I sold my cows at an auction barn last week. When I called Billy at the Bagley Livestock Exchange a couple of weeks ago, I told him I was interested in his services to help me feel decent about getting out of the cattle business. Billy was quick to respond.
" I"ll drop in on my next trip your way," he said. "What's your cel number?"
After reporting my number and feeling like that was too easy, I began to talk to him about selling my cows at an 'auction barn' and my impressions of what that might be like to a neophyte in the cattle business like myself.
"Ahh, sure, Billy, but these are grass-fed cows that have been together on my place for a couple of years. Are they going to go to the first legitimate wrangler that raises his hand to the babble of the auctioneer?", I asked.
"Hey, Ron," he replied, "I can tell you haven't been to one of our sales. That feeling in your gut was legitimate in the past, but since we took over the Bagley sales we're changed that old enigma that a cattle auction is slightly better than dumping one's prized cows out the back of a semi on the freeway at 75 miles per hour. What we call a sale of cows like yours is a 'dispersal sale' and if you can give me a couple weeks advance on when you'd like to sell them I can do my homework and set up the crowd with buyers looking for cows like yours to improve their herds."
"Oh," I said, "that sounds pretty good. Are there many guys grazing cows anymore who might show up?"
"Ron," he said, "you live on the fringe of the grass country in northwestern Minnesota. You're on the edge of commodities grain. Up my way there are plenty of guys feeding cows out on grass and last years hay crop was exceptional so they have a lot of hay to feed. That's cheap pounds going on for them, so there is a lot of interest in calves and bred cows to expand their herds right now. And you calve in late May and June and those lighter calves are selling at pretty high prices for the first time in a long time."
I told Billy I was really looking forward to having him stop by. After hanging up I walked outside to feed the cows their afternoon dose of beet shreddings and to have a chat with them. My little gang of eight cows and one bull were licking at the ground at the feeding lane soon after I arrived at the trailer where I keep the beets under cover from the winter that failed to arrive with any gusto this year. I'd had the calves in the corral since weening them in November and decided not to put them back out with the cows so my bull, "Joey Mauer", wouldn't have his way with any of my heifer calves before their time. The calves like the cows and Joey, were at the gate pacing as soon as I lifted the blue nylon tarp from the trailer to load 5-gallon buckets with dry beet shreddings for their afternoon delight.
As I walked over to the big cows with two buckets of beets, Joe was first in the line and moaning at my tardiness. He was flinging saliva hither and yon in anticipation of me dumping the buckets along the feeding lane they had learned to line up along at nine in the morning and four in the afternoon.
"Easy, Joey," I called out as I dropped a gate wire so I could spread the beets on the ground for the nine animals. Then, "Hey 39!" to my biggest cow now carrying her third calf. "23" I whispered as I dumped a quarter bucket in front of her, "how come you're letting 801 in front of you tonight?", I asked her. No reply. The usual silent treatment, and one I'd come to understand over the past two years as a cows way of saying, "Less is better on the chatter there farmhand."
"How would you guys like to be dispersed?", I asked them as they totally ignored me and lapped at the ground like a hound in a water bucket after a three hour 'coon hunt. "I've asked Billy to drop by and tell me about his operation up in Bagley. How about a ride in a strange trailer to Bagley? Wanna go to Bagley, huh?" Still no reply, but that did get 61 to move to the other side of 805 to pick up on some beets none of the others had spotted in their haste to lick up everything but the subsoil along the lane. "Well," I said, "Billy's coming over anyway. He wants to size you guys up and talk to me about his marketing strategy for the auction in two weeks." Still no response. Somehow I thought that "size you up" and "auction" talk might get a rise out of them. I know for a fact if I had said, "Billy's coming to take you to the ballpark", there would have been some whites of the eyes bugging out in my direction. "Well girls," I said in departing to get the ration for the calves, "you're not going to the ballpark just yet. I promise I'll get you another fine pasture to mow this spring and hopefully long after. All you've got to do is keep dropping those nice little calves and you won't become a No Name hotdog. Joey, I'm not so sure about you, but if they can see that you got all these girls pregnant again, I'm sure someone at the auction will think you're nothing but a stud like you're namesake, Joe Mauer."
Billy showed up on a Tuesday and we walked to the corral to see the calves.
"They look fine", he said. "That little steer is about 50 pounds heavier than those heifers and yet, they are all small enough to pull top dollar for you."
