the ceramic water pot signified death and resurrection. And I had learned at the underwater archaeology museum in Bodrum from the centuries-old wrecks preserved there that a sprig of rosemary in ancient times traditionally hung from the mast or the roof of the ship’s cabin. And I became aware thereafter that even today in the yachts and small boats of the region, rosemary predictably can be found hanging somewhere. Obviously it was an ancient custom, rosemary functioning as some kind of protective talisman.
Are the pots of basil in the windows in Turkey there for reasons other than deodorizing the rooms? I assume they must be since there are so many rituals and beliefs associated with basil worldwide. In India, where it is generally believed basil originated, the herb is placed in the mouth of the dying to ensure that they reach God. The ancient Egyptians and Greeks believed it would open the gates of heaven. And it is known from an examination of mummies that Egyptians used basil in the embalming process.
In European lore there seems to be good basil and bad basil. In some, basil is the symbol of Satan, and some Greek beliefs associate basil with hatred. On the good side, it is believed that basil was found around Christ’s tomb after the resurrection, hence its use in holy water, and its presence beneath altars in most branches of Orthodox Christianity.
On a more romantic level, in Portugal a pot of dwarf bush basil is traditionally presented, along with a poem and pompom, to a sweetheart on the religious holidays of Saint John and Saint Anthony. A friends tells me that in Sicily, a pot of dwarf basil on the windowsill is the sign of a house of prostitution—they seem to have one-upped the young swains in Portugal. In eastern Turkey, a brothel is signaled more subtly, with the glow of a lighted cigarette in a dark window. Slowly, in stages, the glow moves towards the window becoming brighter and brighter, ending with a puff of smoke before withdrawing gradually in stages, leaving blackness. Very mysterious; almost hypnotic. Too dark for potted basil, I guess. And definitely too dark to see the lady.
So where, I wonder, is the basil lore of the Turks? One possible clue: Our name for the plant “basil” apparently derives from Greek. There are two theories regarding the derivation of the word; one is that it derives from the word “basileus,” above, meaning “king” or “royal”, another, that it comes from the word “basilisk,” the half-lizard/half-dragon monster of mythology, right, known for its fatal piercing stare and equally fatal breath. In popular Greek lore, the medicinal application of basil leaf was believed to protect one from the stare, breath, and even bite of the basilisk.
Is it possible that the pot of basil on the window ledges of cottages along the Aegean hark back to this protective function, guarding the vulnerability of an open window? Possibly, since nowhere else in Anatolia do Greek and Turkish cultures fuse so closely as along the Aegean. But, then, I may never know, as I have yet to meet a Turk who would speak to me about basil. —Peter Davies
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 08/23/11 at 08:02 AM • Permalink
AgriCulture: Leading a Lamb to Assisted Living
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Mark writes:
Since I wrote about the dilemma of what to do with an increasingly frail elderly ewe a few months ago, a number of people have asked me “What happened to Marina?” We debated her fate at length. Peter convinced me that she and her twin sister, Mira, and the two other elderly ewes, Brigid and Kybele*, who arrived here together 10 years ago, would have a terrible winter ahead. He worried that because they were increasingly unable to keep up with the herd, they would be prime candidates to be torn up by coyotes. I reluctantly agreed it was time for them to go, and we arranged to send them off to slaughter—there’s a market for older animals as dog food.
I’m thrilled to report, however, that at the last minute Peter called around and instead found a home for all four of them at a wonderful institution, the Catskill Animal Sanctuary in Saugerties. We took them last Monday, and it seems it will be a fine home for them, run by delightful, caring folks who did not have the doctrinaire,“farmer as enemy” attitude I feared. Instead of becoming dog food, these two sets of devoted sisters are now happily retired to assisted living in the farm animal version of DelRay Beach. [*Kybele’s first lambing resulted in twins, one of which she rejected because of insufficient milk. The author, above with the rejected twin Orhan, whom he and his partner bottle-fed and castrated to be the herd wether. Orhan now leads the herd.]
The reason I had concerns about our reception was a certain anti-farm zealotry that sometimes comes across from those associated with farm animal sanctuaries. I got a sense of this antipathy just a couple of weeks ago, when Peter (right) told me about Joe Donahue’s interview on WAMC radio with Jenny Brown, of the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. In the interview, she recounted the saga of Kayli the cow. Kayli recently escaped while awaiting slaughter at a Halal slaughterhouse in Pennsylvania. Her cause was adopted by local animal rights activists; she was pardoned by Pennsylvania’s governor, and finally brought to the Sanctuary in Woodstock to live out her days as a celebrity cow.
It all sounded quite heartwarming—who would not root for a cow escaping death?—but Peter suggested to me that there was a certain anti-agricultural subtext. I listened to the interview, in which Ms. Brown sounded quite reasonable. I then turned to the Sanctuary’s website. There “the subtext” was in bold relief, essays ostensibly about factory farming, but which paint with such a broad brush, they could be used to condemn all livestock raising.
