Turkey Redux

My ongoing computer education...and labor of love....is the compilation of six years of "The Farmer's Wife", Millie's weekly vignettes of humor, history, reminiscence, and sometimes all three for the Tarkio Avalanche.  It's a dandy occupation for fall nights: sitting on the couch with a baseball game silently playing on the television  and a laptop on my....well, lap.  This week, Blake happens to be hobnobbing with high tech agriculture types at what we common folk might characterize as a "Shark Tank" gathering for agricultural innovation.  As an erstwhile future consumer of what these folks are peddling, his message to them could be paraphrased in the famous, if unsubstantiated, words of Benjamin Franklin upon signing the Declaration of Independence: "If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately." One might assume this message would resonate, perhaps precipitate a rousing 'hooah', but that was not the case.  The participants were "all in" when the subject was the application of technology to seed, machinery, and other inputs for crop production.  But when the subject turned to modern animal production systems, the affirmation could be summarized as 'crickets'.   No surprise to hear that the food served at this gathering was heavy on descriptive terms....and light on substance. It isn't an encouraging scenario: the best and brightest minds toiling on a future for agriculture....that harkens back to mid 20th century for its models of poultry or pork or beef production.

Therein lies a tale....a slice of history, if you will, unadorned, unedited, and without any of the warm feelings modern poultry hobbyists and proponents of the good old days would like to pull over the cold hard facts like a cozy comforter.  

Here's Millie's 2008 article about the rise and fall of pasture turkey production from one Atchison county farmer's  experience back in the 1950s:

 The Farmer's Wife

    THIS PICTURE, TAKEN IN 1956 - Shows 12 acres of turkeys with the same amount on the other side of the hill. Lynn Niemann had sold 6,000 turkeys prior to this picture being taken. He was told that he was one of the largest tur­ key producers at that time.

By this time, many of you have already purchased your turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. The size of it depends on how many people there will be gathered around your table on Thanksgiving Day. You had a few things to consider when you purchased it, besides the size of it. What brand would be the best tasting? Would you buy a frozen one or a fresh one? Where would you get the most meat for the cheapest price? Possibly other factors not mentioned here were considered as well. As you took it home, did you ever consider how convenient it was to be able to find a nice fat turkey at your grocery store?

I have visited with Charles Lynn Niemann several different times about his experience with raising turkeys during the 1950's.

Lynn lived north of the Farmers City Store. His father owned 160 acres of which 100 or more he kept in permanent pasture. It was basically unproductive. Looking about for a method to utilize this in a productive manner, Lynn started raising turkeys, ranging them on this pasture land.

The first year he raised 200, then went to 1,000, 3,000, 5,000, and then to 10,000. The first four years in this business were profitable. The last year the market went to pot, thanks to several different companies entering the production, processing, and marketing phase of this business. Consequently, the price in a controlled market did not improve, as well as other factors beyond Lynn's control, and he, as well as many others in the business, absorbed a huge loss and most producers and Lynn quit the business.

One of the hazards in turkey  production on an open range is an unexpected hard rain.  The turkeys drown quite readily if a large or heavy rain is the first exposure to the young turkeys. Lynn witnessed 4,000 drowning the first night  there was  a hard  rain  on  the  range, that  time  a  $12,000  loss, and there was  no way  to prevent  it. There were other factors in the loss of many turkeys due to heat  and predators.

Lynn related to me that during this time of raising these turkeys, it took several truckloads of feed a day. He did not have an adequate supply of water and hired Luke Mather to haul a load of water to the turkeys every day. He eventually had a deep well dug which helped supply water to the turkeys but, again, at a cost.

The year after he stopped raising the turkeys, he planted corn on the acres where the turkeys were raised. There had been so much turkey manure on the land that  the white  corn planted there produced over 170 bushels per acre, a record yield for Atchison  County at that time. 

 When he quit the turkey business, Lynn had suffered  close to a $60,000 loss. That was a lot of money i n the 1950's. , He said, "It was a time in my life not worth remembering."