"Great!", I answered. "Are there many guys up your way running cows on grass all year?"
"Not all year", Billy said, "but, like I told you on the phone the other day, there is so much grass this year they're all picking up extra stockers and they'll run them on grass and finish them on grain later in the summer before they ship them to the feedlots to finish."
"Let's walk out to the cows and see if they'll let you get close enough for a good look", I said.
"Sure," Billy said as we crossed the frozen marsh to the cows and Joey feeding on a round bale of hay. Billy looked at them closely and walked slowly at an angle to them so they didn't spook. Some of them looked up and moved a few yards away from the bale ring and watched us approach closer. Billy pointed out two that he thought might be late calvers and we headed back to his truck.
We talked about the process that would take place at the sale barn on the Thursday after the one coming and I asked Billy if he had someone with a trailer that could come pick up the cows on the day he wanted them.
"Yes, I have access to several guys down this way with truck-trailer combinations big enough to haul your bunch," he told me. "I'll have one of them call you and we should shoot for the Wednesday before the Thursday sale so we can vet check them for pregnancy and tag them in groups for the auction arena. We'll bunch the heifer calves together and the steer by himself. Then we'll bring out your cows in groups depending on the month they are likely to calve. Then your bull will get his chance to win the crowd".
I offered Billy a coffee before he jumped up in his "real cattleman's" truck and he refused. He was running late. I watched him drive up the driveway and realized I had all but committed my cows to their fates in a "dispersal sale".
I got a call from Mark within an hour. He said Billy had assigned him to haul my cattle and we'd have to talk next Tuesday so he could get directions to Blue Moon Farm. Mark lived in Detroit Lakes and after I told him we lived north of Richwood on County 21 he seemed confident he could find us without a hitch.
The week went by fast. I had to pick up a final couple of scoops of beet shavings from my neighbor Wally to supplement the cows those last days. I told Wally I had talked to Billy and he seemed pleased I was going that route rather than trying to sell them myself. He was certain I'd be happier with Billy's way of selling cows than for me to try and do it myself. I thanked him for suggesting Billy's operation and headed home with my small trailer and 500 pounds of beet shavings, more than enough to last the cows until their big trip to Bagley.
By Monday panic had started to set in. Not that I was backing out of selling the cows, but a "big" storm was headed our way and I was getting anxious it would become a spring blizzard and either delay the sale or hit right in the latter part of the week and no one would show up at the sales barn. I called Billy.
"Bagley Livestock Exchange", Billy answered his cellphone. I explained my apprehension as the predictions of a blizzard had become real and I told him I didn't want my cows going on the road on Wednesday right when the blizzard was expected to hit. I talked to him about attendance right after a blizzard.
"Ron," he said, "I don't want to do anything with your cows that you don't want to do to them." That settled me down like a cow getting clamped in a squeeze chute. "And as far as trucking them up here, let's get them from you tomorrow and get them up here. We have plenty of hay to keep them happy and depending on how the storm tracks and how much snow we get, I suspect my buyers will show up anyway", he reassured me.
"That's great, Billy," I said, "I'll call Mark and have him come tomorrow instead of Wednesday. I really just don't have the equipment to dig out in time if he comes on Wednesday and we've had a big snowfall or he gets stuck with his rig trying to get out of my place."
"That sounds fine, Ron", Billy said. "It really is best if we get your cows sold and relocated this week. These guys up here are starting to attend to heifers about to calf and they aren't going to be too interested in buying in the coming weeks with that all going on."
Mark arrived on Tuesday on time and in tennis shoes. I didn't notice his foot attire until he had his 32 foot trailer perfectly backed up to my load-out chute in less time than I could open a gate. "Hey, Mark", I said as he opened his door and got out.
"Hi, Ron", he answered. It was then that I noticed his shoes and asked if he had some mud boots for the loading work we'd have to do in my manured up and snow-packed corral.
"These are my mud boots" he replied and we set about the forty minute task of loading my cows in his trailer. I am happy to report that we didn't exactly have a rodeo trying to get 14 head in, but I will say they got the drift of what we were doing pretty quickly and they mounted a serious act of armed resistance trying to stay at the Blue Moon Farm Hilton. I watched Mark's big truck and long trailer go up the driveway and turn toward the highway to Bagley. Don't ask me about tears. I'm a cattleman you know.
The blizzard came in with a whimper late that night and on into Wednesday. I was still proud of my decision to get the cows to Bagely when I did. Wednesday my neighbor Norm called and asked about the pending sale.