True believers concern me. I admire their passion and commitment, but always worry that their allegiance to a particular vision of an ideal world might make things in the real real world in which we live worse. This has certainly seemed true of late with the rigid ideological zealots of the Tea Party in Congress. The Woodstock Sanctuary has an admirable mission of saving abused and neglected farm animals, but, from what I can discern from its website, it is also guided by a rigid ideology that rests on some unexamined assumptions and damaging misinformation about farm life. The effect of the misinformation is to set up opposition between two groups—small, humanely-run farms and farm animal sanctuaries—that ought to be allies in a shared effort to see that farm animals are well cared for.
Let’s start with the unexamined assumptions. The story of Kayli, like many of the essays on the website, rests on the assumption that saving farm animals from slaughter promotes happier lives for them. The story does not confront an uncomfortable underlying truth: the only reason people support farm animals—provide food, shelter, and attention—is because they serve human needs. If Kayli had not been raised for food, she probably never would have lived at all.
Indeed, over thousands of years of selective breeding, livestock have been essentially created by man to serve as human food or fiber sources. The creatures we’ve created rely on us, not only for their sustenance, but also for protection. If allowed to roam free and reproduce naturally, it is likely that, in short order, they would face extinction. Domesticated livestock do not have the resources or genetic imprint to live on their own. They would be easy prey for predators.
The evil the Sanctuary says it is trying to address is inhumane, unhealthy and environmentally unsound factory farming. The Sanctuary tells us that agriculture has changed: our picture of the small family farm, with contented animals grazing out in pasture, is at least fifty years out of date, and the factory farming that has largely replaced it is full of unspeakable horror. I couldn’t agree more. But the Sanctuary’s remedy is to stop eating meat, poultry and eggs altogether, and even to stop using wool. There is no mention of the obvious alternative of encouraging the movement so evident in our region of raising livestock in a humane and sustainable way. If the Woodstock Sanctuary approach prevailed, the only place you would find farm animals would be at the Sanctuary and like institutions, or on the estates of the rich folks who keep them as pets. Ironically, achieving that goal would jeopardize the continued existence of the very animals that are the objects of the Sanctuary’s work.
Believing that all farm animals will enjoy natural, happy lives if only we stop raising them for food or fiber is kind of like believing that cutting taxes for wealthy people creates jobs—it’s essentially a religious conviction lacking empirical support. When, to support its arguments, the Woodstock website offers facts beyond those about the horrors of factory farming, many of those facts seem to have been created to justify their ideology rather than their ideology growing out of the facts.
Consider these passages from their section on what’s wrong with using wool:
WOODSTOCK WEBSITE: “Supposedly, shearing a sheep is a humane practice because the sheep would otherwise be burdened with kilograms of excess wool. This, of course, is a myth. Sheep grow enough wool to cover, insulate and protect themselves. It is only through human involvement that the wool grows faster because it is constantly being sheared off. Sheep are sheared each spring, after lambing, just before they would naturally shed their winter coats.”
Actually, the human effect on the growth of wool on sheep is the result of eight thousand years of selective breeding. Beginning with Ovis Orientalis, a hairy goat-like wild animal, man bred domesticated animals to produce far more fibers than the animals themselves needed, in order to serve human needs. Shearing removes this excess fiber. Anyone involved in raising sheep knows that without shearing their wool grows longer and thicker and becomes matted—a big source of discomfort once hot weather arrives. The matted wool around the anus can become caked with manure, creating a breeding ground for maggots and flies. Further, sheep do not naturally shed their winter coats. This we know from the few times we have been late getting our shearing done or when we’ve decided not to shear the new lambs born in the spring.
WOODSTOCK WEBSITE: “Timing is considered critical. Shearing too late means loss of wool. In the rush, many sheep die from exposure after premature shearing.”
Give me a break. I’ve never seen or even heard of this happening on farms like ours. Our twice a year shearing is timed to give the sheep relief from summer heat (the spring shearing) and to give them time to grow back a nice coat for winter (the fall shearing). Judging from the challenges of scheduling our expert shearer, Bruce McCord, everyone else is on pretty much the same schedule. Our shearing is about as threatening to the sheep as a haircut would be to a human.
WOODSTOCK WEBSITE: “Every single year, hundreds of lambs die before the age of 8 weeks from exposure or starvation. Many mature sheep die every year from disease, lack of shelter, and neglect.”
Out of the millions of lambs born each year world wide, “hundreds” or “many” die? The vague numbers themselves (asserted without any citation to scientific literature) should give you an idea of just how serious an issue this is. Most breeders we know of create warm, sheltered environments similar to our birthing pens in the barn for sheep to have their lambs, and buy milk substitute to bottle feed the lambs if their mothers are unable to nurse them. Some breeders even make tiny garments for their newborn lambs to keep them warm. If you want a sense of the environment that sheep on small scale farms enjoy, go to the sheep barns at the Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival in October.
No birth (sheep or human) is risk free, but you can be sure that livestock keepers, for whom the sheep have value, take measures to avoid risk. Sheep are quite hardy and can give birth successfully even outside in January blizzards, but if you want to see a big increase in deaths from exposure among the more vulnerable lambs, stop raising sheep agriculturally and let them roam wild.
