After Years It's Only the Beginning

With the crazy weather we might find the farm nice and green when we arrive

For the past three months we’ve been living in a 90 square foot room in a three bedroom apartment shared by two friends of ours. It’s a little weird living in a shared 3 bedroom apartment when you’re married and you’ve spent the prior two years living by yourselves. Bills, dishes, trash, cleaning, finding time to be alone, it all gets complicated. Needless to say, while it’s been fun, I’m really looking forward to having my own space again and this time having a lot more space than I’ve ever had before.
 
Next Saturday our lives will change dramatically. We’ll go from never having owned a house to owning a house. From never having owned land to owning 84 acres. From never farming before to farming. I’ll be working remotely, so at least some of my daily life will remain somewhat intact, but Sweetbreads’ life will shift entirely. The list of things to accomplish when you’re starting out homesteading and farming is endless. Fencing will go up, buildings will be built, the garden will be planted, animals will come on. Pretty soon many lives will depend on us for protection, food and water. Every - single - day. We’ll not only have their lives to sustain and enjoy, but also their deaths to endure.

 

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The Next Era of Industrial Farming


Image courtesy of André Ford and www.we-make-money-not-art.com

We read a thought-provoking article the other day about what might be the next era of industrial farming. A student at The Royal College of Art in the UK put up an installation detailing the potential “progress” that could be made in the ways of “efficiency” and “humane treatment”. The project was the result of a search for how dense and vertical architecture can bring food production back to cities.
 
The article can be read here: Farming the Unconscious, but at a high level it describes a reality where consumers and producers come to terms with the fact that animals should be treated as crops instead of as animals and thus the production systems should completely disregard animal welfare (which they pretty much already do anyway). After all, the British artist (André Ford) argues, “Animals are things we keep in our homes and watch on David Attenborough programs. 'Animals' bred for consumption are crops and agricultural products like any other. We do not, and cannot, provide adequate welfare for these agricultural products and therefore welfare should be removed entirely.” Since the system is already flawed he proposes taking it even further. Why torture these poor animals? Why not just anesthetize them and use technology to capitalize on their meat production capabilities?

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Interwebs On the Farm (Or Not)


I've heard that getting internet in rural areas is difficult and, to be honest, I kind of pushed it to the back of my mind when thinking about the farm. I really take internet for granted. It’s pretty much expected to be fast and available everywhere, so I just assume that it is. Obviously, it's really freakin' important for personal and business reasons to have good internet access. We practically live on the web. Farm research, Skype with families, online shopping. THE BLOG. I even use the voice over IP (VOIP) phone in gmail for phone calls in the apartment. So it probably should have been near the top of the list of our considerations on whether the farm would “work” for us or not, but it wasn't really. Don’t get me wrong, it was on my mind a lot, but I just figured we’d find a way to make it work, even if it was dial-up. The power of denial is strong, and typically not something I’m afflicted with (or am I?), but there's always exceptions I suppose.
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