"Yeah, Norm, I guess we're on for Thursday, but what do I know about "dispersal sales" or auction sales of any kind," I told him.
"Hey, I'm going to be able to go with you, " Norm replied. "Wally is not going to need me to clean up around his place since we didn't get much if any snow with this storm."
"Great, I'll pick you up around 9:30 in the morning since the sale starts at 11:00 and it's a little over an hour and some to Bagley from your place," I told him.
Thursday came to light full of anticipation for me. We got to Bagely and found the sales property with only minor confusion. It had been years since Norm had been to a sale and his intuition of where the place was was dead on. I on the other hand had my handy dandy iPhone App that showed me the Bagely Livestock Exchange in a place too close to town and where, it turns out a small farm was operating. No problem though we eventually found the Exchange, walked around the stockyard until we confirmed that my cows had indeed made it to the right place on Tuesday and then, sat on our butts in the sales arena for three hours before my cows came up for auction. They looked great, well great to me and as good as any other cows in the sale. Some buyers disagreed with my assessment and bid higher on some cows than what they bid on mine. But, I was happy with the prices and strangely, I didn't feel much of anything about them going to another farm. I guess my decision to sell was final in my heart and on the sales floor. I actually sold my cows for more than I paid for them two years before and even Joey came in at a profit price compared to purchase price. I doubt that is normal for a "dispersal sale". But, there is nothing normal about cattle prices this winter and for that, and for the degree in animal husbandry science and farm facility management I earned having those beautiful Angus cattle with us on Blue Moon Farm I can only tip my Stetson.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Things in Common
It's an unsettled day on Blue Moon Farm. I hear Winter wheezing
away, way Up North. A touch of rain the other night and continuing winds
pestering the cows and my loose fitting orange cap. Snowing as I finish this blog, it's the
season of discontent for deer here in Minnesota too. The Sport of Kings
here as almost everyone is affected by "opening day" syndrome in this
land of rituals. Christmas may still be a holiday in Minnesota, but the
opening of the deer season is a call to arms and treestands testing the anxiety of all for a week or so in this state of prairie, hardwoods and conifers.
I've been reading some of the latest work on, "the commons" and how Garret Hardin's ecological thesis on the "Tragedy of the Commons" caused by over-population can now be countered by Elinor Ostrom's application of political tools aimed at resource management strategies and decisions.
From Wikipedia:
I'll explore both views in this blog and maybe take a shot at my own views now as a farmer-landower. When I lived in Montana and roamed the West, I was an unsettled victim of Hardin's Tragedy as he viewed the stresses of geometric population growth and the apparent over-use of "public" resources ("the commons") in his long debated "tragedy" thesis.
That's about as brief as I dare get. Search for "Garret Hardin" and "Elinor Ostrom" at: www.wikipedia.org for more background on their research and ideas.
Ostrom, as summarized above, suggests a the socio-political management of the commons resources at local scales with global implications and seems to avoid the controversy that Hardin faced in his "tragedy" thesis which looks at solving resource depletion problems using population control with both local and global consequences.
And here sits little of Me trying like hell to understand the ramifications of managing an 80 acre farmstead, but involved, in my own little way, with the issues of managing resources of the commons with implications at local and global scales.
The main resources I'm charged with on Blue Moon Farm are soils, first, then water, and generally wetlands, forest and grass products on this so called "private" land. I'm managing a "commons" too. How I cut forest products to heat my farmhouse is a "commons" issue because our 30 acres of forest can be sustainably managed for my own and the common good. Our grassland can be maintained for raising beef cattle sustainably as well using practices that almost eliminate erosion of topsoil and deciding against soil contamination with pest and fertilizer chemicals. The wetlands on Blue Moon Farm are "owned" by Lyn and I, but there are also constrained by legal easements held by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in perpetuity (that's a long time) for the public good. Those easements are protective covenants which preclude us from; draining, filling or burning those wetlands.