WOODSTOCK WEBSITE: “Many people do not know that the sheep farming industry involves abuse, pain and suffering. The animals are often treated inhumanely and are made to undergo severe amounts of pain and brutality. Lambs’ ears are punched, their tails cut off and the males castrated all without anesthesia within the first few weeks of their lives.”
Is punching lambs’ ears (that is, piercing ears for identity tags) painful abuse? Tell that to the millions of men and women who elect to pierce their ears, noses, lips and nipples, solely for cosmetic reasons. As to the admittedly less comfortable issue of castration, there’s a balancing of cost (including the minimal pain to the animal if done right) and benefit, as I discussed a couple of weeks ago in this space. You can make up your own mind, but in doing so, keep in mind that humane societies and animal shelters, which are not raising animals for either food or fiber, generally require neutering of both males and females before they release animals for adoption. Is the SPCA then guilty of abuse? There are many good reasons for limiting reproduction.
WOODSTOCK WEBSITE: “While animals such as egg-laying hens, dairy cows and wool-bearing sheep are not immediately killed to procure their salable products, they suffer tremendously for years prior to their ultimate and unavoidable slaughter.”
As to whether keeping of sheep generally leads to lives of pain and abuse, I am sure the operators of the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary, and the readers of this blog, could readily find dozens of farms to visit within less than an hour’s drive of home where suffering is simply not part of the picture. I believe that, in our region, farms that make humane treatment of their livestock a priority far outnumber factory farms. If the evil is factory farming, then an attack on all livestock farms and all use of meat and fiber is far too broad a remedy.
Folks are certainly entitled to believe that the ultimate slaughter of animals for food is distasteful or immoral; being vegetarian or vegan on that ground is, to my mind, a readily defensible philosophy. But what is not defensible is justifying that philosophy by speading misinformation that implies that raising animals for meat or fiber necessarily involves pain or abuse. Failing to adequately draw the distinction between factory farming and humane farming implicitly vilifies the many people of good faith who live with farm animals and care deeply about their welfare even as they choose to continue the very human practice of eating meat.
As the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy has argued for years, without a market for meat, most farm animal breeds would become extinct, resulting in the loss of our agricultural heritage. If raising farm animals is restricted to the few farm animal sanctuaries that have room for a breeding pair or two, these breeds will not be preserved. If the Woodstock Sanctuary were to succeed in its goal of “saving” all farm animals from their fate, it would ultimately be dooming cows like Kayli to extinction. —Mark Scherzer
For the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 08/15/11 at 04:32 PM • Permalink
AgriCulture: Turns Out the Philanderer Also Farms, In a Way
In last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine Andrew Goldman revisited Mark Sanford, former governor of South Carolina, whose political career and marriage went down in flames when it came to light that he was having an affair with an Argentinian “soul mate.” Since Turkana Farms’ Mark Scherzer and Peter Davies are taking a week’s break from blogging, we thought it timely to revisit Davies July 1, 2009 commentary on the matter. As we pointed out then, it’s not every farming blogger who can do what Davies, a Yale-educated former English professor and dramaturg, has done: a deep reading of Sanford’s e-mails that expose a far more alarming character flaw than mere philandering.
Some of you may have read Governor Sanford’s e-mails for their salacious content. We, on the other hand, read them for what they have to say about modern agriculture. We are all familiar with American Gothic, but South Carolina Governor Sanford in one of his e-mails to his lady in Argentina sent last July inadvertently defines what we might call, “Modern American Bucolic,” He wrote:
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“Got back an hour ago to civilization and am now in Columbia after what was for me a glorious break from reality down at the farm. No phones ringing and tangible evidence of a day’s labors. Though I have started every day by 6, this morning woke at 4:30, I guess since my body knew it was the last day, and I went out and ran the excavator with lights until the sun came up.”
That his farm experience consists of running an excavator says something about him and possibly about what we have come to see as farming in today’s industrialized America. It all sounds much like George W. Bush’s favorite ranch chore, “clearing brush.” Clearing brush for what? Excavating for what? But it gets better. Sanford continues:
“To me, and I suspect no one else on earth, there is something wonderful about listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the background, the tranquility that comes with being in a virtual wilderness of trees and marsh, the day breaking and vibrant pink coming alive in the morning clouds - and getting to build something with each scoop of dirt.”
Country music playing, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine and…. “tranquility!?” How, one wonders, does tranquility break through the din? How on earth, one might ask, is he alive to the dawning of the morning light, driving as he is with his headlights on? It reads to me like a modern advertising script selling big vehicles with all the accouterments by invoking imagery from once authentic Romantic ideals. Undoubtedly, the country music (heard, no doubt, through head phones) is faux, the windows are rolled up (to keep in the air conditioning), the hands on the steering wheel of a big roaring excavator are manicured. But somewhere in his trendy head the faint intimation, a vague sense, that one should, when in a landscape of “trees and marsh,” experience the tranquility of nature. Perhaps his distorted experience with nature mirrors the confusion of his moral and ethical standards. A family man, a devout Christian, a moral majority type, an outspoken critic of Clinton’s sexual antics—but also someone who, as it turns out, admits to dalliances over a twenty year period, and who is finally Tartuffe-like discovered to be having a passionate affair with his Argentine soul-mate.
