Agriculture

Plant, Harvest, Taste

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GUIDESTONES ARE TYPICALLY DEFINED as a sort of celestial clock recording the passage of events or as a stone marker acting as a guide for travelers. The mission of Guidestone Colorado echoes this sentiment. The name “was chosen to honor past and present leaders who have dedicated themselves to building healthy and resilient communities through …

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Weathervane & Cho Ku Rei – Working the Land

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by Tyler Grimes Shifting to a locally grown, plant-based diet is the healthiest choice one can make. Right now in the U.S., 34 percent of adults are obese, as are growing number of children, including 20 percent of 6 to 11-year-olds. Three out of four of the leading causes of death are weight/diet-related illnesses: heart …

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Agriculture and War – Some Thoughts

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by John Mattingly

“You’re in the army now,

You’re not behind the plow. . .”

I remember hearing this verse from a song played on movie newsreels in the decade following WWII, in which the farmer appeared in agony, sweating behind a horse. Until he hears a bugle in the distance. Shedding the shackles of the field, the farmer dashes off to enlist, and is soon seen in uniform, holding a gun across a big smile as he enters a roaring field of battle, his honor and fate now restored far above those homely stands of corn.

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Stomping grapes and making wine

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Article by Mike Rosso

Agriculture – February 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED a clandestine wine-making operation in the family armoire in upstate New York would lead to a celebration of grapes and wine in Colorado years later?

Winemaker Steve Flynn of Salida certainly did not.

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Iron Horse vs. Kicking Horse

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – October 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

“I want to farm it all with horses.”

The speaker (over the phone, long distance), a noted New York City arbitrageur, had recently purchased 1,200 acres under center pivots in Wyoming. Based on readings from his long-time subscription to Amish Farm Journal, he wanted to farm with Belgian draft horses.

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Sustainability

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – September 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

I recently received an offer to contribute to a Sustainable Agriculture Think Tank — not my thoughts, but rather surplus cash I might have lying around the stock tank, now that commodity prices are at record high levels.

After the Think Tank elaborated the complex web of ingredients comprising “sustainability,” the group concluded: “But no matter how elegant the system or how accomplished the farmer, no agricultural system is sustainable if it’s not also profitable.”

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Ranching has something to teach us

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Essay by Courtney White

Agriculture – September 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

AS THE 21ST CENTURY unfolds, it’s becoming clear that we need more family farmers and ranchers on the land, not fewer. We need them not only for the food they provide, but also for a lesson in how to live on the land.

It’s an ironic turn of events.

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Calls for the country vet

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Column by Hal Walter

Agriculture – August 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

THE BULL CALVES went through the squeeze chute one by one, and the vet took a scalpel to their nuts. When each was released into the pen, it walked away from the site of its emasculation and set about eating grass.

“How bad do you think that hurts?” I asked Kit Ryff, the traveling veterinarian from Salida.

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Hay 101

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Article by Shanna Lewis

Agriculture – August 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

AN OLD ADAGE says it’s wise to make hay when the sun shines, and last year ranchers in the Wet Mountain Valley did just that. Starting in June, after a snowy winter and wet spring and summer, tractors rolled out into acres of lush grass. Verdant swaths crisscrossed the Valley floor and sweet clover perfumed the air. Soon huge silver-tarped stacks of bales sprouted along the county roads and the dark echoing hay sheds filled up. It was a good year.

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Sun Worship

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – August 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

AS A FARMER, I’ve always viewed my ground as a solar collector. No matter how hard I appear to work — and like many of my cohorts, I’ve done little to refute exaggerations of my toil — the sun does most of the heavy lifting in the growth of a crop. This is often neglected when farmers and gardeners (and their attending hosts of fertility suppliers) talk about production yields.

Before sizing the role of the farmer or gardener in the success of a crop, three solar basics should be considered:

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Grass vs. gas

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Column by Hal Walter

Agriculture – July 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

RECENTLY, AFTER BUYING an eighth of a beef from a neighbor, it occurred to me that if the price of fuel drives me to eat poorly, then I might be better off crawling into a hole and pulling the dirt back in over the top.

This is a weighty question for someone who chose long ago, when gasoline and food were still relatively cheap, to live 15 miles outside a small town and 50 miles from the closest city, or at least something that approximates one, like Pueblo.

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Bad credit

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – July 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

BAD CREDIT

When I started farming in 1968, the strategy for buying my first farm involved saving the money, and paying for the farm. Same way with machinery. Cash on the barrelhead. If a farmer approached another farmer who had ground for sale, or walked into an implement dealership asking for credit, chances were that farmer left with nothing but a slightly diminished reputation. In those days, in that community, borrowing betrayed one’s inadequacy, and certainly was not considered clever.