So, I can cut firewood at a rate that turns our forest into an upland of sapling-brush-forb regrowth. I can continue to clear that forest to a point where it can be planted to grass to grow more beeves. Or I can make a calculated effort to cut trees at a rate that will keep our house warm in winter, provide continuing values to wildlife and humans. I can also just leave it alone of course, but as you know, that's not how us private landowners view personal well being. Or I can decide that the original vegetation of this land was a prairie and find a way to have a "wild" fire, reset it to a char and eventually watch it regrow into a grass-forb land with trees sprouting at some rate depending on how often that "wild" fire reoccurs. Only one of these actions result in a situation where the forest is managed in a sustainable way. All choices result in soils and hydrology conserved over the long term, but a commons resource, trees, is only being managed in a sustainable manner in one scenario. So many options, so little time....And, what commons resources am I accountable for as a land steward. It seems to depend on who's resource point of view is being qualified.
If I think of Lyn and I living on this farm and trying to make a go of it we would have no choice but to be more aggressive in our use of the land. In fact, it's not likely we could make it without working off the farm like many of my neighbor farmers did/do now and they, of course, have/had way more than 80 acres to make their go of it. Most farms in this area are 600-1000 acre consolidations of the many quarter section to half section farms that were once operating here.
The population issues so near and dear to Hardin's thesis, "The Tragedy of the Commons", are a pressure not felt by us on Blue Moon Farm. We have no children at home to bring up through today's economy; we have no demands on us to make a living off this place because we are retirees affording this farm by applying our annuities to cover costs and other living needs. We are trying however to experience food production on this farm in excess of our personal needs to better understand "feeding the masses" and the effort and decision process involved in producing excess for our needs. It doesn't take long to move mentally into a mindset that says, "Lyn, we have to break more ground for garden produce, we need to cut the forest for more grass, we have to work longer hours, we have to buy more land and equipment, we have to grow....like the economy we hear complained about each night on local and world news reports. When those statements come to mind I feel Hardin's "tragedy" with both barrels. I think to myself of the lyrics, "All alone and I..."and imagine immediately the urgency of pioneers to keep plowing, keep buying, keep working to put shoes on the kids.
Elinor Ostrom enters the frey and I sense alternative somehow. I might be too naive to understand her thesis, but I sense her view of the "commons" involves a great deal more cooperative conversation and action than me working against the forest for more grass, or me against the Fish and Wildlife Service for more drained land to plant crops or cows on. I also sense a community market and workforce to help me makes ends, both mine and theirs, meet.
This detail of "Community" is what has been lost in American agriculture as far as I can tell. "Culture" has dropped out of agri-culture and I mean that in the sense of a local people learning to use local resources and working together to produce food and fiber in a sustainable way. How could I abuse my land by forcing maximum production from it for foreign markets if I had neighbors participating in my success as a farmer; buying and encouraging local foods or land products they can use, improve upon by adding value to them, or valuing our forests, grasslands, marshes, and gardens for aesthetic values; say hunting or bird watching or a walk in the woods.
I'm sensing that Garret Hardin got himself so absorbed in the big picture that he lost the forest for the trees, while Elinor Ostrom went at her research in a local-regional sense rather than from a theoretical-worldwide point of view. I would like to think of her approach as a trend for the next generation to pursue with zesto. Nature doesn't make mistakes like we do; she doesn't loose the farm during bad times by miscalculations. She invents via adaptations to changes at landscape levels we might think of as too regional for this discussion. Yet, I'm talking about regional change here. Regional in the sense that if it takes a city to raise a family it takes a region to grow a community and to me a region is like a watershed, say the Buffalo River feeding into the Red River of the North. As long as the folks in the Buffalo River Watershed are cooperating and using their products at sustainable levels for themselves they might benefit the Red River of the North folks with a bit of overflow or exchange of goods to benefit the diverse needs of both watershed subcultures. Once we loose sight of the local and begin to operate in a global mindset the many minds are left behind for the few to theorize and guess at solutions to problems that are; 1) pretty meaningless to folks at a local or regional level of interaction, 2) not adaptable at the local level because of the great variation in resources and rituals from one nation-state or continent to the next, and 3) discourage cooperation rather than promote it and the benefits of applying long-learned local knowledge and skills to soils, waters and weather to make ends meet.
I'm not saying world population or regional population growth is not a problem for sustaining local/regional resources of common interest. It is; if we try to envision solutions to such large issues in the vacuum of academic science dealing with issues of global scope. Let's for instance realize we could place all 7 billion of us in Texas. That image leaves a heck of a lot of common resource issues in the dust. The thinking here is that we have to restrain ourselves to sustainability at a workable level, say second or
third order watersheds and get off of this mindset wagon of trying to have all the new gadgets all the time, created by people anywhere. Can we begin to make do first with what we can make at home or with trading neighbors in nearby watersheds before we try to solve the World's food shortage from Fargo, ND. I know, I know; but what about cars and freeways and jet airplane travel and going to Mars. Those are things we are used to and can't remember why we invented them. Mostly, they were invented because we are not very patient beings. We have not, until recently, had to realize the last frontier and "last best places" are what we see in our rear view mirrors.