But I digress. The image of him on his excavator with his headlights on also called to my mind our strangely unmechanized farm. Our lack of a tractor has caused consternation from several quarters. We have, for instance, had a farm laborer candidate refuse to work for us because we had no tractor. We have had the sons from a neighboring farm stop, barely veiling their condescension, to comment derisively on seeing us out working with a hoe and shovel. And we have had people come up to us at local social events to say satirically, “So, you are the Luddites.”
While we are certainly not Luddites, I must admit that somewhere in my mind is a contrast between the fields and plots of traditional Anatolian Turkey (which I visit often), filled with bands of peasants planting, weeding, and hoeing, and the typical people-less American farm scene. On returning from a stay in Turkey I am always struck by the sterility of most American farms, where tractors and other farm vehicles move endlessly up and down row after row of soybeans or corn. Farming in America is no longer a hands on operation, not even in instances where it still could be.
As we have found, the pressures to mechanize are great and the prejudice against actually doing handwork very strong to the point that much of what could be better and more cheaply done by hand must instead be done to the roar of a motor. This is not to say that there are not plenty of instances in which the use of a tractor at Turkana Farms is crucial. On that score we are quite pragmatic.
When we need brush hogging done for instance, which involves hours of driving up and down the fields mowing the pastures, we call on near by neighbors with tractors who are always eager to make some extra money. And if we need 900-pound round bales moved or to have our massive compost pile turned, we, likewise, can call on our neighbor’s services. But on a day-to-day basis, we, along with our two farm helpers, manage with hand tools and garden carts to care for our forty acres and a menagerie of livestock. And, in this way, we do experience a good measure of tranquility—real, not faux, tranquility—and in every kind of light (except headlights) can fully appreciate the beauties of the natural world we seek to tame.
Turkish Whole Fava Bean Pods in Olive Oil
For 1 lb. favas:
1/3 to ½ cup of olive oil in a cast iron skillet or heavy enameled pot with a tight-fitting cover
Heat on a medium flame
Add a couple of cloves of garlic, and once they have softened, add the fava bean pods. Toss in the oil to fully coat
Turn heat to low, cover tightly and cook, stirring once or twice, for 10 to 15 minutes, until pods begin to turn a little yellow
Then add boiling water to cover, the juice of one lemon, a tablespoon of sugar, salt and pepper to taste. Simmer uncovered on low flame for about 1 to 1 ½ hours, until beans are soft and liquid turns to a syrupy consistency
Allow to cool; serve at room temperature, garnished with chopped dill.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 08/09/11 at 01:28 PM • Permalink
AgriCulture: Blue Ribbon Okra, Plus Recipes
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes:
One of our best kept secrets is that our farm, Turkana Farms, won first prize, a beautiful blue ribbon with gold letters reading “First Premium,” for our okra entry at the Columbia County Fair a few years ago. The ribbon is proudly displayed on the wall of the farm office. An even better kept secret (until now): we were the only farm that entered okra in the competition. So we must admit that our pride in our blue ribbon has been severely compromised.
One thing the experience taught us is that not many people in this region are familiar with okra. The public’s reaction to our plate of artistically arranged okra in Columbia County’s New Faces of Agriculture booth was, “What is that?” This response corroborated what we had learned a number of years ago when we tried selling our vegetables at the Saturday Hudson Farmer’s Market. When our okra began producing, we were certain that, with the large African American population in Hudson, we would have to meet a big demand. But this was not to be since, apparently, after living up here for generations and buying their food at the standard supermarkets, Hudson’s African Americans no longer remember or value this signature food of the South. Only Hudson’s small Bengali community recognized our okra and purchased it.
It was not until my early twenties that I was introduced to okra. And this was by my then mother-in-law-to-be, May Johnson. Although she was born and spent her early childhood in Scotland, she had absorbed a Southern-oriented cuisine growing up in Terre Haute, Indiana.
She sliced the okra pods crosswise into thin disks and sauteed them in oil with a little chopped onion until the okra was crisp and nutty in flavor. I liked it. It was a fortuitous introduction as, within a few years, I found myself living in Turkey, where okra, known as “bamya,” occupies an important niche in its cuisine. And I received yet another infusion of enthusiasm for okra when I subsequently moved to New Orleans, the land of gumbo. As a result of all of these wonderful introductions, okra has become a favorite in my summer diet.
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Wikepedia tells us that okra (Abelmoschus esculentus Moench) is a flowering plant in the mallow family. There is some controversy about this, but it is also believed to be related to such species as cotton, cacao, and hibiscus. Its leaf structure vaguely resembles that of marijuana, apparently getting at least one grower in trouble with the law. However, Mark, who knows more about these things than I , doesn’t think the two leaves would be easy to confuse. In our region, we are lucky to get okra to grow knee high but in much hotter Texas it apparently can grow to 8 or 10 feet.