I believe Millie's piece about Lynn Niemann would resonate with livestock producers attempting to convince the general population and well meaning animal advocates that reinventing the wheel when it comes to animal agriculture will come at a price.  More animals will be injured or killed by predators, weather, and their cohorts in pastures and pens.  Prices will be more volatile and costs will increase.  That is a pattern centuries old.  Only time will tell whether the innovators at Blake's meeting will produce breakthroughs  that change the food system for the better.  But rehashing methods older than our grand and great-grand parents used is surely not the answer....  

Lucky Thirteen

How can it be that the blond tyke creeping step by step up my back stairs now skis down mountains and teeters across obstacle courses high above the ground.

That the babe in his grandma's arms, too little to know he's perched upon a shiny new toy John Deere Gator, is now the take charge guy for family mowing, the original assistant Pig Keeper, and general factotum in the greenhouse and dirt shed....

That the little boy who once wore red....and then black....has grown up enough to wear red....and now black!

That the number of birthday parties and birthday cakes...and candles on those cakes...is now adding up to thirteen.

That this young man with the great big smile has somehow managed to grow up....right under our noses!... and become a teenager...

How can it be?

Happy birthday, Aaron....We love you !

Cherry-o

Entropy. Anyone remember entropy from high school? I was introduced to the term in freshman physical science: it was an enlightening experience and, along with original sin, explained much about the workings of the world. Entropy: the gradual but unpredictable decline of order into chaos.

Entropy explains August in Missouri. Our gardens have slumped; the maturing fields of grains are marred by leaf disease; weeds poke up through the canopy. Lawns are a mass of rampant water grass. Disorder. Chaos. That will be the state of our landscape until harvest ends the madness and the world settles into winter.

In the fruit country of northern Michigan, August is harvest. Driving through this lovely countryside, you pass row after row of trees laden with apples, blushing gold and pink, and fruit stands with baskets of peaches and pints of sweet black cherries. Ahh..we Missourians cannot resist a sweet cherry; we wait eagerly each summer for them to appear in our stores. On a whim, we pull over to a serve yourself (help wanted!) fruit stand and buy a pint, enjoying the sweet treat and pitching the pits out the window as we drive….

Cherry immersion! Salmon with cherry barbecue sauce for supper and later on, an afternoon of golf on a course built through a cherry orchard. Tourists we may be, but we are also farmers, and curious about cherries as a crop, not just as the raw material for one of Lee’s summer pies.

This is just the tip of the cherry iceberg. I can’t resist taking home jars of cherry salsa and the barbeque sauce, unmistakably cherry chunky and cherry red, but you might eat a Michigan cherry as dessert in your holiday fruitcake, your black cherry ice cream, or in a myriad of other treats topped or decorated with a Maraschino cherry!

Many of the best beloved cherry concoctions are as man made as the machines that harvest them. The rarity and expense of true ‘Maraschino’ cherries encouraged cherry processors to democratize the treat by brining the fruit until it was a pale version of its former self, then infusing it with syrup and color until every cherry was the beloved hue children envision atop a hot fudge sundae. Candied cherries are super sweet, too, one of the reasons a fruitcake passes from generation to generation.

Cherry harvesting is an intricate mechanical ballet. Machines drive alongside the cherry trees through the rows, stopping at each tree. One enfolds the trunk; both are fitted with baffles that direct the bouncing fruit toward the conveyor in the middle. When the machines are in place, a vigorous shaking ensues, but for mere seconds, then the machines separate, and move on to the next tree. The fruit runs up the conveyor into bins of water; each bin can hold 1000# of cherries. The water allows sticks and leaves to float to the top and be picked out before the cherries leave the orchard. Another type of picker drives up to a tree, unfolds like an umbrella or dragon wings around the trunk, then shakes the tree and gathers the cherries onto a conveyor. These harvesters can picks 4 trees a minute. It takes me a half hour on a ladder and dozens of cherries on the ground to fill an ice cream bucket! Whether combining corn or harvesting fruit, the imaginations of the engineers have devised some amazing labor saving machinery:

 Cherry Harvest Leelanau Fruit Company

In today’s supercharged food climate, it is deemed insufficient to be beautiful and tasty; a food must cure what ails ye as well. Dried cherries and cherry concentrate (especially from tart cherries) are touted for its antioxidants and melatonin, as well as helping to ward off Alzheimer’s. I’m all for sleeping better, and Lord knows, forgetfulness is a plague, but something as versatile and miraculous as a cherry, or any fruit that appears like a Christmas in July present, shouldn't have to wave its flag like a medicine man.