We are stuck with our degraded "commons" and our neighbors. We can no longer run from them. We have to be "stickers" as Wallace Stegner encouraged us to be. We have to "learn to be still" as the Eagles song suggested. We have to apply our science as my friend Mike always reminds me. I have to envision a world from this desk by this window overlooking my marsh and the forest beyond. All the while realizing that my cows want another bale of hay before darkness falls and for which I traded their offspring to keep their circle of life going over the winter. So, too, don't we give up our offspring if we cannot learn to sustain ourselves. Yes, we do. And that was what both Garret Hardin and Elinor Ostrom really worried about, each in their own way: Hardin with population control at a vague global level; and Ostrom via consumption control at a local cooperative level. The threats of nuclear terrorism or global warming are two ways to curb overuse of vital resources through paranoia, but from my experience selling produce at the Richwood Farmers Market this summer, I have to believe that solutions involving community cooperation are worth a try. It works according to Elinor Ostrom in some places. Why not try it in your backyard.
I've been reading some of the latest work on, "the commons" and how Garret Hardin's ecological thesis on the "Tragedy of the Commons" caused by over-population can now be countered by Elinor Ostrom's application of political tools aimed at resource management strategies and decisions.
From Wikipedia:
Elinor Ostrom is considered one of the leading scholars in the study of common pool resources(CPR). In particular, Ostrom's work emphasizes how humans interact with ecosystems to maintain long-term sustainable resource yields. Common pool resources include many forests, fisheries, oil fields, grazing lands, and irrigation systems.
Ostrom identifies eight "design principles" of stable local common pool resource management:
- Clearly defined boundaries (effective exclusion of external un-entitled parties;
- Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources that are adapted to local conditions;
- Collective-choice arrangements that allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process;
- Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators;
- A scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules;
- Mechanisms of conflict resolution that are cheap and of easy access;
- Self-determination of the community recognized by higher-level authorities;
- In the case of larger common-pool resources (CPR) ,organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level.
Garrett James Hardin (April 21, 1915 – September 14, 2003) was an American ecologist who warned of the dangers of overpopulation and whose concept of the tragedy of the commons brought attention to "the damage that innocent actions by individuals can inflict on the environment". He was most well known for his elaboration of this theme in his 1968 paper, The Tragedy of the Commons. He is also known for Hardin's First Law of Ecology, which states "You cannot do only one thing", and used the familiar phrase "Nice guys finish last" to sum up the "selfish gene" concept of life and evolution.
I'll explore both views in this blog and maybe take a shot at my own views now as a farmer-landower. When I lived in Montana and roamed the West, I was an unsettled victim of Hardin's Tragedy as he viewed the stresses of geometric population growth and the apparent over-use of "public" resources ("the commons") in his long debated "tragedy" thesis.
Ostrom, as summarized above, suggests a the socio-political management of the commons resources at local scales with global implications and seems to avoid the controversy that Hardin faced in his "tragedy" thesis which looks at solving resource depletion problems using population control with both local and global consequences.
And here sits little of Me trying like hell to understand the ramifications of managing an 80 acre farmstead, but involved, in my own little way, with the issues of managing resources of the commons with implications at local and global scales.
The main resources I'm charged with on Blue Moon Farm are soils, first, then water, and generally wetlands, forest and grass products on this so called "private" land. I'm managing a "commons" too. How I cut forest products to heat my farmhouse is a "commons" issue because our 30 acres of forest can be sustainably managed for my own and the common good. Our grassland can be maintained for raising beef cattle sustainably as well using practices that almost eliminate erosion of topsoil and deciding against soil contamination with pest and fertilizer chemicals. The wetlands on Blue Moon Farm are "owned" by Lyn and I, but there are also constrained by legal easements held by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in perpetuity (that's a long time) for the public good. Those easements are protective covenants which preclude us from; draining, filling or burning those wetlands.