Okra is also known in English-speaking countries as lady’s fingers or gumbo.”Lady’s fingers” must have been a euphemism, as it is my opinion that a more phallic term would be more appropriate. In India, its Hindi name is “bhindi or “bhendi”, terms you have undoubtedly seen on Indian restaurant menus.
Okra is cultivated for its edible, green seed pods, which are picked at an immature stage. If not picked soon enough, they become woody and inedible, usable only in powdered form as a thickener in Creole cooking. Its hibiscus-like yellow or white flower with bright red centers is a strangely delicate flower for such an otherwise coarse-looking plant. The flowering plant, however, is considered so decorative that it is sometimes included in perennial gardens. Okra requires very hot weather, and is, therefore, in this region, a marginal crop, since it will not thrive during a cool summer. Once the temperature goes below 50 degrees it stops growing, and the leaves begin to brown, curl, and drop off. We had that experience a number of times when we first started growing okra. Significantly, it is easier to grow okra here now than it was ten years ago—another sign of global warming.
There is some dispute about the origins of okra, since it is now cultivated in tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate regions worldwide, but it is generally believed that okra originated in West Africa. In corroboration of this, our word “okra” appears to be cognate with “Okuru and ila” in two languages, Igbo and Yaruba, spoken in Nigeria.
The spread of okra, at least in the places I know, seems to be associated with slavery. Historically, the cultures of the American South, the Ottoman Empire, and the Arabic world all included slavery as an important institution, and imported huge numbers of slaves from sub-Saharan Africa. It is known that slaves often carried with them into captivity seeds, including okra seeds. It is no accident, therefore, that okra is very much a signature food in these former slave holding regions.
Okra, according to surviving records, was being grown in Brazil by 1658. It is thought that by the early eighteenth century okra had been introduced to southeastern United States. It is known that by 1748 it was grown as far north as Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson, our most agriculturally attuned president, noted that it was well established in Virginia by 1781. [Page from Jefferson’s farm book, left, headed “Note of the Negroes Taken, 1783.”]
One thing those uninitiated to the joys of okra seem to know is that it is “slimy”. True, it is mucilaginous, resulting in the characteristic “goo” or “slime” when the seed pods are cooked in a certain way such as in gumbos, stews, and soups, where it acts as an ideal thickener.
But apart from these well known uses, it can be cooked in a way that minimizes its mucilaginous characteristics. Some of the ways include stir frying it with acidic ingredients such as citrus, tomatoes, and vinegar; or sprinkling it with a few drops of lemon juice; or cooking the whole pods very quickly leaving them al dente; or, as mother-in-law May taught me, slicing the pods into thin discs and sautéing them. A popular preparation in the Deep South is to bread okra pods and deep fry them. Okra is also, as I found in my travels, quite tasty when pickled, a dish popular in Arab and Turkish regions.
For those nutrition-minded readers, you should know that okra is a rich source of many nutrients, including fiber, vitamin B6 and folic acid. And because of its mucilaginous characteristic, it has many beneficial effects on the intestinal tract, in particular, preventing and treating constipation.
Rather than end on this odd note, may I, dear reader, offer you a few recipes:
A Southern Okra Recipe with Cornmeal
10 pods okra, sliced in ¼ inch pieces
1 egg beaten
1 cup cornmeal
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
½ cup vegetable oil
1. In a small bowl, soak okra discs in egg for 5 to 10 minutes
2. In a medium bowl combine the cornmeal, salt, and pepper
3. Heat oil in a large skillet over a medium high heat.
4. Dredge okra in the cornmeal mixture coating evenly.
5. Carefully place okra in hot oil; stir continuously. Reduce heat to medium when okra first starts to brown and cook till golden
7. Drain on paper towels
An Easy Indian Recipe for Okra
3 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion chopped
1 pound sliced fresh okra
½ teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground coriander
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
salt to taste
1. Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat
2. Add the onion and cook till tender
3. Stir in the okra and season with cumin, ginger, coriander, pepper, and salt, and stir for a few minutes
4. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cover the pan. Cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally until the okra is tender.
My Own Variation on Sauteed Okra
¼ cup of olive oil
A dozen or so okra pods cut into ¼ inch discs spread out on a paper towel
½ small onion chopped
1 clove of garlic chopped
1 cup of chopped tomatoes
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon of ground black pepper
juice of half a lemon
1. Heat a heavy skillet with the olive oil over medium/high heat. When hot add onions and sauté till soft, adding garlic towards the end
2. Turn up heat; add the okra discs and brown on both sides
3. Add chopped tomatoes and stir turning the heat down once the tomato sauce is hot. Salt and pepper to taste.
Cover the pan and allow to simmer till okra is tender (or if you prefer al dente)
4. Move to serving bowl and add lemon juice. Serve hot or at room temperature with lemon slices on the side.
—Peter Davies
For the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/30/11 at 10:02 AM • Permalink
AgriCulture: The Pleasure Principle
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Mark writes:
On this extremely hot afternoon smack in the middle of a short (we hope) heat wave, I am very thankful not to be living in the Midwest, where the extremely hot afternoon would have been preceded by a month of similarly awful hot afternoons and followed (if forecasts are accurate) by a seeming eternity of awful hot afternoons. For us, the heat brings to the fore one of the farm responsibilities we haven’t had to pay much attention to most of the summer: Since the early days of spring, the animals have managed to make themselves comfortable without tremendous effort on our part. These days, they need our help.
