On Overwhelming Scope (and MOSES 2015)

Exhibit Hall at MOSES 2015

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to attend the 26th Annual MOSES Organic Farming Conference. It was my second trip to this specific conference. In 2013, it was during conversations with other young conference attendees that I decided to make this website/blog. I skipped last year’s conference in favor of a few others, which meant that my experience two years ago was thrown in greater relief this time around. Two years ago, I was a former WWOOFer about to start my first full-season apprenticeship. It was my first conference, and it couldn’t have been much more overwhelming. Over three thousand people gathered in one place with at least one basic principle in common, a dozen workshops to choose from every hour, a floor full of people who would love to give you piles of information, and a dining hall packed with tables of people having a thousand interesting conversations. From the moment I walked into the La Crosse Center, was certain I was missing something. Sure, this conversation over lunch is interesting, but I bet those people over there are even more awesome. I’m learning tons in this workshop, but could I be learning more in that other one? It sounds like that contra dance is really fun, but I’m too busy drinking beer and getting to know these young farmers. The sheer magnitude of the conference meant that every moment, no matter how completely engaged I was in what I was doing there was a little voice in the back of my head that suspected I might be missing something.

Contra Dance at MOSES 2015

This year’s conference was equally large and potentially overwhelming, but I experienced a drastic reduction in FOMO (fear of missing out) this time around. I think it was partially explained by the return visit and the other conferences I have under my belt, but that only explains away about half of the anxiety. I was talking about this with a friend at the conference, and our conversation brought up a key difference between MOSES 2013 me and MOSES 2015 me: my scope has narrowed considerably. In 2013, I was very new to farming, and everything was incredibly compelling. My experience working on farms so far had been exhilarating and (purposefully) diverse. My farm dreams were grand - I couldn’t imagine giving up any facet of them. So when presented with a list of workshop choices, it all seemed essential! I couldn’t imagine sacrificing the chance to learn about stone fruit production while someone else could be telling me how to farm without fossil fuels! I remain curious about the vast majority of topics covered at MOSES, but my reason for being there has shifted slightly since 2013. In the intervening years I have gotten closer to those “farm dreams” and they come into sharper focus the closer they get. While I still have some possibly outlandish long-term farming goals, my short-term plan is increasingly pared down to the bare bones. It’s not that I find any facet of that initial sprawling plan less intriguing, but practicality has dictated a more measured approach to starting a small business. So when I opened the schedule last weekend to plan my attack, I was able to limit myself to workshops that might be useful to me in the narrow scope of my near future without any dread creeping in that I was making horrible choices.  

Planning!

I’ve spent the better part of the past week sifting (mentally and physically) through everything I’ve brought back from MOSES 2015. While I wasn’t necessarily as overwhelmed at the conference itself as I was two years ago, it remains equally exhausting and invigorating. Very rarely am I called upon to be completely engaged for such a sustained period, and it made for a physically and mentally exhausting few days. So when I took a moment to sit down after dinner on Friday night, it seemed inconceivable that I’d find myself shedding layers to swing and bounce around for three hours at the annual contra dance. As I sit down these days to get down to the nitty gritty of planning the course of my next year approaching my own farm start-up, I am alternatively exhausted and invigorated. I can’t wait to get down to it, and I can’t really imagine that it will be possible. Two years from now, I hope I’ll be reflecting on MOSES 2017 as a farmer having made it through her first season on her own, probably exhausted, probably invigorated, but always willing to dig deep for the energy for another turn around the dance floor. 

New Farmer Summit, April 3-5, 2014

Nothing get you energized in the spring than spending three days with 150 other people who are also looking forward to getting their hands dirty as soon as possible. I was lucky enough to squeeze in another conference (read about the last one here) before the season starts again in earnest. Once again, the three days were packed with new information, though-provoking conversation, and lots of awesome people. There’s really nothing like knowing that you could walk up to any person in a room and almost instantly engage on a thoughtful and passionate level about any number of things. 

The summit was hosted by Primrose Valley Farm in Belleville, WI, whose amazing event space provided the perfect setting. A smaller group of farmers arrived a day early for a bus ride to three different farms in the area. We started out with a tour of Primrose Valley’s state of the art greenhouse and wash and pack area. A visit to Grassroots Farm provided the perfect counterpoint, with a smaller scale and a more bootstrap approach. We ended the tour at Inn Serendipity, a wind- and sun-powered bed and breakfast with a small intensive vegetable plot. 