So, I can cut firewood at a rate that turns our forest into an upland of sapling-brush-forb regrowth. I can continue to clear that forest to a point where it can be planted to grass to grow more beeves. Or I can make a calculated effort to cut trees at a rate that will keep our house warm in winter, provide continuing values to wildlife and humans. I can also just leave it alone of course, but as you know, that's not how us private landowners view personal well being. Or I can decide that the original vegetation of this land was a prairie and find a way to have a "wild" fire, reset it to a char and eventually watch it regrow into a grass-forb land with trees sprouting at some rate depending on how often that "wild" fire reoccurs. Only one of these actions result in a situation where the forest is managed in a sustainable way. All choices result in soils and hydrology conserved over the long term, but a commons resource, trees, is only being managed in a sustainable manner in one scenario. So many options, so little time....And, what commons resources am I accountable for as a land steward. It seems to depend on who's resource point of view is being qualified.
If I think of Lyn and I living on this farm and trying to make a go of it we would have no choice but to be more aggressive in our use of the land. In fact, it's not likely we could make it without working off the farm like many of my neighbor farmers did/do now and they, of course, have/had way more than 80 acres to make their go of it. Most farms in this area are 600-1000 acre consolidations of the many quarter section to half section farms that were once operating here.
The population issues so near and dear to Hardin's thesis, "The Tragedy of the Commons", are a pressure not felt by us on Blue Moon Farm. We have no children at home to bring up through today's economy; we have no demands on us to make a living off this place because we are retirees affording this farm by applying our annuities to cover costs and other living needs. We are trying however to experience food production on this farm in excess of our personal needs to better understand "feeding the masses" and the effort and decision process involved in producing excess for our needs. It doesn't take long to move mentally into a mindset that says, "Lyn, we have to break more ground for garden produce, we need to cut the forest for more grass, we have to work longer hours, we have to buy more land and equipment, we have to grow....like the economy we hear complained about each night on local and world news reports. When those statements come to mind I feel Hardin's "tragedy" with both barrels. I think to myself of the lyrics, "All alone and I..."and imagine immediately the urgency of pioneers to keep plowing, keep buying, keep working to put shoes on the kids.
Elinor Ostrom enters the frey and I sense alternative somehow. I might be too naive to understand her thesis, but I sense her view of the "commons" involves a great deal more cooperative conversation and action than me working against the forest for more grass, or me against the Fish and Wildlife Service for more drained land to plant crops or cows on. I also sense a community market and workforce to help me makes ends, both mine and theirs, meet.
This detail of "Community" is what has been lost in American agriculture as far as I can tell. "Culture" has dropped out of agri-culture and I mean that in the sense of a local people learning to use local resources and working together to produce food and fiber in a sustainable way. How could I abuse my land by forcing maximum production from it for foreign markets if I had neighbors participating in my success as a farmer; buying and encouraging local foods or land products they can use, improve upon by adding value to them, or valuing our forests, grasslands, marshes, and gardens for aesthetic values; say hunting or bird watching or a walk in the woods.
I'm sensing that Garret Hardin got himself so absorbed in the big picture that he lost the forest for the trees, while Elinor Ostrom went at her research in a local-regional sense rather than from a theoretical-worldwide point of view. I would like to think of her approach as a trend for the next generation to pursue with zesto. Nature doesn't make mistakes like we do; she doesn't loose the farm during bad times by miscalculations. She invents via adaptations to changes at landscape levels we might think of as too regional for this discussion. Yet, I'm talking about regional change here. Regional in the sense that if it takes a city to raise a family it takes a region to grow a community and to me a region is like a watershed, say the Buffalo River feeding into the Red River of the North. As long as the folks in the Buffalo River Watershed are cooperating and using their products at sustainable levels for themselves they might benefit the Red River of the North folks with a bit of overflow or exchange of goods to benefit the diverse needs of both watershed subcultures. Once we loose sight of the local and begin to operate in a global mindset the many minds are left behind for the few to theorize and guess at solutions to problems that are; 1) pretty meaningless to folks at a local or regional level of interaction, 2) not adaptable at the local level because of the great variation in resources and rituals from one nation-state or continent to the next, and 3) discourage cooperation rather than promote it and the benefits of applying long-learned local knowledge and skills to soils, waters and weather to make ends meet.