Until the other day, I did not know that there is a science of animal comfort: “hedonic ethology”. The New York Times Science section this week had a report by Katherine Bouton on a new book on this topic, The Exultant Ark: A Pictorial Tour of Animal Pleasure by Jonathan Balcombe. I have not yet read the book, but The Times assures us it is not merely an album of cutesy photos of piglets tumbling in play, macaques sunning themselves together on rocks, and giraffes nuzzling with their young. It has a serious accompanying text, in which it is argued quite logically that animals’ ability to feel pain, which everyone would acknowledge, must naturally imply an inverse ability to experience pleasure. That ability reinforces our growing understanding that animals are fully sentient beings and that we, therefore, have an ethical responsibility to treat them well in order to increase their pleasure. Not that we act entirely without self interest here. As Balcombe points out, happier animals have better survival and reproductive success.
We are pretty sure that we’ll increase the animals’ pleasure these days if we give them ways to avoid the heat of the sun. Our cows need no help on this score since they have discovered the coolest, breeziest spots themselves, one of them just across the fence from the cool, breezy spot where we most like to sit in the back yard. The cows know how to find comfort. But the sheep are less resourceful about shade. They don’t seem to understand that trees will supply relief on super hot days; the only shady spot they crave seems to be the barn. Most of the summer, we try to exclude them from the barn except for brief visits for grain treats. But when the heat is this excessive we accede to their wish for indoor time on the cool shaded concrete floor of the barn. We reconcile ourselves to having to muck out the mess they leave in the barn when the weather cools down a bit.
Like us, in this heat the animals also need to be frequently and amply hydrated, This means refilling water tanks for all the animals two or even three times a day. Even when water containers appear to have plenty of water, we’ve got to test the temperature and often dump and refill them with cold water, as the animals are just as unenthusiastic about drinking hot water as we might be.
There is always the danger that we extrapolate too much from human experience in determining what will make animals happier and more comfortable. Observing them closely is the only way to really learn their preferences. Some of our observations almost rise to the level of the scientific method, perhaps making us hedonic ethologists. Three weeks ago, for example, I thought we were able through observation to establish a clear hierarchy of bovine pleasures. We were finally trading our beloved bull, Tommy, for a new one, with a different blood line, from Herondale Farm. (We had initially scheduled the trade for late May but Jeremy Peele, Herondale’s owner, thought we had better postpone until July when he was ready to place his bulls with the cows for breeding. Introducing a new face to the bull pen without the distraction of cows in heat to breed, he suspected, would lead to fighting.)
In order to avoid conflict and make for a smooth exchange when Jerry arrived with the new bull, we wanted to confine Tommy to the paddock. I figured apples, which cows love, would be the way to draw him in. I went up to Tommy, who was standing in the shade nearby, with a bucket of apple slices. He was, as I predicted, quite happy to eat them from my hand. At least while he was standing in the shade. But he was not, it turned out, willing to follow me out into the hot sun of the paddock just to get more slices. Shade trumped food. What to do?
When Jerry, practiced stockman that he is, arrived, he immediately fixed on a solution. He asked whether we had any cows in heat. We knew we did as our youngest cow and Tommy had been bellowing across the fence at each other for days. At Jerry’s suggestion, Peter moved that cow into an adjoining paddock near the barn where Tommy could see her. And when she appeared there, Tommy was out of the shade and into the paddock, where we wanted him, in a flash. On that hot summer Sunday, we executed what seemed to me to be a perfectly controlled scientific experiment, in which two stimuli competed with a third, and clearly established a hierarchy of urges. Shade may have trumped food, but both were completely eclipsed by the power of sexual desire. Peter has questioned the validity of my experiment’s design and conclusion, saying that it could just have been that Tommy sensed a trap when I tried to lead him with apples, a trap he did not sense when he saw the cow. But I’d like to think of that observation as my coming of age as a hedonic ethologist.
According to the Times, Balcome also suggests that animals may experience their own unique pleasures, types of pleasure inaccessible to humans. Maybe so. As we’ve learned, some animals have special needs and special mechanisms for making themselves comfortable. Pigs have no pores and hence cannot sweat. Their best mechanism for cooling down is to dig a hole in a wet spot, a wallow, and lie in it. Hence the expression, “Happy as a pig in mud”. In this heat, even our marshy back field where the pigs spend the summer has been drying up, so every morning, we dutifully run a hose to five or six of their favorite wallows to create the mud for them, giving them a most welcome shower in the process if they’re around when we’re doing it. Carmen and Miranda used to love such showers so much they went into hilarious pirouettes to get the full effect.