We rounded out the day with a BYOB meet and greet in downtown New Glarus, one of the best towns in the world for B-ing your own Beer! There I met up with Dela and Tony Ends, who had generously offered to host a few of us at their farm, Scotch Hill Farm, over in Brodhead. Over the next few nights and mornings, we quickly realized that we had signed up for a supplemental ongoing workshop from two delightful and kind organic pioneers. Their CSA is going on 20 years!

Friday and Saturday were chock-full of great workshops, working lunches, panel discussions, amazing local food, and even a square dance with a live band and caller. Nobody wants me to go into detail on each and every workshop, so instead I offer you another little list of tidbits from the workshops I attended this weekend:

  • From Jackie Hoch of Hoch Orchard: a “value-added product” is hardly ever more valuable than direct-marketed fresh fruit, but are a valuable way to reduce loss from imperfect or imperfectly timed fruit.
  • Biologically active soil is the pest preventative measure for safer food, as manure gets broken down almost instantly. 
  • Special events like Christmas markets are especially good for value-added products, which have to be unique enough to stand out from the competition but not too crazy for people to want to buy.
  • “Chick-saws” are small-scale mobile coops for egg layers that can be moved by one person (like a rickshaw) instead of a tractor. 
  • Greenhouse heating is a high expense, so make sure you’re maximizing your use - you only need walkways when you need walkways, so rolling tables can be useful to use every possible square foot. 
  • The USDA’s NRCS and FSA offices have special incentives for beginning, women, and minority farmers (and a severe acronym addiction), including grants and cost-sharing, and low-interest loans. 
  • While record keeping may seem like a chore associated with organic certification, if you incorporate data logging into your workflow, you not only spend less time on paperwork, but you’ve created systems that can be helpful for you above all.
  • Most farmers’ online marketing headaches can be solved by getting listed for free on a few sites - even more important than having a fancy website or a Facebook page. 

Book Report: Dirt Hog

Back in February at the MOSES conference, I spent what seemed like (and what may have been) hours in the bookstore trying to decide which of the many books to spend my allotted money on. The spread was overwhelming, covering every conceivable topic of interest to the organic farmer. I made a few visits to the bookstore over the course of the weekend, unable to sufficiently narrow my choices. By the end of the weekend, two talks had narrowed down the choices for me. First, Mark Shepard's permaculture talk had the desired short-term effect of prompting me to buy his book. Second, a panel on organic hog production left me underwhelmed, and sure that there was a more truly sustainable model. Kelly Klober's book Dirt Hog found its way into my to-buy pile and the ever-increasing to-read pile. Incidentally, when I got the most recent MOSES Organic Broadcaster, the Acres USA ad on the back page featured these two books! I guess I'm not alone in my book-buying habits.

The organic hog production panel that spurred my purchase was based on practices that mimicked conventional hog production, simply substituting organic grain for conventional feed. With all grain prices rising indefinitely, this mode of production ignores many of the problems of conventional hog operations while continuing to work the narrowest of profit margins. The men on the panel discussed things like the fineness of grind to maximize feed efficiency. What I took from that particular panel was not a desire to emulate their practices but an important reminder that the "organic" label is not necessarily the paean some wish to believe.

In this book (subtitled "A Hands-on Guide to Raisin Pigs Outdoors...Naturally"), Klober selectively tackles another facet of conventional hog production: large-scale indoor operations. His audience is not necessarily CAFOs, but rather the family hog farmer of the lower midwest (Klober is from Missouri) that has responded to pressures to get big or get out by mortgaging himself to the hilt by building larger and larger hog barns. Klober instead advocates for simple shelters and outdoor production, either on pasture or in a drylot. He does practice a bit more of a natural approach to hog production, but he relies heavily on conventional grain feed and a just slightly less heavily on antibiotics and other medications.

The book does provide very good insight into the art of choosing a sow or a boar for breeding, good husbandry practices, and the relative strength of purebred and crossed genetics. He has raised mostly breeding stock for about 50 years, selling feeder pigs and his own whole hog sausage as a sideline. His descriptions of what to look for in a healthy sow with good genetics will no doubt be useful to me in the future, and the breeding programs he espouses seem sound. While I certainly learned plenty from the book, it definitely raised more questions for me than provided answers. I need to look into humane hog raising practices, the organic guidelines for hog producing, the feed value of unorthodox crops, and much more.

Read this if: you are a hog farmer looking to decrease your overhead; you have a strong interest in animal husbandry