I'm not saying world population or regional population growth is not a problem for sustaining local/regional resources of common interest. It is; if we try to envision solutions to such large issues in the vacuum of academic science dealing with issues of global scope. Let's for instance realize we could place all 7 billion of us in Texas. That image leaves a heck of a lot of common resource issues in the dust. The thinking here is that we have to restrain ourselves to sustainability at a workable level, say second or
third order watersheds and get off of this mindset wagon of trying to have all the new gadgets all the time, created by people anywhere. Can we begin to make do first with what we can make at home or with trading neighbors in nearby watersheds before we try to solve the World's food shortage from Fargo, ND. I know, I know; but what about cars and freeways and jet airplane travel and going to Mars. Those are things we are used to and can't remember why we invented them. Mostly, they were invented because we are not very patient beings. We have not, until recently, had to realize the last frontier and "last best places" are what we see in our rear view mirrors.
We are stuck with our degraded "commons" and our neighbors. We can no longer run from them. We have to be "stickers" as Wallace Stegner encouraged us to be. We have to "learn to be still" as the Eagles song suggested. We have to apply our science as my friend Mike always reminds me. I have to envision a world from this desk by this window overlooking my marsh and the forest beyond. All the while realizing that my cows want another bale of hay before darkness falls and for which I traded their offspring to keep their circle of life going over the winter. So, too, don't we give up our offspring if we cannot learn to sustain ourselves. Yes, we do. And that was what both Garret Hardin and Elinor Ostrom really worried about, each in their own way: Hardin with population control at a vague global level; and Ostrom via consumption control at a local cooperative level. The threats of nuclear terrorism or global warming are two ways to curb overuse of vital resources through paranoia, but from my experience selling produce at the Richwood Farmers Market this summer, I have to believe that solutions involving community cooperation are worth a try. It works according to Elinor Ostrom in some places. Why not try it in your backyard.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
When an Old Friend Calls Out of the Blue
Yes. Some days a phone call missed is an opportunity gone to the answering machine or as my iPhone likes to designate such calls: Voicemail. So, I get this call from Chris L. of Great Falls, Montana and being in the act of hunting grouse in Northern Minnesota my iPhone hesitates to ring me and instead sends Chris right to the Voicemail in the Virtual World we now can live in. When I finish my hunt and enter "tower space' I get a one ringy dingy alert message on my pocket pal letting me know someone has been virtually stored in my Voicemail. It's so simply done now, so taken for granted now, so common I have a tendency to think of it as trivia. So. Are my old friends like Chris trivialized by this marvel of engineering I call an iPhone now?
I'm not sure how to go on from here. I'm letting myself just babble here a bit, because I know locked up in that opening paragraph is a theme I want to Blog to death. I called Chris back tonight and we had a hell of a good time catching up on Life's minutia and grandness along both our paths. It was inspiring to hear about his life since we parted company in 2005 so I could go farming with Lyn and he could carry on in Great Falls. Since that departure we have each lost both our parents to the Grim Reaper: His parents dying traumatically in his presence; mine dying more traditionally normal in a slow dramatic style, one day at a time over the period of a year or so. Sorry, but becoming an orphan is a non-trivial wake up call no matter how your parents are taken from your life stream.
I'm thinking now about the way it is on the farm. Our cows are all less than four years old, so pretty prime animals. Our chickens are of mixed ages, but only one is nearing a long life for a chicken, say five or so years old. Our dog, Tess, is five. She has congenital hip dysplasia, but overall acts pretty healthy and rarely shows signs of her rear differential going out. Our parrots, Luci and Pepper exemplify "one day at a time" and most likely will be found laying on the floor of their cage one of these days, dying out of the sky blue for no apparent reason. Life and death on the farm are like sunrise and sunset only the certainty of sunset cannot be looked up on my iPhone celestial APP for a specific time of occurrence.
Where is this going? Well, I'm bothered by taking things for granted tonight. Somehow I feel that Things like iPhones, computers or laptops, digital TVs, etc., are reducing life values without us really thinking about it. They're like devices planted on us to take our mind off of the moment to moment workings of our lives. I can now travel around the world in seconds retrieving information never before available to me; saving me time, fuel, money, sweat, preparation stress, ... "Around the World in 80 Days is now possible in an extensive sequence of digital photos and videos in about 8 minutes. Am I living longer because of these virtual expeditions? In a way I am, in other ways, I'm not living at all; I'm just seeing and emoting if I can relate in any way to the images coming forth from the virtual world I ask Google to recite to me in images and text and sounds. We'll know we have arrived when I ask Google what a volcano is and I get an image, the sounds of bubbling magma, the smell of sulfur and the heat of the virtual volcano burns my lungs and hide for being too close.