But should this pleasure of the wallow really be reserved to pigs alone? Lacking air conditioning, and closely observing the pigs’ pleasure, I’m contemplating that we might enjoy having a mud wallow of our own. If the heat keeps up more than another day, this is going to the top of my Project List, so that we, too, can be happy as pigs in mud. —Mark Scherzer
For the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/24/11 at 05:23 PM • Permalink
AgriCulture: The Great Release
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AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes:
This is the week of the great release. Our 100 or so heritage turkey poults finally, after more than two months of confinement, have reached a size that they no longer can be carried off by the red tailed hawks and other predators. So we opened the hatch to the outside and most of them (the brave ones) rushed out excitedly for their first experience of sunlight and wind, and reveled in their freedom to forage for themselves. They found their new world to be a spacious compound grown up with waist high oats and weeds, which, in not much more than a month, they will graze as bare as the Gobi Desert.
By the second day, the stay-at-homes and cautious ones had also joined the others outside. The liquid gurgling sound they made as they moved amongst the oats and weeds said everything about their pleasure. From now till Thanksgiving, they will spend every day on pasture, only to be driven into their sleeping porch at nightfall to protect them from predators. Discovering 19 of them one morning several years ago scattered about the compound, bloody and headless, ended their nights sleeping in the apple trees. It was a horned owl that did the deed, we think.
Our Toulouse goslings were next to be released. In the almost military order that is characteristic of the breed, they waddled, under my wand’s direction, in a tight gabbling phalanx down the block-long turkey compound to the lower pasture.and with just a few movements of my wand, they obediently marched into their new hut, where they will be closed in every night.
By the second day they were making cautious forays out into the pasture to graze. .But they have not yet worked up the courage to wander as far as the little pond under the willow. Turkeys typically rush in where angels fear to tread. But not geese.
Our shy, yellow ducklings next followed in the exodus from the brooder houses. But with their rather hysterical nature, there was no prospect of walking them in an orderly way to their new world. Instead they were gathered in a large garden cart, covered with a sheet and trundled to their portable pen, where they will safely overnight. We learned quite a few years ago that ducks could not survive outdoors at night, as each morning we had the depressing experience of discovering yet another missing or maimed duck. For us the expression “like a sitting duck” took on new resonance.
On the second day we left the portable duck pen door ajar, and soon most (but not all of them) mustered the courage to venture out to graze in the fenced area between the turkey compound and the vegetable garden. We are trying another breed this year, the Muscovy, actually a type of duck most people are familiar with. Unfortunately we could not convert our customers into accepting the smaller, leaner French Rouen duck despite our eloquent explanations and the French recipes we supplied. This new, improved breed of Muscovy will, we have been assured by our hatchery, reach a much larger size and in a shorter period of time.
In the next few days our fifty meat chickens, the French Freedom Rangers, will also be released, leaving their brooder boxes to take up residence on pasture, sleeping at night in their portable pen for safety. We are leaving the Cornish/cross chickens we have grown in the past behind for the Freedom Rangers, which are a relatively new French breed, pasture grazers that produce, we think, a better tasting chicken. Last year we raised an equal number of each breed, and we invited our customers to sample both and give us their responses. On the basis of those responses and our own tastings, as well as some research into fat and nutrient content, we have voted this year to move entirely into Freedom Rangers even though they take considerably longer to reach market size.
Would that things ran this smoothly with the vegetable garden and berry bushes. A particularly brutal winter seems to have considerably reduced the berry crops this year. Strawberries were sparse and small and rather malformed. And the birds and chipmunks seem to have gotten most of them. The raspberries are also producing a pathetically sparse crop; hopefully on the next flowering we will be lucky. The gooseberries and black currants (partly because of the winter and Mark’s radical pruning) likewise have produced very little. Only the blackberries, it seems, are going to live up to their potential. We are thankful we planted the hardy Illini breed.
Our vegetable garden struggles along, enduring days and days of rain and high humidity and precious little sun. Rain seems to come these days only in deluges, and the sun, when it does appear, is scorching. Thunder storms and winds have become increasingly violent. And there has been the constant threat of hailstorms and even tornadoes. These extremes of weather are not conducive to growing crops.
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But while plants like tomatoes (which are again threatened by tomato blight), and corn (which so far has looked rather stunted) have not been thriving, spinach and lettuce have. And, surprisingly, as we discovered as we took up our garlic this weekend, we have produced the most beautiful and bountiful crop yet. But so far this is one of the few bright spots.
The news we have been getting from other farmers supports our impression that, indeed we are experiencing the effects of climate change. Perhaps only a know-nothing faction of the Republicans can believe that this is not happening. But with matters having to do with climate, we should not be in the realm of religion (which is a matter of faith and belief) but rather science (which is a matter of empirical observation).
It is hard for me to imagine that farmers can remain Republicans for long when they see what they are experiencing so directly and intensely on a daily basis adamantly denied.