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Future cultivation

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – June 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

DATELINE: DENVER, COLORADO MAY 3, 2034

In a joint news conference yesterday, Steady State Bank, Resurrection Mortgage, and Overburtin Industries announced plans to plow under another 160 acre subdivision in Thornton and plant wheat.

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`Driving’ cattle in the New West

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Column by Hal Walter

Agriculture – January 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

A CATTLE DRIVE in the New West isn’t exactly like Lonesome Dove. For starters, it’s not as romantic. And though there are some perils, it’s nowhere near as dangerous.

Moreover, time is now measured in hours rather than days, weeks, or even months. Horses and mules have given way to heavy-duty pickup trucks and gooseneck stock trailers. And historic routes such as the Goodnight-Loving Trail have been lost to state and federal highways. In short, what used to be the adventure of a lifetime has been reduced to merely a stressful day in the life of the modern-day cosmic cowboy.

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Barnyard attachments

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Article by Patty Lataille

Agriculture – January 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

CARING FOR FARM ANIMALS in today’s ultra high tech and modernized age can be a refreshingly innocent and unpretentious pastime. Raising baby goats can actually help reduce your profound cynicism of the world’s current state of affairs down to manageable levels.

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A Downhill Pull

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – January 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

“We farmers are going to have the world by the tail with a downhill pull.”

I first heard this from a neighbor in the spring of 1968 when I started farming, and though the words were sometimes different over the next 40 years, the notion was always the same: farmers are bound to get what they richly deserve from the markets.

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Genetically Modified Crops

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – November 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

I admit it, hands in the air: I’ve not only grown genetically modified (GM) crops, I’ve produced GM seedstock. To the surprise of some, I haven’t yet grown horns.

Many people argue that modifying and recombining the genetic material of various plants is hazardous to humanity because we don’t yet know enough about possible consequences. Put another way: because genetic alterations are at such a fundamental level of living processes, the precautionary principle is in order.

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Professional hubris?

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Letter from Slim Wolfe

Agriculture – November 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

Colorado Central:

“Don’t try this at home, sonny?” John Mattingly’s recent essay discouraging non-farmers from food production sounds a bit like he’s not quite far enough afield to be rid of a bit of professional hubris. I have gardened in a backyard in urban Boise, before that in a San Francisco vacant lot with free loads of milorganite trucked in by the city, and there are even those intrepid few who raise food in the south Bronx and the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Granted, these efforts have hardly broken the back of agribusiness, and granted, some of these locations are less than organic or sanitary, but thus far no one has perished from the fruits of their labors who wouldn’t have perished sooner or later, and meanwhile the active participants benefit from a sense of personal empowerment otherwise hard to come by in fortress America.

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Food Safety

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – October 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

About a year ago, a bovine-born strain of bacteria, E coli 0157, traced to bagged spinach proved the culprit that killed an 81-year-old woman and young child, caused the clearing of shelves nationwide of the bagged spinach, wholesale destruction of growing spinach fields, and media specials blaming the Food and Drug Administration for not doing its job, backed by tear-jerking testimonials from the spinach victims.

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Living precariously with cattle and wolves

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Essay by Bryce Andrews

Agriculture – October 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

THROUGH THE END of June last year, we got along fine with the wolves. I was working on a ranch in Montana’s Madison Valley, where the wolves ran elk to exhaustion in the high country while yearling cattle fattened on the lower pastures of the ranch. Peaceful coexistence with predators seemed within our grasp, and that was our goal, just to get along.

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License to Drive Stock?

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – September 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

TO DRIVE A VEHICLE on public roads, a person has to be tested for knowledge of road rules, and demonstrate proficiency behind the wheel. To own a piece of the Earth in the United States, a person has only to show up with the money. Likewise, to own any kind of livestock. When we speak of property in the United States, the next word that comes automatically to mind is “right,” not “responsibility.”

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The short but happy life of 51R

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Column by Hal Walter

Agriculture – August 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

I’D NEVER BOUGHT A BULL, but there I was, standing in a pen of 11 yearling Red Angus at Smith Land and Cattle near Fort Garland, trying to choose one out of the crowd.

After looking over all the red bulls carefully, three of them stood out. They wore eartags 3R, 34R and 51R.

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Collamer’s Tools

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – July 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

I ALWAYS KNEW MY FATHER was older than I was, but I didn’t realize he was actually old until one day when he faced me after a bout with the flu. A cold spring wind blew at us under a darkening sky. His face had no color; his hair was the color of snow. I was in a hurry, as usual, pushing to get some field ready for planting, and I didn’t want to stop, but there he was, detaining me, looking at me, an old man, and it drained the rush right out of me. Father somehow always had been young. He didn’t grow old and decay. He stayed strong and smart. But there he was in the cold gray wind, facing me, an old man, talking about how he needed me to do some ground work in his orchard.