Then again, I'd just as soon not arrive then. Chris was missing his parents tonight. The intellectual connection he had with his parents was a substantial comfort to him, no less the millions of zillions of other feedbacks he got from his folks. It made me think of my folks in personal ways just talking to him and as I recall this to write about it, I believe I can smell my parents; each had a distinct odor that was theirs and it became mine to carry with me until my mind gave up it's amazing ability to recall minutia; really, really important minutia.
As I listened to Chris and we commented to each other how good it was to hear each others voices again I have to laugh at the trick our phones were playing on our minds. Just for a few minutes as we spoke I was sure Chris was really in my earshot, like on the other side of the kitchen table. I would have been drinking tea with him had he really been there. He would have been chomping away on one of Lyn's freshly made peanut butter cookies and nursing coffee I suspect. And now I sense I'm experiencing double speak in this blog of mine. But, maybe not. Maybe this real mind of ours has invented these virtual gadgets to make it easier for us to use our minds all the time and our senses are just obeying our mind and it's creations by being able to experience our fellow minds more constantly and at greater distances than ever before.
Say what? Now back to you Chet.
Brinkley.
I'm not sure how to go on from here. I'm letting myself just babble here a bit, because I know locked up in that opening paragraph is a theme I want to Blog to death. I called Chris back tonight and we had a hell of a good time catching up on Life's minutia and grandness along both our paths. It was inspiring to hear about his life since we parted company in 2005 so I could go farming with Lyn and he could carry on in Great Falls. Since that departure we have each lost both our parents to the Grim Reaper: His parents dying traumatically in his presence; mine dying more traditionally normal in a slow dramatic style, one day at a time over the period of a year or so. Sorry, but becoming an orphan is a non-trivial wake up call no matter how your parents are taken from your life stream.
I'm thinking now about the way it is on the farm. Our cows are all less than four years old, so pretty prime animals. Our chickens are of mixed ages, but only one is nearing a long life for a chicken, say five or so years old. Our dog, Tess, is five. She has congenital hip dysplasia, but overall acts pretty healthy and rarely shows signs of her rear differential going out. Our parrots, Luci and Pepper exemplify "one day at a time" and most likely will be found laying on the floor of their cage one of these days, dying out of the sky blue for no apparent reason. Life and death on the farm are like sunrise and sunset only the certainty of sunset cannot be looked up on my iPhone celestial APP for a specific time of occurrence.
Where is this going? Well, I'm bothered by taking things for granted tonight. Somehow I feel that Things like iPhones, computers or laptops, digital TVs, etc., are reducing life values without us really thinking about it. They're like devices planted on us to take our mind off of the moment to moment workings of our lives. I can now travel around the world in seconds retrieving information never before available to me; saving me time, fuel, money, sweat, preparation stress, ... "Around the World in 80 Days is now possible in an extensive sequence of digital photos and videos in about 8 minutes. Am I living longer because of these virtual expeditions? In a way I am, in other ways, I'm not living at all; I'm just seeing and emoting if I can relate in any way to the images coming forth from the virtual world I ask Google to recite to me in images and text and sounds. We'll know we have arrived when I ask Google what a volcano is and I get an image, the sounds of bubbling magma, the smell of sulfur and the heat of the virtual volcano burns my lungs and hide for being too close.
Then again, I'd just as soon not arrive then. Chris was missing his parents tonight. The intellectual connection he had with his parents was a substantial comfort to him, no less the millions of zillions of other feedbacks he got from his folks. It made me think of my folks in personal ways just talking to him and as I recall this to write about it, I believe I can smell my parents; each had a distinct odor that was theirs and it became mine to carry with me until my mind gave up it's amazing ability to recall minutia; really, really important minutia.
As I listened to Chris and we commented to each other how good it was to hear each others voices again I have to laugh at the trick our phones were playing on our minds. Just for a few minutes as we spoke I was sure Chris was really in my earshot, like on the other side of the kitchen table. I would have been drinking tea with him had he really been there. He would have been chomping away on one of Lyn's freshly made peanut butter cookies and nursing coffee I suspect. And now I sense I'm experiencing double speak in this blog of mine. But, maybe not. Maybe this real mind of ours has invented these virtual gadgets to make it easier for us to use our minds all the time and our senses are just obeying our mind and it's creations by being able to experience our fellow minds more constantly and at greater distances than ever before.
Say what? Now back to you Chet.
Brinkley.
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