—Peter Davies
For the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/16/11 at 01:22 PM • Permalink
AgriCulture: Why We (Um)...Castrate
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Mark writes:
If you want to know what empathy is, follow the expression on a young man’s face as he assists at a piglet’s castration. Last Sunday I watched bemusedly as Tony, below, who is helping us part time this summer, darted a glance quickly down at the tiny piglet whose leg he was holding, widened his eyes, winced in almost visceral pain, and then intently stared off into distant space, mouth contorted, while the surgery proceeded. That was for the first piglet. For the second one, he never shifted his gaze downward at all.
Even though we assemble three people to assist the vet (probably a bit overstaffed), castration day is always something of an ordeal. It starts with catching the piglets. I am the designated catcher, a task that varies in difficulty, depending on where the sow and her litter are housed. If they are in the pen we have set up for this purpose, I simply have to deposit food in the corner we have created with a low fence. The piglets enter through an opening in the fence too small for their mother to follow, and once they are in, I block the opening, locking them into the corner, then simply reach in and pick them up. Last week, however, they were in one of the other pens lacking this feature, along with their mother, Jane (cousin to Eyre). I had to climb into the pen, fending off Jane. then use a large fisherman’s net to catch the scampering piglets, jumping out, with Jane in close pursuit. One of the piglets escaped the net, forcing me to corner him again. In a castration session a few years ago, one I was fortunate to have missed, a young kid we had hired to do the deed found himself backed up against the pen fence as the enraged sow charged him. According to Peter, the poor guy, obviously powered by a surge of adrenaline, escaped by doing a backflip over the fence.
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As piglets are caught and lifted from the ground, they emit loud squeals and unearthly shrieks, but once they are securely in my arms, they generally quiet down, and my role in the castration becomes perhaps the least traumatic. I clasp the back of the piglet to my chest, so he is facing away from me, my hands holding his front legs. I murmur soothing words into his ears. I can’t really see what’s going on below. Meanwhile, Peter and an assistant face me, each holding one of the piglet’s hind legs away from the groin area. They have a front row view as Elaine, our trusty, cool-headed vet, makes incisions and quickly yanks out the testicles. She is quite practiced at this, and it’s usually over in a matter of a minute or two.
During the operation itself, the piglets usually seem unaffected by pain and don’t seem to have much awareness of what’s going on. And the minute you put them back down in the pen with their mothers, they return to nursing and running around as if nothing has happened. Their relative equanimity about the process does not do away with the trauma for the human witnesses, however. We men, particularly, seem to feel the pain on behalf of the poor little piglets. We don’t relish castration days.
So why do we do it? The first reason that comes to mind is control of the testosterone level on the farm. Intact males are aggressive, challenge each other and their owners, and create chaos when intent on breeding or establishing their pecking order. We see the power of the sexual urge and male hormones every day. If we are to keep the peace and exercise reasonable control over the breeding schedule, we must carefully control the number and placement of intact males
But this is not the whole story behind castration. There is yet another, even more compelling reason for this unsavory task—the flavor of the meat. There seems to be near universal consensus in America today that meat from sexually mature intact males just doesn’t taste very good, especially as they get older. Farmers I’ve spoken to say that male hormones makes the meat of all large livestock, including cattle and sheep, unpalatable, but the distaste seems particularly strong where pigs are concerned.
Does the meat from mature intact males really taste different? Our experience with the slaughter of a ram years ago suggested it did, but we haven’t made a scientific study of the question. Others have. I found a University of Wyoming study, for example, comparing palatability of intact rams with wethers. They determined that the meat of wethers was generally more tender than that of young intact rams, though the flavor was similar. But, they found, as rams age and became heavier, their meat also developes a marked “staggy” or ammonia-like odor. This is not to most Americans’ taste, and I’m not sure if it is to anyone’s.
We do have customers who like somewhat older lambs, for their stronger flavor. Our Uzbeki customers even like adult sheep up to 3 or 4 years old. And of course the English and Australians have long loved their mutton. But we have not yet found any customers clamoring for meat from intact males of any of our livestock. I’ve seen wild boar on some menus, and found it quite tasty, but I assume that what is being served is either very young intact boars or simply feral female pigs.
If leaving the piglets intact did not make them unsaleable, we might well figure out ways to avoid the surgical castration. Thankfully, when we turn our little bull calves into steers and little rams into wethers, no surgery is required. Unlike pigs, these animals have hanging scrotums that can be removed by placing a band around them, above their testicles, that cuts the blood flow so the scrotum gradually atrophies and falls off. I’ve been learning to do a reasonably good job of this myself, at least on the lambs, obviating the need for surgery. But for the piglets, there is no alternative.
So why do we engage in this barbaric-appearing practice? My friend George, disturbed that we might be doing this just for a minimal improvement in flavor, asked only half in jest, “What’s the next Turkana taste test? ‘Bovine Waterboarding: Added Flavor, or Just a Waste of Time?’ or ‘The Rack: Prior to the Kill, or Only in the Oven?’ ” But it’s really the difference between enjoying flavorful and tender meat or ingesting something that tastes like ammonia. Now that you realize its value, let us know if you’d like to volunteer to assist at the next castration.
—Mark Scherzer
For the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/09/11 at 07:59 AM • Permalink