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Food for thought

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Letter from Slim Wolfe

Agriculture – June 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

Editors,

John Mattingly’s continuing series on small farm economics has been most welcome and given us much food for thought. Several subsidies and benefits he describes might seem like a good thing — and yet they are probably small potatoes indeed compared to the benefits our system doles out to the big players in our economy, including oil, agribiz, and defense industries. Small farmers, for example, are hardly the only ones to benefit from state-funded education, price supports, or other programs put forward by well-funded lobbies.

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Unexpected lives

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – June 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

AFTER HE GRADUATED from college, I offered to give my son a circle in the San Luis Valley. Farmers in the Valley refer more to how many circles they’re farming than how many acres. A circle is a 120-140 acres irrigated by a center pivot system, usually in the middle of a quarter section (160 acres). I’d owned and farmed 11 circles, but had started a gradual road to retirement by selling seven of the circles over the previous three years. The circle I offered my son was one of the four remaining circles I intended to sell in the coming two years. The gift circle was about 130 acres under a late model Zimmatic pivot.

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In the potato patch

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Column by George Sibley

Agriculture – May 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

I GUESS I’M FINALLY BEGINNING the transition to agri-culture. I don’t see how we’re going to be able to avoid it this century. But it’s not an easy transition for those of us who’ve been clinging to our hunter-gatherer past, high-grading the planet for its easy pickings.

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The subtle ag subsidies

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – May 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

Not all subsidies to the ag sector appear in large print.

1. Student grants and loans.When I went to the University of Colorado to get my undergraduate degree at age 51, and then make a run at law school, I was presented with a FAFSA (Free Application For Student Aid). Though I was quite willing to pay the tuition — which I considered a bargain at some $1,600 a semester for my in-state status — I discovered a FAFSA footnote regarding the assets an applicant was required to list in the calculation of eligibility for federal scholarships and loans: “Do not count the value of a family farm that you (or your spouse) or your parents live on and operate.”

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The nagging issue of subsidies

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – April 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

IN THE YEARS I’VE FARMED and been around ranchers, I’ve noticed the general public is often irked, or at least confused, by agricultural subsidies. Perhaps because farmers and ranchers are most often heard championing hard work while criticizing the welfare system, it’s hard to reconcile the appearance of those same folks on the list of subsidy recipients available to the public at www.ewg.org. However, when subsidies are viewed in the context of our full U.S. economy, the facts — as well as the full roster of beneficiaries — are surprising.

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Winter meditations

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – March 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

BETWEEN THANKSGIVING and Valentine’s Day, I do as little as possible on the farm. After many winters of plugging in block heaters and magnetic transmission heaters to fire up tractors to load hay or grain, I decided there was an economic and emotional benefit to hibernation. Both I and the machines groaned and staggered when commanded into action in the sub- zero temperatures of the San Luis Valley. I didn’t even blade or shovel snow unless it had us totally locked in. I simply packed the freezer with elk, tossed in vegetables from the garden, hung a bag of apples and oranges in the cellar, and made sure there were a couple of quarts of vodka in the cabinet over the sink. OK, maybe it was more like three quarts of vodka. But it was Colorado vodka. It took several years, but people eventually learned I was not going to start a tractor to load hay during this time period. I was out of it — or, more precisely, I was into winter.

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Organic: Method, Movement, or mere marketing tool?

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – January 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

ORGANIC: Method, Movement, Or Mere Marketing Tool?

“Are you an organic farmer?”

I’ve been asked this question many times in the 40 years I’ve farmed. In the ’70s it was asked by pilgrims of Rodale, The Whole Earth Catalog, and Sir Albert Howard — seeking a source for home-grown vegetables, or feed for small livestock. In the ’80s the question subsided (perhaps overshadowed by a growing concern for fat) while Reagan’s agriculture department, and others in the food industry, denounced organic farming as a hippie fad that could never feed our great and growing nation. As if to confirm this condemnation, most organic produce looked substandard on the shelf, and was presented without finesse. Around this time, products labeled Natural began to appear, but an examination of the content labels usually read like the same stew of ingredients in conventional (presumably unnatural) foods.

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Why is it raining?

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – December 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

FROM A GRAY-GREEN SKY, a torrential rain overwhelmed the parking lot. Cars appeared to liquify into the asphalt as it became the bottom of a shimmering, black lake. The awning under which I stood began to droop from the weight of gathering water, so I stepped back under the wide soffit of the supermarket, wondering if this downpour was also falling on my crops out at the farm, or if, as usual, it was focused exclusively on the urban heat island.