Cherry trees begin bearing between three (for tart, or what we call, pie cherries) and seven years (for sweet varieties). We saw orchards in all stage of life, from three foot saplings with drip lines to ensure success to trees nearing the end of their 25-30 years of useful life. At any age, they make a graceful landscape, a testament to husbandry at the highest level.

‘The sweet things in life, to you were just loaned

So how can you lose what you’ve never owned?

Life is just a bowl of cherries

So live and laugh at it all.’

Ray Henderson and Lew Brown

In other words, just enjoy Blake's personal favorite, the cherry fudge…

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Jack and Elvis and Thirty Nine Years

Three hundred and fifty eight thousand. That's what rolled up in green lights this morning on the odometer of our 2002 Dodge Ram. Three hundred and fifty eight thousand miles. I'd sure like to see it turn over to 400,000. Picture a distance runner with the finish line in sight. Every time I climb in those creaking doors, buckle up and push the plastic seat belt holder back into the front seat, I'm rooting for the old darling to rumble on and on. Fourteen years and three hundred fifty thousand miles is quite a lot.....but not enough.

As many years and as many miles of gravel, terraces, interstate, and two lane oiled state highways as the brown pickup has traveled, they are just a drop in the bucket compared to the miles and years accumulated by this pair of middling married folk. Thirty nine years is the tally this year...thirty nine years! That's the sum made famous by Jack Benny...perpetually thirty nine years old after declaring "there's nothing funny about 40" ,(how about it, Matt?) and adopted thereafter by legions of adults facing the imminent departure of youth and arrival of middle age.

Soo...what about thirty nine years ago...that would be 1977, right? What was going on in 1977, the spring we went to a jeweler one afternoon and picked out a ring, that I ate lunch with my mother at Katy Station and told her we were engaged, that Blake and I wrote letters (snail mail!paper!)every day I was in D.C. and talked on the "Watts" line (remember that?!) once a week?

January...Apple Computer is incorporated, it snows in Miami, and Jimmy Carter, newly inaugurated, pardons Vietnam era draft evaders.

March...Three Washington DC buildings are seized by Muslim gunmen who hold 149 hostages. Negotiators include three Muslim ambassadors who urge the gunmen to surrender, citing passages from the Quran.

April...The Mariners and Blue Jays play their first baseball. Optical fiber is used to carry live telephone.

May....Space Mountain opens in Disneyland. Star Wars opens May 25.

June...Jimmy Carter cancels the B-1 Bomber program (revived later by Reagan). James Earl Ray escapes but is recaptured. Apple sells its first Apple II computers. The Supremes perform for the final time.

August....Jimmy Carter signs a bill creating the Department of Energy. The Son of Sam murderer is captured. Groucho Marx dies at age 86.

And.... Elvis Presley dies at Graceland on August 16, age 42.

Sad to say, that last news item is the one indelibly imprinted on my brain. I'd spent my summer earnings on an unfinished table and chairs, a dresser, and a nightstand. The week Elvis died, I borrowed my parents' car to drive over to Columbia so I could stain and varnish our new furniture in our soon to be duplex. Solid Gold Elvis was the soundtrack of every radio station all day long, imprinting my ears and memory for, apparently, the next thirty nine years!

We have celebrated...and not celebrated...our anniversary in many different ways over thirty nine years. Many years, we have spent August 27 in some small town in Missouri, eating ham, or chicken, or brisket, with a roomful of Farm Bureau friends. Late August is prime time for both county annual meetings and delivering mums. And other years, it's just been another pleasant summer night to raise a toast over grilled steak or burgers...then watch baseball.

This year, August 27 is a golf date with friends and family in Mound City for our Community Hospital. Since we are celebrating thirty nine years, why not top this piece off with another bon mot by Mr. Benny, this time concerning golf....

Hey, I've got a great partner!

Here's to thirty nine years...

And beyond.....

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