Processing Costs, Water Problems, Spring Barn Cleaning
Things are picking up on the farm. Keeping the cows moving to fresh grass and moving pigs to a fresh paddock in the woods. Amy made lots of real farm bone broth and also spent a half day rendering pork fat into lard. She delivered meat to Chilhowie and Abingdon Monday afternoon. We know Saturdays can be hard from some to get to the farmers market in Abingdon, so we’ve added another Abingdon delivery option every 4th Monday of the month.
Wednesday we got more beef back from the processor and sorted it all into the freezers. Costs continue to rise, including our processing costs. Almost 20% increase. Ouch. The beef we just got back averaged right at $1000/head just for processing. The more our costs increase, the more important it is for us to evaluate and adjust our pricing. I don’t like this part of farming. We are passionate about taking care of our animals, stewarding the land, and getting healthy meat to folks in our region. But our passion for farming won’t keep us farming for long if the numbers don’t add up.
A couple water problems took priority early in the week. Hasten doesn’t typically like to farm with me as much as the girls do, but addressing the water issues captivated his attention. He knew the cows needed water, and his problem-solving mind kicked into gear, understanding that not fixing it was not an option. “What are we going to do dad? We have to figure it out.” After riding throughout the farm, finding the problem, and uncovering it, we both stood there scratching our heads over what the next step should be, Hasten, in deep thought wisely said, “I sure wish Ronnie was here to give us some tips.” After calling Ronnie, he gave us more than tips, he came out and helped fix it. Thankful for good neighbors.
We won’t harvest any of our pastured chickens until the first week of June, but another farm in the area raised a group of meat birds they want us to process for them on Monday. So Amy got the pressure washer out to clean up our processing area. Today I’ll clean and check all the equipment. Looking forward to trying out the new plucker. On farm processing starts early this year.
This week while farming I’ve been listening to “Corruption in America” by Zephyr Teachout. Here’s a few quotes:
“Temptation is a central theme of the book… What America now faces, if we do not change the fundamental structures of the relationship of money to legislative power, is neither mob-rule nor democracy but oligarchy.”
“He [Benjamin Franklin] imagined ever-growing salaries because there would always be some reason proclaimed and groups who would speak in favor of increasing salaries. For him, the question of the scope of payment represented a fundamental struggle that appeared between rulers and ruled which could lead to great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the princes or enslaving of the people.”
“A few people represent a district, but the rest are all gravestones, at least as far as the candidate is concerned, and money buys the outcome. The private interests, like the agents of the English king corrupt one of the finest fabrics ever built. At a formal level, everyone gets a vote, but at a formal level everyone got a vote for parliament too. At the level of power, fewer than 1% of people get to choose whom everyone else can vote for.”
“The citizen, too, becomes itemized, a set of wants, a consumer, a taxpayer. And government is seen as transactionally instead of as part of a social political whole. The American democratic experiment is in the midst of a political disruption enabled by this conceptual disintegration. We could lose our democracy in the process… Americans don’t trust their government, and we feel that the country is going in the wrong direction, not just as a matter of policy but as a democracy.”
Have a good week.
Will