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The legacy of Earl Butz

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Essay by John Mattingly

Agriculture – November 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

DRIVE ACROSS the Great Plains and Midwest of the United States in summer, and you’ll notice a vast quilt of wheat, corn, and soybeans, their tidy rows stitching fencerow to fencerow, from eastern Colorado through Ohio. Every thirty miles or so, white silos and gray, steaming feedmills rise up on the horizon like bountiful cathedrals, towering over short Main Streets where cafes with names like Rear O’ The Steer and Fillin’ Station are surrounded by glinting new pickups next to the Supreme Court Motel.

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A farmer far afield

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Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – October 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

WALK INTO ANY FOOD STORE in the United States — be it a species of super box store, a supermarket, or a gas-n-go shop on the highway — and you have to be impressed with the magnitude of selections. The old mom-and-pop grocers I recall from the ’50s and ’60s had one kind of cracker (Saltines) three kinds of bread (Wonder, White, and Wheat), perhaps half a dozen kinds of soda pop, and one corner devoted to produce, another to meat, the butcher wielding his cleaver on demand.

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Premium Hay

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Column by Hal Walter

Agriculture – August 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

THERE’S NOTHING like a drought — whether a long-term trend or a short-term dry spell — to make livestock owners edgy. Lately we’ve seen both sides of dry.

While an early July monsoon bolstered hopes of a better hay crop this year, the long-term trend has been drier than dry, and the demand for hay is outrunning the supply. These factors, combined with sky-high petroleum prices have bucked the price for a bale of hay to near record highs. At $5.50 to $6 per bale, or up to $195 per ton, hay is commanding a premium price.

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Inform yourself about NAIS

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Letter from Leigh Mills

Agriculture – August 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Dear Editor:

I am writing this letter to tell folks about the USDA’s draft strategic plan of the NAIS, National Animal Identification System, which was designed to create and implement a national database to store information about all livestock animals and their movements in the United States. Currently, the plan is voluntary, although some states like Wisconsin are making it mandatory. The USDA intends to make this plan mandatory January, 2009, if they do not get “full participation.”

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Livestock ID: Coming to a farm or ranch near you

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Column by Hal Walter

Agriculture – July 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

WILLIE NELSON HAS SAID that farmers and ranchers are the backbone of our country. I happen to think he’s right.

Last month in this column I discussed the National Animal Identification System, what seems like an absurd blend of George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm” in which farms, ranches and livestock will be registered, and some animals will be outfitted with radio frequency identification devices.

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Suggestions for a better market

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Essay by John Mattingly

Agriculture – July 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

John Mattingly wants you to pay more for food,

and he thinks you should want that, too.

THOUGH FARMERS GET PUBLICITY ranging from hard-working yeomen to subsidy-sucking parasites, the fact is, no one but farmers want farmers to be price makers. The structure of the current U.S. economy boxes the farmer into being a price taker. Consumers like it. They spend only about 10% of their income on food (the lowest percentage in the world), and that enables robust retail consumerism.

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Confessions of a retiring farmer

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Essay by John Mattingly

Agriculture – July 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

I’VE BEEN TRYING To quit farming for almost 40 years. This year I succeeded. The problem with quitting has never been desire. All 40 years I’ve nursed a lurking urge to get on with my life and get into a decent profession — something with regular hours, good health care, and a pension. The problem has been timing.

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What’s size got to do with it?

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Essay by John Mattingly

Agriculture – June 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

HAL WALTER’S PIECE in the May edition stimulated some thoughts.

I started farming in 1969, and as I recall, Colorado Senate Bill 35, circa 1972, prescribed the 35-acre limit to stop the spread of subdivisions. Land traders responded by chopping up big, open spaces (mostly ranches and windblown bestiaries) into 35-acre subdivisions. But 35-acres is too big for a home lot, and isn’t an economic unit for farming or ranching in the arid West.

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Agricultural lands being lost at a ferocious rate

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Brief by Allen Best

Agriculture – June 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

A new report from an organization called Environment Colorado points out how rapidly agricultural land is being lost to residential and commercial development. While the usual phrase is “cows not condos,” the report says that single-family homes on large lots, usually 2 to 40 acres, proportionately cause the greatest loss.

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The coming problem with hay

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Column by Hal Walter

Agriculture – May 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

IT IS A LOT OF STUFF to focus on at once, especially for someone with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and perhaps mild dyslexia — a steering wheel, clutch, double brake pedals, hand throttle, gearshift, three-point hay fork, a buggy whip, a swinging gate and six frisky escape-minded horses.

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